TAILLEFERRE Germaine (1892 - 1983)

Lot 230
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8000 - 10000 EUR
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Result : 10 400EUR
TAILLEFERRE Germaine (1892 - 1983)
autograph musical manuscript signed "Germaine Tailleferre", Sous le rempart d'Athènes (1927); one folio volume of 174 pages (plus a few blank leaves), bound in half parchment with corners, silver paper covers (Heugel Archives stamps). Orchestral score of this music for a play by Paul Claudel. It was in the summer of 1927 that Germaine Tailleferre composed, for a government commission, this incidental music for Paul CLAUDEL's play Sous le rempart d'Athènes, written to celebrate the centenary of Marcelin Berthelot, and performed at a gala at the Elysée Palace, on October 26, 1927, in a production by Louis Jouvet, with an orchestra conducted by D.E. Inghelbrecht, in the presence of President Doumergue; it was performed again at the Comédie Française in 1929. Claudel had said to Germaine Tailleferre: "They are philosophers who walk at noon under the ramparts of Athens. [Your music must evoke the weather, the air, the beauty of the site... From time to time, the actors will have to stop talking to listen to your music. Make a score that never stops, that always runs, a sound set". In a text published in L'Intransigeant on October 26, 1927, and used as a preface when the play was published, Claudel returned to the role of music: "Music is necessary to the drama. It gives the atmosphere, the permanent current that continues when the actors are silent and to which their words do not cease to agree. Its purpose is not to support and underline the words, but to create behind the drama a kind of sound tapestry, whose colors amuse and relieve the spectator and bathe with their pleasant reflections the aridity of a philosophical discussion. Thus the sound of a stream of water or of cages filled with birds mingles pleasantly with the conversation. In a drama or in a conversation, the actors must not only speak, but also listen, and there must always be around them not only something to see, but something to listen to. I would like to thank Germaine Tailleferre, who was kind enough to lend me her admirable talent for this music. The manuscript is written in black ink on 28-line paper, with the text of the piece written throughout the score in red ink; it is dated and signed at the end: "August-September 1927". The orchestra includes: flute, oboe, clarinet, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, gong, celesta, harp, violins I and II, violas, cellos, double bass.
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