DEBUSSY Claude: La Damoiselle élue. Lyrical poem, after D.-G - Lot 162

Lot 162
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DEBUSSY Claude: La Damoiselle élue. Lyrical poem, after D.-G - Lot 162
DEBUSSY Claude: La Damoiselle élue. Lyrical poem, after D.-G. Rossetti. French translation by Gabriel Sarrazin. Score for voice and piano reduced by the author. Paris, Librairie de l'Art Indépendant, 1893. In-folio (365 x 235 mm) of (8)-21-(1) pp, printed title and introductory leaves, lithographed music (Imp. E. Delanchy), paperback (spine broken with important paper losses, edges of the boards dusty and a little faded, pale freckles) lithographed cover in colors, not trimmed. First edition, dedicated to Paul Dukas. Limited edition of 160 copies: this one, one of the 125 on white vellum, bears the number 75. This beautiful book, one of the masterpieces of Art Nouveau - and as such described and reproduced in the catalog The Turn of a Century - contains the score of a cantata for soli, choir and orchestra on a poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, composed in 1887 by Debussy while he was staying in Rome, at the Villa Medici. This exquisite page of Pre-Raphaelite-inspired music, dedicated to the friend and fellow student Paul Dukas, contains an episode that foreshadows the hair fetish of Pelléas (Debussy began work on his grand opera in 1893). The cover is decorated with a famous color lithograph by Maurice Denis. This fascinating image, printed in four tones (beige, pale ochre, pink and an almost black midnight blue) shows the "Damoiselle" of the title standing on a balcony, a book in her hands. The young woman, dressed in a long flesh-pink dress that covers her entire body, looks away from the book and, with her eyes closed and a dreamy expression, lets her blond hair flow into the night, "à la Mélisande". Behind her, a black sky dotted with stars. A work of youth (Maurice Denis was twenty-three years old at the time), this lithograph is one of the Nabi artist's earliest works for the book.
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