La Soiree Dans Grenade

• Like other French composers before him, Debussy was attracted to the exoticism of Spanish culture, and once made a very brief journey across the Spanish border.
• Granada is a town in southern Spain, in an area where centuries ago Moorish invaders from Morocco in north Africa had settled. Their influence remains to this day in architecture and music.
• The rhythm of the piece is based on the habanera, originally a Cuban dance
• Habanera rhythm is a distinctive rhythm of dotted quaver, semiquaver and two quavers.
• At the beginning the music is marked with "habanera tempo"
• the piece is in simple duple time - 2/4
• Staccato is an essential characteristic of the style, and can be found continuously from bar 5 to 16.
• Debussy refers to the guitar's sounds in the spread chords that are frequently heard in this piece, emphasising the flamenco style
• The first six bars of the Très rhythmé section (from bar 38) all end with a spread chord.
• The melody beginning at bar 7 is like a Moorish lament. It starts with extreme dissonance with the opening D clashing against the C♯ in the right hand.
• Parallel chords can be heard in various sections of the piece, e.g. from bar 17, where there are parallel seventh chords.