From Debussy’s Studio: The Little-Known Autograph of De rêve, the First of the Proses lyriques (1892)

In the early part of his career, one of the areas in which Debussy carried out extensive experimentation was the art song—the mélodie. Having at first set poetry by Verlaine, Baudelaire, and Mallarmé, Debussy decided in the eighteen-nineties to write his own poetry for musical setting, taking inspiration from the free verse (“vers libre”) of the Symbolists. Completed in the years 1892–93, the group of four melodies that he symbolically entitled Proses lyriques was conceived at the moment at which the composer was completing both the String Quartet and the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. And it is not by chance that he completed these mélodies just as he was beginning work on the opera Pelléas et Mélisande.

For the Proses lyriques we possess several manuscript versions, including the autograph manuscript that served the engraver (the Stichvorlage), today on deposit at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. For the first of the group, “De rêve,” another autograph is preserved in the collections of the Juilliard School. Comparison of the Morgan and Juilliard manuscripts reveals differences not in the structure of the mélodie as much as in the subtle refinements Debussy made in the writing for voice and piano. Indeed these refinements reveal the experimental and pragmatic predilections of a composer anxious to offer his interpreters a musical text accurately reflective of his sonic universe.