Description
D’un cahier d’esquisses is precisely what the title purports it to be: a sketch, and perhaps because a sketch, it appears to be the first piano composition in which three-stave notation is used throughout.
Written in 1903, it forms a logical hyphen between the just finished “Estamps” and “Reflets dans l’eau ( Images I)” started in the summer of that year. Short as it is, its importance can hardly be over emphasised. Not only do we find echoes in Debussy’s own “Danse sacree” and “La mer” with which he began to occupy himself at that period. It’s influence stretches even to Ravel’s “Oiseaux tristes”.
