Debussy: The Preludes 169
style with its wide, delicately sonorous spacing of chords,
and realize anew the astonishing prophetic qualities of
measures like these :
In these final measures of the F major “Prelude”, Chopin
has dared to add the seventh harmonic to the triad and to
treat it as a consonance, as a point of final repose. In that
single Eb is implicit all the delicate and sensuous delight
in sonorities so characteristic of modern music and to which
we shall have frequently to refer in the following com-
mentary on Debussy’s Preludes.
Volume I.
I. Dancers of Delphos {Danseuses de Del-phes)
A slow, stately dance in the simple three part key-scheme
found in so many of the Preludes of Bach, namely: Part I,
tonic key with inflection, at the end, toward the dominant
(measures 1-10); Part II, dominant, with allusions to re-
lated keys (11-20) ; Part III, tonic (21 to the end). Note,
in the 18th measure, the delicately sonorous disposition of
the harmony and the subtle way in which the timbre of
the isolated octaves on C is modified by the addition of the
Ab triad.