Serge GAINSBOURG – “Rereading your letter” – Autographed sheet music signed.

Serge Gainsbourg (1928.1991)

Autographed musical manuscript signed – Rereading your letter. 

Three folio pages on paper with musical staves.

[Paris. 1961]

Rereading your letter, I realize that spelling and you don't mix. 

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Musical manuscript titled in spectacular handwriting, on the first sheet, En relisant ta lettre… lyrics and music by Serge Gainsbourg and bearing on the second and third sheets eleven lines of musical notes and some handwritten annotations by the artist.

Rereading your letter was filed with SACEM on January 25, 1961. The song appears on the singer's third album, entitled L'Étonnant Serge Gainsbourg , on which we also find La Chanson de Prévert .

This title is one of the most famous and cynical songs of the young Serge Gainsbourg, a symbol of his early misogynistic lyrics, his fierce, offbeat and dark humor, which introduced a new tone in French song.

This jaded seducer, rereading the pathetic letter addressed to him by his conquest on the verge of suicide, coldly noting all the spelling mistakes it contains and the unflattering vision of the woman that emerges from this text, will not prevent Barbara from taking it up again in 1969.

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Provenance: Lucien Merer (1927-2019), pianist, composer and arranger who accompanied Gainsbourg from his earliest days. Merer collaborated with several other big names in the music scene: Boby Lapointe, Jean Ferrat, Cora Vaucaire, Édith Piaf, Léo Ferré and Charles Aznavour, sometimes assisting them during their beginnings or their performances in cabarets and concert halls.