Clair De Lune (Simplified) (Piano)

This simplified Clair de Lune sheet music is Debussy's melody in C major and 9/8, 58 bars, marked 108, with the fast runs taken out. The original is in D♭ major with five flats; this version has no key signature.

The right hand plays two notes at a time, in thirds, and the top note of each pair is the tune. The left hand holds one interval per half bar. Clair de Lune has no lyrics; it is a piano piece, the third movement of Debussy's Suite bergamasque, named after a Verlaine poem.

Click the sheet music to play it in your browser with each note checked as you go; no account is needed.

Bar 1 is four notes at a walking pace: E with G, then C with E, each pair a beat long. Nothing in the first four bars is faster than an eighth note, and the left hand changes twice a bar at most.

That pace is why the piece works for a beginner. There is time to hear each pair of notes before the next, and time to decide how loud the next one should be. "Clair de lune" is French for moonlight. The simplified version keeps the pace and the floating sound; what it removes is the density.

The tune is the top note of each third: G, E in bar 1; D, E, D in bar 2; C, D, C, E, C in bar 3. Play the top notes alone first, with finger 5 or 4, so you hear the line the thirds are carrying. Then add the lower note of each pair.

The two questions to ask in every bar: how softly can bar 1 be played with both notes of each third still sounding, and does bar 3 want to be a little warmer than bar 2. The notes are easy enough that you can afford to ask them.

The score is 58 bars of 9/8: three groups of three eighth notes to a bar, counted "1 and a, 2 and a, 3 and a". No flats to read, where the original has five. The right hand is two notes at a time and the left hand one interval or one chord per half bar. From bar 5 the left hand thickens to three-note chords (C D F, then B D F) and from bar 9 it spreads them, a low C then E and G above it.

In Chordzy the notes highlight as you play, which is the easiest way to learn where the three beats fall without counting to nine.

The left hand in bars 1 to 4 is one interval a half bar: E and G, then F and A♭, then E and G, then D and F. It never has to be fast, which makes it a first exercise in hand independence you can pass.

Keep the left hand quieter than the right. Two layers at two volumes is the skill every expressive piece after this one will ask for, and here the layers are slow enough to hear separately.

Debussy's music runs on shading. Grow the volume through bars 1 to 3 as the thirds climb to C and E, let the held B and D in bar 2 bloom, and let bar 4 settle before bar 5 begins. Playing every bar at the same volume is the one way to make this piece dull.

The melody leans forward as it climbs, and settles on the held thirds at the end of each bar. Those two habits are what turn the notes into the piece people recognise.

Click the sheet music to open the simplified Clair de Lune in Chordzy. It follows you note by note, so the melody, the 9/8 pacing and the two-hand balance can be learned with feedback rather than by hope.

Let it be the quiet part of a practice session, five minutes at the end, and it will carry you towards the full Debussy later on.