Images (1894)

This work only has the title in common with the well-known “Images” I and II from 1905 and 1908. Debussy dedicated the three-part cycle to the daughter of a painter friend, writing: “These pieces shy away from brightly lit salons, in which people are usually to be found who do not care for music. They are rather soliloquies of the piano and the self and it is not forbidden to employ the special mood conjured up by rainy days.” The slow movement – it resurfaces in a slightly altered form as the middle movement of “Pour le Piano” – is associated with the atmosphere in the Louvre and its old paintings. This is Impressionist music of a very special kind.