Debussy’s Clair de Lune III

Well-versed in Rodenbach’s Symbolist ideas, Lévy-Dhurmer has similarly captured the mood of a late evening in Venice in the present work, contrasting a symphony of the blue and silver tones of moonlight playing across the water and the gondolas with the dazzling, brilliant yellow and orange tones of glowing orbs of man-made light. In some areas, it is not clear what is itself a light source, and what is reflection, and these glowing orbs seem to cluster together above the empty gondolas almost like fireflies. The resulting composition is less an exact depiction than an evocation of the mood of the emptying city illuminated by moonlight.

Christie’s

Note: Clair de Lune – Start: 59:34 21. End: 1:03:17