Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum by Claude Debussy: play it with falling notes in your browser, on your computer keys, a touch screen or a MIDI keyboard. It is part of Klaviero Premium, and 49 pieces are free. The chart has 1,110 notes over 2:24, peaks at 9.2 notes per second, and Klaviero rates it tier 3 of 5.
Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum is the first of the six pieces in Claude Debussy's Children's Corner, L. 113, composed between 1906 and 1908 and published by Durand in 1908. Harold Bauer gave the first performance in Paris on 18 December that year. Debussy dedicated the suite to his daughter Claude-Emma, known as Chouchou, then three years old, with tender apologies from her father for what follows. The title alludes to the books of piano exercises called Gradus ad Parnassum, Steps to Parnassus, among them Muzio Clementi's and Carl Czerny's, and the piece makes fun of their mechanical drill. It is also a real study in finger independence. In the middle the player slows down and tries the material in other keys, then grows more frantic toward a loud ending. Debussy told his publisher it should be played very early in the morning. The chart is 1,110 notes over 2:24, averaging 7.7 per second with a peak of 9.2 between 1:25 and 1:50. The notes run from C1 to F6, and 9 of them fall outside a 61-key keyboard.
The first piece of Debussy's Children's Corner, a joke at Clementi's and Czerny's exercises.
It averages 7.7 notes per second against a peak of 9.2, so the busiest bar is barely harder than the rest and there is nowhere to recover. The right hand plays 59% of the 1,110 notes and the left 41%. The notes run C1 to F6, 5.4 octaves, which is past what a 61-key board reaches at one end or the other. Klaviero rates it tier 3 of 5.
Composer
Claude Debussy
Notes
1,110
Length
2:24
Peak density
9.2 notes per second
Difficulty
tier 3 of 5
Access
Premium
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