DEBUSSY Claude (1862 - 1918) Lot n° 38

L.A.S. "ADebussy", Villa Médici [fi n June 1885], to Henri VASNIER; 4 pages in-8 in purple ink. Beautiful letter about his stay in Rome at the Villa Médicis. He thanks for sending photographs: "I am going to be able to be sure that I have not left you, all of you who were my second family, and whom I miss so much, they will perhaps seem less hard to me these long evenings so sad now, these photographs reminding me of those when I worked so joyfully. I will ask them for enough illusion, if not to work joyfully, at least, courageously, I regret that there is not yours, so that the picture is complete. I beg your pardon for repeating the same thing over and over again, but I still have a hard time getting used to the Villa and need to be given courage. I am cured of my fever, and I have started to work, it does not come very well for example, so much so that sometimes I wonder if I have ever made music, it is not one of the least sad things that are part of the troubles with which Rome fills me. As for Zuleima, I thank you for your friendly interest in it, but I will never be able to do the 3rd part, it's too stupid; the 2nd doesn't please me much either; I'm not saying that I won't go back to it, but the other parts will have to be reworked a lot, and then I'd rather do something new, which I absolutely like, especially in the state of mind I'm in, because, since I already have a lot of trouble working, even on Diane, I wonder what it would be like if I had to do something that has become terribly unpleasant for me. As for what you tell me about my melodies, I can assure you that I have in no way given up on them, I will send them to you as soon as they are finished, besides, it is only next winter that we will be able to take care of them, the summer season not being fertile in publications. He will ask the painter Rochegrosse to intervene with Théodore de Banville (his adoptive father): "I even intend to make him add some choruses". Then he evokes the competition of the City of Paris, won by Vincent d'INDY with Le Chant de la cloche : "There is a feeling in the joy of Father FRANCK, about d'Indy, that you may not suspect, it is to have beaten the Rome prizes, he has always dreamed of having a class of composition ; so he is very happy to see his teaching overcome in a way that of the Conservatoire. That does not take anything away from the musical value of d'Indy, that I consider, as a very strong boy" GOUNOD should come to see HÉBERT (director of the Villa Médicis) in Rome in the winter : "Well, between them, they will not be funny, because Hébert pontificates almost as much as Gounod, you can easily imagine what we are going to have to undergo of too big ideas and very hollow words. About the Hébert, they show me an interest a little tiring. Under the pretext of trying to make the Villa sympathetic to me, they are going to make it a little more odious. You will tell me that I am not changed, but if they were in Paris, I might like them a lot, here they are only jailers for me and nothing more" ..... Correspondence, n° 1885-10.