| |
| Id |
4622 |
| Category |
antiquarian music |
| Author / Composer |
DEBUSSY, Claude (1862-1918) |
| Title |
Cinq Poèmes de Ch. Baudelaire. |
| Place |
[Paris |
| Publisher |
Librairie de l’Art Indépendant] |
| Publication Date |
1890 |
| ISBN / Plate No. |
|
| Series |
|
| Size |
Folio. [v (title, dedication, contents)], 35pp. |
| Description |
Cloth (hinges and backstrip worn); original printed parchment wrappers bound in. Hand-made paper. Ex library with bookplate and label to outer covers and discreet stamp. Debussy’s settings of Charles Baudelaire’s Le Balcon, Harmonie du Soir, Le Jet d’Eau, Recueillement and La Mort des Amants for voice and piano. The poems are Debussy’s only settings of the poet’s works and show the composer using non-diatonic scales and chord streams to emulate the symbolist interest in pure sound. Debussy met the dedicatee Étienne Dupin in 1887 and started composing these settings in 1888. ‘Debussy knew nearly all Wagner's works long before he went to Bayreuth, but his Wagnerism reached its peak in 1887–8 when, according to Pierre Louÿs, he made and won a bet that he could play Tristan by heart. His apostasy after his second visit to Bayreuth was above all the result of his quest for a personal style somewhere beyond Wagner. Before beginning Pelléas, he confided to Louÿs that he did not see ‘what anyone can do beyond Tristan’, and as late as 1896 he still gave Wagnerian sessions at the home of a society hostess, Madame Godard-Decrais. The early works in which the Wagnerian influence is most evident are La damoiselle élue and the Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire; the latter pieces are exceptional among Debussy's output of songs in their length, their wide intervals and their chromatic harmonies’ (NG2). The music was only available in this limited edition and not produced for general sale until 1902. This edition was engraved by R. Rodier and printed by L. Parent. |
| Reference |
First edition, no.49 of only 150 copies (1-50 on 'papier de Hollande'): very rare. Lesure no.64. WorldCat records copies at Harvard, New York Public Library and Texas. |
| Price |
£700.00 |
|
