Pagodes is the first of three movements from Claude Debussy's 1903 composition Estampes, written for solo piano. Debussy wrote Pagodes to evoke the sound of Indonesian gamelan music, which he had heard at the 1889 Paris Exposition. The piece uses pentatonic scales, low sustained 5ths, interlocking rhythms between the hands, 3:2 polyrhythms, and trills to mimic musical features of a gamelan ensemble. The work is an example of Impressionism, a musical movement in which composers placed a greater emphasis on evoking a general mood and atmosphere. Impressionist works focused more on creating a "wash of colour" and exploring tone colours, rather than using standard harmonic progressions or having clear, forward-moving melodic lines.

A pagoda is a tiered tower with multiple eaves, common to East Asia and Southeast Asia.

Pagodes is in ternary form with a short coda.

A section

The piece begins with low, sustained 5ths of B and F#, establishing B as the initial tonal centre. These 5ths of B and F# act as a pedal point over the first 10 bars.

• Countermelody

• Cross hands

  • • Main droite (m.d.) - Play with right hand

    • Main gauche (m.g.) - Play with left hand

• Cross rhythm

• Hemiola

• Pedal point

• Pentatonic scale

• Polyrhythm

• Slendro (scale)

• Ternary form

• Whole-tone scale