This piece is pure Debussy – a beautiful, quiet contemplative tone poem. Like “Des pas sur la neige” (Footprints in the Snow) from the first book of preludes, it is not terribly technically challenging, but it must be played with careful attention to every note to succeed.

While Canope has superficially very simple melodies and structure, this masks a very subtle harmonic structure and a complex exploration of sonorities. Claudio Arrau considered it to be one of Debussy’s greatest preludes and said “It’s miraculous that he created, in so few notes, this kind of depth.”