OFFENBACH Jacques (1819 - 1880) - Lot 142

Lot 142
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OFFENBACH Jacques (1819 - 1880) - Lot 142
OFFENBACH Jacques (1819 - 1880) autograph musical manuscript signed "Jacques Off enbach", Grande Scène Espagnole, [1840]; 49-page sewn notebook, 37 x 27.5 cm (slight stains and wetness, a few restored tears, small marginal paper losses skillfully filled, affecting a few beginnings or ends of lines on the 1st leaf); in red half-box slipcase. Suite for cello and orchestra, one of the great successes of the young virtuoso cellist. This Grande Scène Espagnole, opus 22 [A 79], is one of the first works of the then twenty-year-old Off enbach. The manuscript is written in brown ink on the front and back of 25 sheets of 16-stave paper¸ gathered in a notebook. At the top of the first page, Off enbach has noted the title and the list of the different pieces of this suite: "Grande Scène Espagnole pour le Violoncelle avec acct d'Orchestre - N° 1 Introduction - Prière. 2 Ronde des Muletiers. 3. Serenade. 4. Boléro -composed by Jacques Off enbach"; follows a scratched date (March 27 [?] 1843). There are numerous corrections by scratching, as well as strikethroughs and reworkings, and a small pen drawing in the margin of the last page (a man wearing a large hat, perhaps a Spaniard). Off enbach reworked this suite, as evidenced by a collar and traces of deleted leaves, probably before giving his manuscript to a copyist to establish the orchestral parts before a concert: he cut out the Sérénade [du Ménestrel], and the Ronde desMuletiers, of which only the first and last leaves remain, as indicated by remnants of margins of leaves cut between the beginning leaf (12 bars) of the Ronde des muletiers, which was sewn with the final leaf (15 bars). There is also a large collar on the 11th page for the cello cadenza before the Bolero. In addition to the 24 pages of the booklet, there is a last page giving a first version of the 17 measures of the final sheet. The orchestra includes, besides the solo cello: flutes, oboes, clarinets, horns, bassoons, trumpets, trombones, violins I and II, violas I and II, cellos and double basses. After the Introduction Andante maestoso, in D major in 4/4, comes a "Solo" cadenza (p. 3) which leads to the Prayer (p. 5). This is followed (p. 11), after a 4-bar collette, by the Bolero, in C in 3/8, marked Allegro vivo. Composed in Cologne at the beginning of 1840, when illness and death struck his family and reminded Off enbach of his native city, this Grande Scène espagnole, "whose cheerfulness could be surprising if it did not constitute a refuge from such a painful situation" (Jean-Claude Yon), was successfully premiered by the young composer and cellist in Cologne on November 10. He played several pieces of it during his Parisian concerts, such as the "Ronde des Muletiers" on April 16, 1842, or in its entirety on April 2, 1843, at the Salle Herz, where the Boléro "especially produced a lot of eff and by its Iberian color, and the lively, original and cute way in which the author played it", reports L'Artiste, which adds: "one believes to hear cracking the satin corset of the Andalusian girls; it seems that one is penetrated by the lively flame of their black eyes; one feels at the same time to fall in the reverie and to carry all burning in the continuation of these brown girls of Spain". He played excerpts (Prière and Boléro in particular) at the Grand Théâtre de Marseille on November 26, 1844, in Troyes in February 1848, in Cologne on July 16, 1848 and January 9, 1849, and in Vienna on March 11, 1862. The work, published in Berlin by Schlesinger in 1846, then in Paris by Cotelle, was dedicated to the Countess Madeleine-Sophie Bertin de Vaux (1805 - 1849), who was the patron of the young Off enbach, whom she welcomed into her musical salon, thus launching him into Parisian musical life, and his godmother at his christening in 1844. PROVENANCE Jacques Brindejont-Off enbach (1883-1956, grandson of the composer); Laurent Fraison DISCOGRAPHY Camille Thomas, Orchestre National de Lille, dir. Alexandre Bloch (Deutsche Grammophon, 2017).
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