Debussy Children's Corner

Published in 1908, Claude Debussy's Children's Corner (L. 113) is a six-movement suite for solo piano. It is dedicated to Debussy's daughter, Claude-Emma, who was three years old at the time of composition. The work is meant to be evocative of childhood, and is not intended to be played by children. The six movements are titled Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum, Jimbo's Lullaby, Serenade for the Doll,The Snow is Dancing, The Little Shepherd, and Golliwogg's Cakewalk. A typical performance lasts about fifteen minutes.

The first movement, Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum, is a satirical piece of intermediate difficulty. Works entitled Gradus ad Parnassuminclude a seminal textbook on counterpoint written by Johann Fux in 1725, and collections of instructional piano pieces by Muzio Clementi and by Carl Czerny.

With a musical style in which impression matters more than direction, the revolutionary French composer Claude Debussy (1862 - 1918) produced a body of magnificent music, strikingly different from that of previous composers and having profound influence on subsequent composers.