Debussy, Claude

a setting of Verlaine's 'Les donneurs de serenades', from his collection Fêtes galantes (1869), notated for solo voice and piano, in dark brown ink on three-stave systems, an early version in 3/8 metre, containing important differences from the later versions, including the instrumental links and the untexted vocalise at the end

5 pages, folio (c.34.5 x 27cm), 12-stave paper by Lard-Esnault of Paris, archival sleeve, modern green folding box (overall size: c.45 x 39cm), Vienna, 25 November [1882], browning to margins, splitting at folds

This may be the earliest known version of Debussy's 'Mandoline', composed while on a trip with Madame von Meck to Vienna and Italy in the autumn of 1882, and it contains consistent differences from later sources and editions.  The other sources all give this song in 6/8, opening with an arpeggiated piano accompaniment, which is how it was published in the Revue illustrée (1890).   The instrumental links between the stanzas are all longer than in later sources and the final vocalise here is pitched mostly an octave higher than in the printed editions.   An intermediate version is found in Debussy's autograph manuscript in the Bibliothèque nationale (Recueil Vasnier MS-17716 (1)), where it appears with four other songs based on Verlaine's Fêtes galantes ('Pantomime', 'En sourdine', 'Clair de lune' and 'Fantoches')--the last three were revised in Debussy's Fêtes galantes of 1903, but 'Mandoline' had already been published in 1890.  The poem was later also set by Faure (1891), Hahn (1892) and others.