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ACKNOWLEDGES THE "CONSIDERABLE INFLUENCE" OF MALLARMÉ DEBUSSY, CLAUDE. Autograph Letter Signed, to Mallarmé's son-in-law Edouard Bonniot ("Dear Sir"), in French, requesting permission to publish the three Mallarmé poems that Debussy had set to music. 1 1/4 pages, 4to, personal stationery; folds. [Paris], 7 August 1913
"According to a letter received from my editors, Durand and Co. Place de la Madeleine, it appears that you reserve the right to authorize, or not, putting to music the poems of Stéphane Mallarmé. I did not know this detail, thinking that this question was handled among editors, without that, it could not be but agreeable for me to address myself directly you. Finally (at any rate), I have put to music the following poems: Soupir; Placet futile; Autre éventail (de Mademoiselle Mallarmé). "I have kept piously the most fervent admiration for the one who was truly 'our master.' He is--perhaps without knowing it--a considerable influence on the very quiet musician that I was at the time when he did me the honor of receiving me in his home. And this fervor increases in gratitude in the remembrance of his kind welcome of the music for 'The Afternoon of a Faun'. These memories, among many others, will remain with me. I . . . ask you to facilitate the publication of these three melodies!" Published in Debussy, Correspondance, ed. Lesure and Herlin (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 2005), 1650. The first complete volume of Stèphane Mallarmé's poetry was published in 1913, when both Debussy and Maurice Ravel independently began work setting select poems to music, including, astonishingly, two of the same poems. Ravel had already secured the rights to the poems from Mallarmé's descendants before Debussy realized he must do the same, and when Ravel learned that Debussy requested rights to the some of the same poems, he did not insist upon retaining exclusive rights. Later that year, two works were published under the name Trois poèmes de Mallarmé: one by Debussy, the other by Ravel.
