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This arabesque is in the key of E major. This piece begins with parallelism of triads in first inversion, a composition technique very much used by Debussy and the impressionist movement. It leads into a larger section beginning with a left hand arpeggio in E major and a descending right hand E major pentatonic progression which breaks with the D note. From bars 13 to 16, because of the impressionist movement, one could opt for saying the piece changes to E Lydian (instead of the A♯ being merely a IV secondary leading tone chord, and a II secondary dominant chord) returning to the normal Ionian mode (major scale) in bar 17. The introductory theme returns then G♯ harmonic minor is briefly tonicized, followed by E major, than C♯ harmonic minor is tonicized. In bar 23 it modulates to A major, to G major in bar 26 and then back to E major before the end of the first section.
The second quieter B section is in A major, which starts with a gesture (E-D-E-C♯), briefly passes through E major, returns to A major and ends with a bold pronouncement of the E-D-E-C♯ gesture, but transposed to the key of C major, played forte. In this C major sections we see once again parallelism of triads. The gesture is repeated in a higher register, with slight modifications resulting in a transposition back to the E major of the A section.
In the middle of the recapitulation of the A section, the music moves to a higher register and descends, followed by a large pentatonic scale ascending and descending, becoming a V7 chord (B7), and resolving back to E major, before the descending right hand E major pentatonic progression is played an octave up. Both hands rise up the keyboard with a progressions of 4ths and closes with gentle E major chords.
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