CHAUSSON (Ernest). - Lot 246

CHAUSSON (Ernest). Autograph letter signed to Claude Debussy, dated Luzancy, Thursday [May 4, 1893], 4 pages in-12 (179 x 116 mm), in a modern red half-maroquin folder. Touching testimony to the deep friendship between the two composers: ... I am very sure of your friendship. This certainty is delightful to me. And as it is reciprocal, isn't it, everything is for the best [...] I feel a fierce desire to work. There are times when it seems to me that I'm going to eat up "Roi Arthus" [...] I'm doing the final cleaning of the "Concert" and I realize that I forgot to take the separate parts of the quartet with me. Would you be so kind as to pick them up from me [...] I may be called back to Paris at any moment by an imminent birth, and I would like to take the complete manuscript to Bailly [Edmond Bailly, their joint publisher]. In a postscript, he asked for news of him and of Das Rheingold, giving Wagner a swipe in the process: it would be nice to be deaf, intermittently and at will. In early 1894, Debussy gave several recitals of Wagner's works, and used to borrow scores from Chausson.