[jinfiesto]

Speaking as someone who studied music academically for a while, I imagine they left it out because it's pretty unremarkable despite it's popularity. Debussy was actually reticent to publish Suite Bergamasque (which contains Clair de Lune) as it was from is "immature period" (his words not mine.) The suite was published 15 years after its initial composition.

In terms of its importance to the literature as a whole, despite being beautiful music (I'm really not trying to discount that the music is beautiful) Suite Bergamasque still represents an extension of the Romantic style. It's not nearly as groundbreaking as the Preludes/Images/Estampes which are a serious departure from all of the music that came before. Art was never the same after Picasso tore down the establishment. Ditto music and Debussy.

[pohl]

This piece is to Debussy what Liebestraume No. 3 is to Franz Liszt: it's simultaneously the cloying, overplayed hit that distracts from the rest of the oeuvre, while also being the masterpiece that serious music people love to pooh-pooh.

I agree with the "painfully beautiful" characterization. I must avert my ears. I'd rather listen to any other Debussy piece – I never tire of Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum for some reason – but only because I can't bear its perfection.

[jinfiesto]

I'd never claim it's not a masterpiece. Both it and the 3rd Liebestraume are in my repertoire. But since it's more in line with the Romantic idiom, Clair De Lune and Suite Bergamasque in general gets compared against the masterpieces of Chopin/Liszt/Brahms/Schumann, and against that bar I'm not sure it necessarily measures up. Debussy was obviously a/the pioneer of impressionism, and in that idiom, his work is unmatched. I haven't seen a serious argument that he could out-compose any of the composers that are the pillars of romanticism in that idiom though, and since Clair de Lune is in that style, that's what it gets measured against.

[Rooster61]

Thank you for your more informed analysis, and fair point. Admittedly, the rest of the suite doesn't tickle my fancy like that one movement does. I suppose I'm a sucker for his earlier, more contemporarily popular (but less profound) works, as my other favorite piece from him is Deux Arabesques No. 1.