DEBUSSY, CLAUDE. (1862-1918). French composer; creator of La Mer, Pelléas et Mélisande, Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and other masterpieces. ALS on a visiting card. (“C Debussy”). 1½pp. 16mo. Paris, (1917). To French composer and critic ALFRED BRUNEAU (1857-1934). In French with translation. Debussy has written his brief ALS in blue ink on the recto and verso of his printed visiting card.

CLAUDE DEBUSSY “begs you, my dear Bruneau, not to forget Miss Suzanne Clerc [?]. Much must be forgiven to those who play [?] the piano in this temperature! Thank you and forgive me your old Claude Debussy”

Debussy studied at the Conservatoire beginning at the age of ten, and in 1884 he won the prestigious Prix de Rome for his cantata, L’Enfant Prodigue. His residency in Rome was not especially rewarding, but a new chapter in Debussy’s life opened in 1893, when he began work on the opera Pelléas et Mélisande, based on Maurice Maeterlinck’s Symbolist play about a love triangle. By the spring of 1895, Debussy had completed what would remain his only full-length opera, which premiered at Paris’s Opéra Comique in 1902, but was heavily criticized for Debussy’s use of non-traditional elements and lack of melody. Nonetheless, the work became popular, running for two years and staged across Europe, Russia and the United States. “Debussy never meant for his opera to be popular with the general opera-going public. Indeed, he would have regarded such popular success as an artistic failure… Ironically, given Debussy’s expressed disdain for popular success, this production brought him international celebrity,” (Program for Pelléas et Mélisande at The Metropolitan Opera, 2019, www.metopera.org/globalassets/season/2018-19/operas/pelleas-et-melisande/programs/012519-pelleas.pdf). Debussy’s compositions marked the first of a series of attacks on the traditional musical language of the 19th century, and, as such, he became a seminal force in the avant¬-garde music of the 20th century.

A student of Massenet, Bruneau, Debussy’s contemporary, challenged the French musical establishment, bringing realism to the operatic stage, and is remembered for his collaboration with Emile Zola, whose work La Rêve inspired his opera of the same name and who became his librettist for such works as Messidor and L’Ouragan. Bruneau praised Debussy’s compositions in the pages of the Matin, and both composers are considered to have influenced each other’s work.

In excellent condition.