Dances for Harp and String Orchestra

[3] Lyon commissioned Debussy to write a work for the new instrument, originally for the competitions at the Brussels Conservatoire, where a class had been established for the study of the ancient harp in its modernised form.

[11] The work was first heard in Britain in June 1908 in the piano and orchestra version, with Julius Harrison as soloist and Granville Bantock conducting.

[13] Wurmser-Delcourt was the soloist;[8] in her American début, she again played the Danses, at a concert in Aeolian Hall, New York, in December 1919,[9] but did not give the US premiere, which was in December 1916 in a concert at the same venue, when Carlos Salzedo was the soloist in the Dances and in the first American performance of Maurice Ravel's Introduction and Allegro.

The Danse profane – marked modéré, ♩ =152, and 34[17] – is a slow swirling waltz, with its theme alternating with more animated interludes, before fading to a quiet conclusion.

[n 2] Debussy's biographer Léon Vallas, calling the music "simple and pleasantly harmonious", comments, "The use of the ancient modes, as well as certain details of the instrumentation, may possibly recall Erik Satie's Gymnopédies".