Beschreibung:

Claude Debussy
Autograph letter signed ("Claude Debussy") to André Caplet, ABOUT HIS INTERIOR CREATIVE LIFE AND THE PROJECTED BALLET MASQUES ET BERGAMASQUES
beginning in light-hearted fashion by mentioning his beloved daughter "Chouchou", who has made a speedy recovery from tonsillitis with the aid of her doll Dagobert, mentioning the two days he has spent writing a ballet scenario [Masques et bergamasques] for the next Ballets Russes season, referring to the fine treatment of the bassoons in a work by Henri Büsser ('written as if he had been born in a bassoon'), observing more seriously that he is in a state of mind in which he would rather be a sponge at the bottom of the sea than a man of thought, hardly wishing to accept the fact that he might be a complete idiot ('like the silent wooden horses in a merry-go-round with no music to set them off and no one to ride them'), and wondering whether 'this is the punishment for those who live in the world of ideas and who doggedly follow a single one - the idée fixe which is a prelude to madness'
...Ici, une interruption de deux jours, pendant lesquels j'ai écrit un livret de ballet pour Claude Debussy et pour la prochaine saison russe...Il n'y a pas à dire, je suis dans cet état d'esprit o[ù] l'on aimerai[t] être une éponge au fond de la mer, une potiche sur la cheminée; tout, plutôt qu'un homme de pensée, espèce de machine si fragile, qui ne marche que lorsqu'elle le veut bien, et contre quoi la volonté de l'homme n'est de rien...On commande [à] quelqu'un qui ne vous obéit pas et ce quelqu'un, c'est soi-même! Comme il est difficile de se traiter froidement d'idiot, l'on rêve dans un cercle vide; comme des tristes chevaux de bois, sans musique et sur lesquels personne ne monte...
4 pages, 4to (15.6 x 11.1cm), written in dark blue ink, Debussy's printed blue stationery ("80, Avenue du Bois de Boulogne"), with autograph envelope and later typed transcription of the letter, [Paris,] 24 July 1909, slight discolouration along folds
A superb, lengthy, letter to the French composer and conductor André Caplet (1878-1925), written only a week after the historic first meeting of Debussy with Diaghilev and the Chinese scholar and critic Louis Laloy, at which the possibility of a new ballet for the Ballets Russes - Masques et bergamasques - was discussed.
Excited by the project, Debussy himself (rather than Laloy) spent two days, as he mentions here, drafting a scenario for the ballet. No music for it is known to survive, however, other than possibly one bar, marked "(Angelus)", contained on p.96 of the Images sketchbook from the Lehman deposit in the Morgan Library, New York.
Although at the height of his career at the time of writing to Caplet, Debussy was a man in crisis: living with cancer and plagued by his creditors, he was also assailed by self-doubt and anxiety, which often manifested itself at the very moment of creation, as the composer so eloquently and revealingly describes in this letter.
Caplet and Debussy had met two years earlier (in 1907) and soon became close friends, Caplet acting to some extent as an amanuensis to the composer. The former is perhaps most remembered today for his completions of the orchestration of a number of works by Debussy, including some of his best-loved, namely La boîte à joujoux, Children's Corner, and Clair de lune from the Suite bergamasque. 
LITERATURE:Edward Lockspeiser, 'New Letters of Debussy', The Musical Times, xcvii (1956), p.404; Robert Orledge, Debussy and the theatre (1982), p.154; Denis Herlin et al., edd., Claude Debussy. Correspondance, 1872-1918 (2005), pp.1197-1198 (no. 1909-87)
PROVENANCE:Formerly in the collection of the bassoonist William Waterhouse