Jules Massenet | Autograph manuscript full score, signed, of the incidental music to "Jérusalem", 1911, unpublished

Jules Massenet

Autograph manuscript full score, signed, of the incidental music to Georges Rivollet's play Jérusalem, UNPUBLISHED

a fair-copy manuscript of the complete five-act work, scored for 8 baritone voices, treble voices, 3 flutes (including piccolos), oboes, cor anglais, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, bass tuba, timpani, bass drum, tubular bells, harp, and strings, notated in black ink on between one and three systems of varying size per page, autograph title-page on upper wrapper (" 'Jérusalem!' / pièce en cinq actes / de Georges Rivollet / | musique de scène. | Massenet / partition d'orchestre."), autograph title at the head of the score (" 'Jérusalem!' / Musique de scène."), some autograph performance instructions ("[on p.69:] Note: au concert - petit orchestre - on pourra commencer le morceau à la 3^ième mesure - le quatuor seul - sans autres instruments."), with extensive engraver's markings relating to the production of performing material, autograph cues and other entries in red ink, autograph rehearsal numbers in blue crayon, with numerous autograph erasures and corrections

72 pages, large folio (39.9 x 30cm), on guards, written on rectos only, apparently original upper wrapper bound in, contemporary half buckram, no place, [1911], first page browned, slight browning to edges, light wear to covers

THIS IS A SUPERB, LARGE-SCALE MANUSCRIPT OF A COMPLETE WORK BY MASSENET.

Massenet was the most successful French composer of opera at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth.

Massenet's score, the last in a distinguished line of incidental-music scores by the composer, provided the musical accompaniment to a five-act play by Georges Rivollet (1852-1928), whose action, with modern-day characters of wavering or non-existent faith, took place in the holy city where the three great Abrahamic faiths collide against each other. It was written in the autumn of 1911 at the request of Albert I, Prince of Monaco, as a letter of Massenet to his wife of 23 July 1911 makes clear:

...Hier j'ai recu une letter du chef du cabinet de S.A.S. (M. Jaloustre). Le prince me demande d'écrire de la musique de scène pour une pièce de Georges Rivollet intitulée: Jérusalem. (G. Rivollet doit être le meme que celui qui a eu déjà plusieurs succès au Théâtre Français). J'ai répondu de suite que j'acceptais; ce travail m'intéressera a Égreville, en septembre, et je ne le suppose pas plus considérable que les musiques de scene habituelles. J'ignore a quelle époque on jouera cet ouvrage...peut-être sera-ce l'hiver prochain aussi, à Monte-Carlo, puisque le prince me demande cette musique pour son théâtre! [Yesterday I received a letter from the head of His Serene Highness's cabinet (Mr Jaloustre). The prince asks me to write incidental music for a play by Georges Rivollet entitled Jerusalem. (G. Rivollet must be the same person who has already had several successes at the Théâtre Français). I replied immediately that I accepted; this work will occupy me at Égreville in September, and I do not suppose it will be any more considerable than the usual incidental music. I do not know when this work will be performed...perhaps it will be next winter, in Monte Carlo, since the prince is asking me to write this music for his theatre!]...

While the composer announced the conclusion of his work to the playwright (in a letter of 2 October), the orchestration was not in fact carried out until March of the following year (a date of 3 March is contained on the orchestral draft).

A letter by Rivollet of 29 December 1911 contains the highest praise for Massenet and his score:

...Jérusalem, notre fille, ne vaut réellement que par vous. Je n'en suis que le père. Vous en êtes, vous, la mère, si j'ose dire : c'est de vous qu'elle tient, par la grâce de votre musique - ce chef-d'oeuvre ! - le charme, l'émotion, la véritable et sereine beauté [Jerusalem, our daughter, is truly only worth what you make her. I am merely her father. You are her mother, if I may say so: it is from you that she derives, through the grace of your music - that masterpiece! - her charm, her emotion, her true and serene beauty]...

The work was first performed after Massenet's death, without great success, at Monte Carlo on 14 January 1914. A vocal score was published by Heugel in 1912. The many engraver's marks in the score relate not to the production of a generally available score but to the production of parts for the orchestral musicians involved in the earliest performances.

In addition to the present manuscript, the following manuscripts relating to the Jérusalem incidental music also survive: the autograph orchestral draft and the autograph vocal score (Frederik Koch Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale).

We are grateful for the kind assistance of Professor Jean-Christophe Branger in our cataloguing of this lot and the following two lots.

PROVENANCE:

From the collection of Richard Bonynge

LITERATURE:

TNG, xvi (2001), pp.89ff.; Jean-Christophe Branger, Jules Massenet (2024), pp.940-941