Sagesse, Nos. 1 and 3: "Bon chevalier;" "Les faux beaux jours." Songs for voice and orchestra set to poems by Paul Verlaine. Autograph musical manuscripts signed. Complete. Full scores

1903. 2 volumes. Folio (350 x 285 mm.). Uniformly bound in full dark green cloth boards with titling gilt to upper boards and spines, marbled endpapers.

Volume I: Bon chevalier: [1] (manuscript title), 42 pp. With corrections, annotations, and performance markings in lead and blue pencil and with a short 4-measure sketch to verso of final leaf.

Volume 2: Les faux beaux jours: [1] (manuscript title), 27 pp. + 8 pp. orchestral sketches in pencil and ink laid in (these do not appear to relate to this particular song, although they may relate to one of the other 12 songs in the cycle).

Both manuscripts notated in black ink on 28-stave music paper with the small embossed stamp of "H. Lardesnault Ed. Bellamy Sr. PARIS" to upper inner margins.

Binding slightly worn, rubbed, and bumped. Some internal wear and browning, heavier to margins of first and last leaves. Each leaf guarded at inner edge. Sagesse is both the title of Verlaine's book of 12 poems and the title of the group of song settings of these poems by Hermant for voice and orchestra. The present songs are the first and third songs in the series. The entire work was published in piano-vocal score in Paris by Enoch in 1904.

We have not located any published edition of the full score of any of the songs in the series.

"Just as musicians in the nineteenth century sought fresh sources of melody in the Near East, Asia, India, and Africa, painters searched for exotic influences and inspirations outside Europe. In about 1888, Bonnard, Vuillard, Denis, the writer Pecheron, the musician Pierre Hermant, and the actor Lugné-Poë began meeting on Saturday afternoons at the home of Paul Serusier, an artist and friend of Gauguin. Serusier rarely left his home except to attend performances at the Opéra or Opéra-Comique in the company of his parents or musician friends: Saint-Saëns, Delibes, Verdi, Chabrier, or Gounod. ... Often he contemplated the Gesamtkunstwerk, the "total art work," which was only possible, he decided, with music. Several years later, Gauguin spoke of Bonnard, Vuillard, and Serusier as artists whose painting had entered a musical phase.

The group of painters around Serusier viewed themselves as forerunners of the future, and borrowing a Near Eastern word, called themselves Nabis, Hebrew for prophets." Brody: Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope 1870-1925, p. 131.

Les Nabis, aiming to revitalize painting, were active in Paris from ca. 1888 to 1900, and "played a large part in the transition from impressionism and academic art to abstract art, symbolism and the other early movements of modernism." Wikipedia

"It is widely known that Denis had been working since 1889 on illustrations for Paul Verlaine's collection of poetry, Sagesse. It is far less known that the same painter designed a cover in 1904 for twelve musical scores composed by Hermant for Verlaine's poems from Sagesse. Hermant, who once contributed to La revue blanche, met other Nabis like Denis, Vuillard, and Roussel at the Lycée Condorcet where they were all students." Leonard, ed.: Arabesque Without End: Across Music and the Arts, from Faust to Shahrazad, p. 115.