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Debussy is a household name in a way most composers on this catalog aren't, so it's worth being precise about what “complete” means here: every playable engraving of his music in our source corpus is now live — not every note he ever wrote, but the full pool available to us. That's 22 pieces: the two piano solos most people already know, plus the piano parts of 20 mélodies that just joined them.
Two solos everyone knows, twenty songs most people don't
Clair de lune and Arabesque No. 1 have been on PracticeClef since early in the catalog's life. What's new is the rest of Debussy's output in our corpus: 20 songs, all mélodies for voice and piano, ingested as piano parts. Say that plainly, because it matters — these are the piano accompaniments to songs, not the vocal line, and every page is labeled that way. The piano writing here is not a backing track; it carries as much of the Impressionist harmonic language as the solo works do, which is what makes it worth practicing on its own.
Three complete song cycles, not a scattered sampler
The 20 mélodies aren't a grab-bag — three complete cycles are in there whole. The Ariettes oubliées, six Verlaine settings, are all present: “C'est l'extase langoureuse,” “Il pleure dans mon cœur,” “L'ombre des arbres,” “Paysages belges: Chevaux de bois,” and both halves of the “Aquarelles” pair, “Green” and “Spleen.” The Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire are all five: “Le Balcon,” “Harmonie du Soir,” “Le Jet d'Eau,” “Recueillement,” and “La Mort des Amants.” And the Trois chansons de Bilitis, Debussy's settings of Pierre Louÿs, are all three: “La flûte de Pan,” “La Chevelure,” and “Le Tombeau des Naïades.” The remaining six — “Mandoline,” “Les cloches,” “La Grotte,” “L'âme évaporée,” and two Rondels on Charles d'Orléans texts — round the set out to 20.
Clair de Lune — Claude Debussy
This piece is in Db major, sits at level 7 of 9, and takes about 5 minutes to play.
The third movement of the Suite bergamasque and the most famous piece of music Debussy ever wrote — rolling, harp-like arpeggios under a slow melody that drifts through his signature blurred, pedal-soaked harmony. It's a solo, not a song, but it's the same ear that wrote everything below.
Open this score when you want to play it.
Arabesque No. 1 in E Major — Claude Debussy
This piece is in E major, sits at level 6 of 9, and takes about 4 minutes to play.
Debussy's other famous piano solo — flowing sixteenth-note figures over a gently shifting harmonic bed, recognizable to almost anyone who has spent time around a piano.
Open this score when you want to play it.
Il pleure dans mon cœur (piano part) — Claude Debussy
This piece is in G# minor, sits at level 7 of 9, and takes about 2 minutes to play.
The marquee piece of the new batch: a Verlaine setting built on a repeating raindrop ostinato in the piano, one of the most-performed Debussy mélodies in the concert repertoire. This is the piano part only — the vocal line is a separate part and isn't included here.
Open this score when you want to play it.
Mandoline (piano part) — Claude Debussy
This piece is in G major, mixolydian signature, sits at level 6 of 9, and takes about 2 minutes to play.
An open-string guitar-strum figure under a Verlaine text about masked revelers — one of the more accessible entry points into this set if you're new to Debussy's song output. Piano part only; no vocal line included.
Open this score when you want to play it.
Rondel: Le temps a laissé son manteau (piano part) — Claude Debussy
This piece is in C# minor, dorian signature, sits at level 6 of 9, and takes about one minute to play.
A genuine curiosity: Debussy set a 15th-century Charles d'Orléans poem in deliberately archaic modal notation, dorian rather than plain minor — early-music pastiche you can see notated on the page. Short, but a real piece of music history. Piano part only.
Open this score when you want to play it.
Aquarelles I. Green (piano part) — Claude Debussy
This piece is in Gb major, sits at level 6 of 9, and takes about 2 minutes to play.
One-sixth of the complete Ariettes oubliées cycle — “Green” sets a poem about a lover's exhausted devotion in gently shifting, watercolor harmony. Piano part only, no vocal line included.
Open this score when you want to play it.
Not beginner repertoire
Across the 20 mélodie piano parts, difficulty on our published 1–9 scale skews advanced: two at 5, eight at 6, seven at 7, three at 8. That's repertoire for the intermediate-to-advanced pianist, not a beginner's first Debussy. Mandoline or L'âme évaporée are the gentler starting points; Il pleure dans mon cœur, La Grotte, and La Chevelure sit at the harder end.
Explore it
The full library is free to browse and play — filter by composer, difficulty, or era. Connect a digital piano for live note feedback. Turn on Wait mode when you want the cursor to advance after you play the written notes. See the docs for setup. No account is needed.
A note on the numbers. Every count in this post is checkable against the live catalog: piece counts, keys, and difficulty grades come from each piece's own metadata record, and “complete” means every playable engraving in our source corpus — not every piece Debussy ever wrote. Duration figures are estimates derived from the score, not measured performances.