Claude Debussy began composing his Suite Bergamasque around 1890 at age 28, then hid it away for fifteen years, convinced it was immature and worried it would dilute his reputation as an avant-garde innovator. When a publisher finally persuaded him to release it in 1905, he heavily revised the score and renamed two movements, turning the generic "Promenade Sentimentale" into the now-legendary "Clair de Lune." This episode traces the suite's roots in Paul Verlaine's poetry, where masked aristocrats dance in the moonlight while hiding a quiet melancholy beneath their costumes.

We walk through the architecture of all four movements: the breathing rubato of the Prelude, the weightless Minuet that dodges its own downbeat, the rolling 9/8 meter of Clair de Lune, and the driving three-against-four polyrhythm of the Passepied. Then we follow the mu ...