Debussy's Rêverie — when its first edition was finally due in 1905, the composer wrote: "You are wrong to publish the Rêverie… In two words: it's bad!" He had sold it back in 1891, and it became one of his best-known piano pieces. Mostly quiet, with even its thickest stretch marked soft. The full piano score is on screen, note by note.
Sold in 1891, first published in 1905 — and its composer called it bad
Rêverie is usually dated 1890, when Debussy was in his twenties, still finding his voice and trying the traditional genres — ballade, mazurka, nocturne, waltz — usually once each.
In 1891 he sold it, with a Mazurka, to two Paris publishers at once, Choudens and Hamelle; the editor of Henle's 2025 edition adds a question mark: perhaps not on purpose. Neither published it, for reasons unknown. In 1895 the rights passed to Fromont; Rêverie appeared once in the magazine L'Illustration, and the first edition followed only in 1905.
By then Debussy was forty-two, made famous by the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and Pelléas et Mélisande. He wrote to Madame Fromont: "You are wrong to publish the Rêverie… It's a thing of no importance… In two words: it's bad!"
Published anyway, it became one of his best-known piano pieces; Henle's editor finds the verdict hard to understand today — salon music in the best sense, with melodic charm and elegant writing within reach of amateurs.
In Westworld's first season, a host plays it on the player piano
HBO's Westworld used this piece in the third episode of its first season, "The Stray" (2016): what a host plays on the player piano there is Debussy's Rêverie. The series' music is by Ramin Djawadi.
The left hand rocks, the right hand sings slowly
The first two bars are the left hand alone: four notes up and back down, rocking like a chair. At bar 3 (0:07) the right hand lays a slow tune on top.
At 0:46 the tune moves up a fourth and into octaves, the left hand sweeping up from the lowest F on the keyboard and back. 1:06 and 1:10 are the only two f marks; each lasts a bar, then back to p.
From 1:25 the hands trade places: the rocking figure moves into the right hand and the tune sinks into the left.
The bars from 2:00 very nearly stop — the bar at 2:02 strikes a single note.
From 2:05 both hands move in chords, one per beat; at 2:26 the key signature turns to four sharps, brighter and further away.
From 2:51 comes the thickest stretch, twenty to twenty-four notes a bar — the treble ringing between two Gs, then the left hand between F and G — yet the page asks for soft, softer, softer still.
At 3:07 six notes fall like a bridge; at 3:10 the opening tune returns at pitch, its accompaniment split: the rising half stays in the bass, the falling half moves two octaves up and drops from above the tune.
From 3:49 it slowly settles on an F major chord.
One hundred and one bars, three changes of key signature
101 bars and 1,319 notes, 67 of them tied continuations, so 1,252 key strokes; no repeats, no grace notes.
The key signature changes three times: to four sharps at bar 59, to none at bar 69, and back to one flat at bar 76. Bar 75 is the piece's only bar of 3/4.
Bar counts run from two to twenty-four, averaging thirteen: bars 69 to 73, at twenty to twenty-four notes, are the thickest; bar 50, with two notes written and one of them held over, is the emptiest.
Twenty-eight dynamic marks — fifteen p, seven pp, three mf, two f, one sf — and twelve hairpins; no pedal marks at all.
The range runs from D1 to A6, five octaves and a fifth: D1 only in bar 38, A6 only in bar 100. The shortest note lasts about 0.20 seconds, in bars 69 and 70.
The difficulty is adding notes without adding force
First, keep the left-hand rocking figure even. It starts in bar 1 and keeps coming back, and a single note taking extra weight turns it into a beat-keeper rather than a bed.
Second, dynamics. Twenty-two of the twenty-eight dynamic marks are p or pp, and each of the two f marks lasts a single bar; the thickest bars, 69 to 73, are marked p and più p — more notes does not mean louder.
Third, pedal. Fromont's 1905 first edition prints no pedal marks at all, so it is your call. This recording pedals the broken-chord passages a bar at a time, changing at the bar line; in bars 51 to 70 and 92 to 98 the chords change often, mostly on every beat, so it plays them without pedal, joined by their written lengths — otherwise neighbouring chords smear together.
Fourth, bar 75. The whole bar is a single falling line of six notes, the last two written on the lower staff for the left hand; the opening tune returns at the very next bar, and these six notes are the bridge to it — do not hurry across.
Fifth, the reprise from bar 76. The first half of the accompaniment is in the left hand and the second half leaps into the right hand's treble, with the tune passed between the hands in the middle — the hands interlock, and the tune has to float out of the middle.
Tempo: the first edition prints only Andantino sans lenteur (an unhurried andantino) and no metronome mark; this recording takes ♩= 100, in the upper half of the usual andantino range.
We rate this 3 out of 5.
The same years, and twenty years on
From the same years: the Suite bergamasque, home of Clair de lune, also dates from around 1890 and likewise waited until 1905, when the same publisher, Fromont, brought it out; the two Arabesques, L. 66, by contrast were printed by Durand in 1891. All of them come from his twenties: a clear tune over a rocking accompaniment.
For Debussy twenty years on: "La fille aux cheveux de lin" from the first book of Préludes, written in 1909–1910 — just as quiet and just as short, in the language of his maturity.
