Lot n° 121
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6000 - 10000
EUR
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Result
: 5 900EUR
DEBUSSY, Claude (1862-1918), compositeur.
Autograph manuscript, with some corrections. [April 1902]. 3 pp. in-folio (32 x 20 cm). With export certificate.
Exceptional text unveiling the genesis of Pelléas et Mélisande, in which he develops his conception of music.
Written in early April 1902, at the request of Georges Ricou, Secretary General of the Opéra-Comique, this text was not published until after Debussy's death, on October 17, 1920, in the bi-monthly Comoedia, under the title "Pourquoi j'ai écrit Pelléas". "My knowledge of Pelléas dates from 1893... In spite of the enthusiasm of a first reading and perhaps the secret thought of a possible music, I only began to think seriously about it at the end of that same year (1893).
My reasons for choosing Pelléas
For a long time I had been looking for music for the theatre, but the form in which I wanted to make it was so unusual that after various attempts I had almost given up. Previous research into pure music had led me to hate classical development, the beauty of which is all technical and can only be of interest to the Mandarins of our class . I wanted music to have a freedom which it contains perhaps more than any art; not being limited like the latter to a more or less exact reproduction of nature, but to the mysterious correspondences between nature and Imagination.
After a few years of passionate pilgrimages to Bayreuth, I began to doubt the Wagnerian formula. Or rather it seemed to me that it could only serve Wagner's special case of the genius of Wagner. The latter was a great collector of formulas, that he gathered them into a particular formula which seemed personal but because one knows little about music. And without denying his genius, we can say that he had put the finishing touches to the music of his time in much the same way that Victor Hugo encompassed all previous poetry. So we had to look for Wa
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