The Little Nigar

History#

Debussy composed The Little Nigar (giving the noun this spelling) in 1909 on a commission from Théodore Lack, for his piano method Méthode de Piano. The subtitle describes it as a cakewalk. It is reminiscent of Golliwogg’s Cakewalk from his Children’s Corner, a piano suite that he had composed a year earlier. Debussy regularly sought exotic influences. In The Little Nigar, he alluded to banjo chords and drums, influenced by American minstrel shows. The piece, marked allegro, begins with a first theme presenting “jazzy” syncopes in time, in the then popular ragtime style. It is followed by a lyrical passage, marked espressivo and pianissimo (very softly), which leads to a return of the first section. The first theme leans towards pentatonic and is accompanied by a chromatic sequence of broken minor thirds. The Little Nigar was first published in 1909 by Éditions Alphonse Leduc in Paris as part of Lack’s piano method and again as a single piece in about 1934, now with an added repetition and entitled The Little Negro, with subtitle Le petit nègre. Debussy also used the piece’s main theme in his 1913 ballet for children, La boîte à joujoux, in which it characterises an English soldier. Numerous transcriptions have been made of the piece, including an arrangement for woodwinds that has been used for advertising Purina One dog food.

Literature#

• Schmitz, E. Robert (1950). The Piano Works of Claude Debussy, foreword by Virgil Thomson. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce.

External links#

• The little nigar (recordings) muziekweb.nl
• Christine Stevenson: N is for Negre – Debussy’s Le Petit Negre notesfromapianist.wordpress.com 2012