Proust’s Portraits
HAHN, Reynaldo.
Portraits de peintres. Pièces pour piano d’après les poésies de Marcel Proust. Paris, Au Ménestrel, 1896.
Four parts in one volume, folio, pp. 5; 3; 3; 5; with 4 engraved portraits; music engraved throughout on thick paper; plate nos. 18,387–18,390; a very good copy, each part loose as issued in the original pale green paper wrappers printed in red and black, small publisher’s stamp on verso of each part.
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Portraits de peintres. Pièces pour piano d’après les poésies de Marcel Proust.
First edition of Hahn’s piano suite based on four poems by Marcel Proust, inspired by portraits Proust had seen of four artists in the Louvre: Albert Cuyp, Paulus Potter, Anthony Van Dyck, and Antoine Watteau. Each piece, for spoken text with piano accompaniment, is preceded by a leaf containing an engraved portrait of the artist and the text of Proust’s poem, followed by the engraved music.
The Venezuelan (later naturalised French) Belle Epoque composer Reynaldo Hahn (1874–1947) first met Marcel Proust in Paris at the home of the artist Madeleine Lemaire (to whom these pieces are dedicated) in 1894. Proust, at 23, was still a little-known aspiring writer. Hahn was the younger by three years, but he had been a child prodigy, entering the Paris Conservatoire at the age of ten, where he studied under Massenet. He was already well known for his musical settings of French poetry, and was the darling of the salons. Proust and Hahn became lovers, and were to remain close friends until Proust’s death in 1922, collaborating on many projects together. Proust, who once commented ‘Everything I have ever done has always been thanks to Reynaldo’, portrays Hahn in his novel Jean Santeuil. His first book, Les plaisirs et les jours, was published later in 1896 and included the four Portraits de peintres set to music by Hahn.