What Did the West Wind See? Teaching Whole-Tone Scales through Debussy's "Ce qu'a vu le vent d'ouest"

Abstract

Debussy’s “Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest” (Préludes, Book 1) provides fertile ground for teaching undergraduate students to identify whole-tone scales in a musical context. Included in this article are an analysis of the piece and lesson plans designed to help students find examples of whole-tone collections in melodic and harmonic contexts. Students collaboratively construct a musical timeline, deepen their thinking through exploratory writing, discuss the interactions of diatonic and whole-tone elements throughout the piece, and support their analytical observations with specific musical examples. In a setting that invites both tonal and post-tonal analysis, students learn to discern which analytical tools are appropriate to diverse musical contexts.