Piano Solo - Level 4 - Digital Download SKU: A0.534657 Composed by Claude Debussy/Robert Orledge. 20th Century,Concert,Standards. Score. 10 pages. Musik Fabrik Music Publishing #5732665. Published by Musik Fabrik Music Publishing (A0.534657). In January 1913, Debussy struggled to complete Toomai des Ă©lĂ©phants as the 11th prelude in Book2, finally replacing it by a rather Stravinskian study Les Tierces alternĂ©es. However, his daughter Chouchou was fascinated by elephants and in the summer of 1913, Debussy wrote her a âToybox Balletâ (La BoĂźte Ă joujoux) which contains a âPas de lâĂ©lĂ©phantâ and an âold Hindu chant which is still used to train elephants [in India]. It is constructed on the scale of â5 oâclock in the morningâ,which means it must be in 5/4 time.â My reconstruction of this lost prelude is based around this material and it evokes a day in the life of Toomai, the young mahout, and his faithful elephant Kala Nag from one dawn to the next, incorporating the legendary âElephantsâ Danceâ from Rudyard Kip lingâs First Jungle Book (1894) which only Toomai was ever privileged to witness. The version presented here is the revised second version of this prelude which contains an effect of piano harmonics as the dawn returns towards the end.
