An extraordinary autograph letter from Debussy to a piano manufacturer [Pleyel], arranging the loan of an instrument for his young colleague, the important American composer and musical innovator of French birth, Edgard Varèse. 1 p. 19, July, 1911. Translated, in full: "Dear Sir, Would you please be kind enough to lend one of your pianos for a month and a half to my young colleague E. Varèse. He is of great interest and you will have a rewarding connection. With my thanks, please believe in my feelings of deepest sympathy. Claude Debussy, 80 av. du Bois du Boulogne." With annotations in the hand of someone from the piano firm, in pencil, recording that Varèse was staying at "Chez M. Jamakorzian / Rue Tournefort 24" and that the delivery would be made "Friday morning" etc.

The address 24 Rue Tournefort was that of the famously shabby, romantic Parisian guesthouse, the Pension Vauquer, of Balzac's Père Goriot.

Debussy had three pianos in his own house: an upright Pleyel which was a gift from the manufacturer, another upright piano which was a Bechstein, and the Blüthner grand, and wrote that he felt his music sounded "at its best and most perfect on a Bechstein grand." The present letter was almost certainly addressed to the Pleyel firm, the only one of the three based in Paris. Though Varèse lived mainly in Berlin from 1907 to 1914 (where he became friends with Busoni, Richard Strauss, the conductor Karl Muck and the writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal), he was evidently visiting his hometown of Paris during this period. In 1908, he had met Debussy, to whom he revealed the first atonal works of Schönberg, and it was Debussy who gave the young composer much inspiration, encouraging Varèse to look at non-western music for inspiration.They continued a mutually supportive relationship.