The two Arabesques are early works, predating the composer's watershed composition for orchestra, L'après midi d'un faune. While some have dismissed them as lightweight Debussy, the First here became extremely popular in the early twentieth century and is still widely known and performed today. Part of its continued popularity comes from its exposure as the title music, via an electronic keyboard rendition, on the PBS astronomy program Star Gazer, hosted by Jack Horkheimer. Oddly, there is little about the Arabesque No. 1 that can be associated with anything in the astral realm. Neither is there is much in its music that can be related to Debussy's trademark Impressionist style, something he would later develop. The word arabesque is associated with complexity in decoration and embroidery or with a dancer's position in ballet. Here, the music might well relate to the former definition, for its long-breathed main theme consists of a winding road of notes first in descent, then rising with a sense of great expectation of some ecstatic joy. The middle section is playful and maintains the happy mood, even through several rather muscular passages. The piece closes after a return of the lovely main theme. This Arabesque has a duration of about four minutes.

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Although in his later years his piano compositions ranked among his best-known works, Claude Debussy was initially rather uncomfortable with the medium. Despite having been trained at the Paris Conservatoire as a professional pianist from age ten, it wasn't until he was nearly 30 that he produced his first substantial works for the instrument. Begun just a few years before the landmark Suite bergamasque, Debussy's Two Arabesques (1888-1891) are among the earliest of his pieces to have maintained a place in the recital repertory.

Many of the hallmarks of Debussy's mature pianistic style are evident in the Arabesques, particularly in the first. Debussy's love of parallel chords—in this case, triads in first inversion—is apparent in the arpeggiation which opens the first Arabesque, and even more so when the same figuration recurs at much greater length toward the end of the piece. The music unfolds in an ABA form whose tonal scheme hinges on dominant harmonies with the addition of ninths and the occasional thirteenth. The first and third sections, more atmospheric than thematic, are characterized by the sort of rolling left-hand accompaniment that figures so prominently in the composer's later piano music. The A major middle section, foreshadowed by the work's opening triad, is both shorter and more thematically organized than its neighbors, though its primary melody is actually the inversion of a subsidiary motive from the A section.

The second Arabesque, marked allegretto scherzando, is altogether more energetic and sprightly than the first. Less harmonically innovative than its companion piece, it relies on tried-and-true harmonic formulae to define its G major tonality. Like the first Arabesque, the piece is shaped into an overall ABA form, again with a shorter middle section in the subdominant. Significantly, the triplet-sixteenth-plus-eighth rhythmic cell which dominates most of the second Arabesque is completely absent in the middle section, which instead features an ascending sequence of broken parallel thirds. Unlike the first Arabesque, the B-section material returns near the end of the piece, again making reference to C major, only to be rejected in favor of the primary rhythmic cell. A rather startling forte digression to B major seven bars before the end is quickly deflected back to the home key, and the music disintegrates into a series of increasingly quiet, quintessentially Debussyan punctuations.

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