Music of the Paris Conservatory

Rahr-West Art Gallery, Manitowoc, WI

August 12, 1990

The 19th century van an era of the artist-composer. Flute players were no exception. The Paris Conservatory, as the national school of music, was the focal point for the activity of many of these French flutists. Beginning with the first flute professor at the Conservatory, Francois Devienne, we can follow a "lineage" of flutists who were not only composers and performers, but also professors at the Conservatory. This program will explore the music of these flutist/composers/teachers and will include music by Devienne, Joseph Guillou, Louis Dorus, Paul Taffanel and Philippe Gaubert, each of whom was the student of the flutist named before him.

Paris was the center of the musical life in 19th century Prance. In fact, 19th century Paris has been called the opera center of the world. Both as a livelihood and as a source of inspiration, a connection with opera was an important one for the flutist/composers represented on today's program.

Born in 1759 in Joinville, Haute Marne, a city about 250 miles from Paris, Devienne was the fourteenth child of a blacksmith. An accomplished bassoonist as well as flutist, Devienne was named professor at the newly formed Paris Conservatory in 1783. He died in 1803 in Charenton, the Parisian insane asylum in 1803. A surprising number of artists of this period died insane. The total instability both of economic and of political life after the Revolution apparently took its toll.

Like his contemporary, Mozart, Devienne was a prolific composer. Boasting an oeuvre of more than 500 pieces, Devienne composed concerti, symphonies, patriotic songs and hymns (no doubt a popular field in Revolutionary France), and operas. His music shows a good sense of melody as well as a lively wit. This sonata, difficult on the modern flute, would have been even more of a challenge on the instrument Devienne played, a one-keyed Baroque flute.

One of Devienne's students at the Conservatory was Joseph Guillou. Guillou entered the Conservatory in 1797 at ten years of age. All flutists who wish to graduate from the Conservatory must obtain a first prize in the annual competition, and Guillou obtained his in 1805. During the next few years, he struggled in competition with several other great flutists of the time. If only for his professorship at the Conservatory and his participation in the world's first woodwind quintet, Guillou merits a greater place in the history of the flute than he has yet been given. Guillou was first flutist at the Opera and professor at the Conservatory. Due to the vagaries of his fortune, however, Guillou lost all of his posts by the end of the 1820s. He then toured Europe for a time and eventually settled in St. Petersburg, gaining employment for a time as a dry-cleaner. Guillou went on to write music criticism for music journals and eventually founded L'artist Russe, a magazine in French about Russian musicians.

Guillou' s Variations are typical of the genre in the early 19th century. His choice of material, a Scottish folk song, reflects the Romantic preoccupation with things exotic and foreign.

Studying with Guillou during his short tenure as professor, Louis Dorus was himself professor at the Paris Conservatory between 1860 and 1868. He introduced the Boehm flute, which had been perfected during the 1830's at that institution. As did Devienne and Guillou, Dorus played in several opera orchestras. Dorus' sister, Madame Dorus-Gras was a well-known singer of the period and they often appeared in concert together. We can hear the influence of vocal style both in Dorus' choice of theme, from the opera Anna Bolena, and the opera's aria-like flute lines are especially evident in the slow variations in this work.

Opera was also important to Paul Taffanel. He began his flute studies with his father, and worked with Dorus at the Conservatory where he won his first prize in 1860 when he was 16 years old. He played in the Opera Comique orchestra from 1864 to 1890 and in the Paris Opera orchestra from 1865-1892. In 1893 he was appointed music director of the Opera, the first non-string player ever to be given the job. The influence of opera on this great musician can be seen both in his compositions and his teaching, as it was passed down through Marcel Moyse.

Andante Pastorale & Scherzettino was the "morceau de concours" or contest piece for the flutists hoping to graduate from the Conservatory in 1907. It is dedicated to Philippe Gaubert.

Gaubert was Taffanel's student at the Conservatory and won his first prize in 1894. In 1897 he was appointed to the Opera Orchestra and was made professor at the Conservatory in 1919. Following in Taffanel's footsteps, Gaubert was made conductor of the Opera orchestra in 1920 where he concentrated on contemporary works. Due to his busy schedule, Gaubert composed almost solely during the summer. His Deuxième Sonate was written in 1924 and is dedicated to Marcel Moyse. It is full of the harmonies of Wagner and Debussy, whose music Gaubert championed in his position as head of the Paris Opera.

With Gaubert's death in 1941 we come to the end of al- most two centuries of flute music written by flutists. Gaubert's dedication of his Deuxième Sonate to his colleague, Marcel Moyse, who died in 1985, brings us almost to the present. These composers, with their lyric sensibility, their knowledge of the flute and its strengths, their dedication to it both in their playing and teaching, have provided us a rich heritage of pedagogy and composition.

John Ranck is currently a member of the faculty of the Community Music Center of Boston, where he is chairman of the Wind Department, and of the Performing Arts School of Worcester, MA. Having received his Master of Music degree at the Stony Brook University, Ranck also holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree from the Manhattan School of Music in New York City. He has performed extensively throughout the United States and Europe and has appeared as a soloist with several orchestras, including the Greenwich Village Symphony in New York.

David Giebler is an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin - Marinette. He holds music performance degrees from Fort Hays State University and the University of Wisconsin. He completed is Master of Music degree in 1981. In addition to teaching piano, theory and music appreciation at U-W-Marinette, Giebler also serves as director of performances with the Milwaukee and U.W. - Madison Symphony Orchestras and the U.W-Madison Wind Ensemble. He is presently active in the performance of the music of composer Gordon Binkerd.

John Ranck and David Giebler have collaborated on several concerts over the past decade, their most recent being a program of flute and piano music by American composers broadcast over Wisconsin Public Radio as part of the “Live from Elvehjem” series.