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Images (piano suite)

suite of 6 piano pieces by Claude Debussy

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ1132712 ↗
Source-derived summary

Images (usually pronounced in French as [i.maʒ]) is a suite of nine compositions for solo piano by Claude Debussy. They were published in two books/series, each consisting of three pieces. These works are distinct from Debussy's Images pour orchestre. The first book was composed between 1901 and 1905, and the second book was composed in 1907. The total duration is approximately 30 minutes. With respect to the first series of Images, Debussy wrote to his publisher, Jacques Durand: "Without false pride, I feel that these three pieces hold together well, and that they will find their place in the literature of the piano ... to the left of Schumann, or to the right of Chopin... "

Debussy wrote another collection, Images oubliées (L. 87), in the winter of 1894 and dedicated it to Yvonne Lerolle, daughter of the painter Henry Lerolle. The collection remained unpublished during Debussy's lifetime, despite an announcement in the February 1896 issue of Le Grand Journal that the score was soon to be published by Fromont. Its première publication came in 1977, by Theodore Presser in Pennsylvania.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Images (piano suite)” is suite of 6 piano pieces by Claude Debussy. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Images, piano and suite, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1901, 1905, 1907, 1894—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Images, piano and suite is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “suite of 6 piano pieces by Claude Debussy” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1132712. VIAF identifies the subject as 178572051. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1901, 1905, 1907 and 1894.

Critical limits

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  2. Expand the search: follow Images (piano suite) primary sources, Images (piano suite) archive and Images research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Images (piano suite)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.