VIARDOT, Pauline (1821-1910). Autograph music manuscript for the song ‘Chanson d’autrefois’ (VWV 1129), n.p. [Baden-Baden], n.d. [c.1884]

Three pages, 343 x 264mm, bifolium, ruled with 12 staves per page, scored for voice and piano, four systems of three staves per page, certain of the pedal marks apparently added later by Viardot, pencil attribution in another hand (small loss at base of bifolium hinge, cropped at outer margin, a little split along the central horizontal fold).

Text by Victor Hugo, in French, from the poem Chanson d’autrefois, opening ‘Jamais elle ne raille/ Etant un calme esprit’. Provenance: Maria Callas (1923-1977) – sold (as part of) Sotheby’s Milan, 12 December 2007, lot 88.

An autograph manuscript for one of the mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot’s own compositions – a setting for Victor Hugo’s poem Chansond'autrefois– from the collection of Maria Callas. Viardot did not regard herself as a composer – rather, as a singer and a teacher – yet her work, undertaken both for the pleasure of composing and to provide teaching pieces for her pupils, was highly accomplished, praised by her erstwhile tutor Franz Liszt as genius, even. She wrote more than 100 songs and melodies to texts in several languages – from Pushkin to Goethe – most of which were published in her lifetime. The present song was composed, as the majority of her works, during her retirement in Baden-Baden and was published as one of 6 Mélodies (1884).

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