The story behind the Reynaldo Hahn collection at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France is one of the institution’s most bizarre.

After the composer’s death, the documents in the collection fell into the hands of Guy Ferrant, who decided to bequeath them to the BnF on one special condition: that they remain sealed until Hahn’s work was in the public domain. In 1954, the collection was transferred to the library-museum of the Opera, where it remained undisclosed until the 1^st of January 2018.

Sagesse: Monodies tirées du sélection de Verlaine; is one of the ten cycles of unpublished works that were unveiled when the collection was made public. It consists of four pieces for mezzo-soprano or baritone and piano, and are part of the extensive series of songs about wisdom.

The fundamental element when working on pieces of this kind is to obtain maximum fidelity. We have to use the tools and technology of our professionals to respect every detail of what Hahn put into the manuscripts: every stroke of the composer’s quill and every drop that soiled the paper as he wrote.

The cover of the notebook printed with two PANTONE inks has a clean and pure appearance, like the scores that remained untouched over sixty years. In keeping with this, it is bound with a knotted thread, a very simple and authentic method.