The Little Nigar (CD 122, L. 114) is the original title by composer Claude Debussy for a short piece for piano, composed in 1909 for a piano method and published the same year. It was later also published as a single piece, entitled The Little Negro and Le petit nègre. In more recent times, the piece has also been published under the title Le petit noir (The Little Black).[citation needed]
History
Debussy composed The Little Nigar (giving the noun this spelling)[1] in 1909[2] on a commission from Théodore Lack, for his piano methodMéthode de Piano.[3][4] The subtitle describes it as a cakewalk.[3] It is reminiscent of Golliwogg's Cakewalk from his Children's Corner, a piano suite that he had composed a year earlier.[5]
Debussy regularly sought exotic influences. In The Little Nigar, he alluded to banjo chords and drums,[6] influenced by American minstrel shows.[4] The piece, marked allegro, begins with a first theme presenting "jazzy" syncopes in 2 4 time, in the then popular ragtime style.[7] It is followed by a lyrical passage, marked espressivo and pianissimo (very softly), which leads to a return of the first section. The first theme leans towards pentatonic and is accompanied by a chromaticsequence of broken minor thirds.[8]
The Little Nigar was first published in 1909 by Éditions Alphonse Leduc in Paris as part of Lack's piano method and again as a single piece in about 1934, now with an added repetition and entitled The Little Negro, with subtitle Le petit nègre.[3][2]
Debussy also used the piece's main theme in his 1913 ballet for children, La boîte à joujoux, in which it characterises an English soldier.[6][5]
Numerous transcriptions have been made of the piece, including an arrangement for woodwinds that has been used for advertising Purina One dog food.[9]
