Debussyâs two books of preludes amount to a revolution in piano writing, and reflect better that any of his other works the span of Debussyâs achievement.
The first book (1910) proved to be his most successful work: it includes some of the more popular preludes, such as La fille aux Cheveux de Lin (The Girl with the Flaxen Hair), and La Cathédrale Engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral), based on the legend of the sunken city of Ys, whose cathedral was allowed to rise to the surface once a day.
Both books include musical idioms from many different parts of the world (Spain, Scotland, Italy, the Orient etc.) and the evocative titles, placed as afterthoughts at the end of each piece, often allude to literary works by Shakespeare, Dickens, Baudelaire, Shelley and others.
