Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Autograph manuscript draft for the Prelude to his opera La chute de la Maison Usher, [early 1909]
One of the earliest surviving drafts for Debussy's unfinished opera based on Edgar Allan Poe's story.

9 bars on a single system of three staves, one page, 98 x 256mm, cut down from a larger leaf.

Provenance:
(1) Sotheby's, 28 May 2015, lot 237.

(2) Schøyen Collection, MS 5550.

The Debussy scholar Prof. Robert Orledge identified these bars as an early draft for the Prelude of La chute de la Maison Usher, and surmised that they were among the first musical sketches for the work: Debussy presented a more developed version to his wife Emma on her birthday, 11 June 1909. The passage is cancelled in the working score of 1915-16, and reappears within the opera itself as part of a monologue for Roderick Usher.

The fruit of his long fascination with the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, Debussy worked on his opera based on The Fall of the House of Usher between 1908 and 1917, but never completed it.