The instrumental music of the end of the later eighteenth
century has attracted increasing attention in the last twenty
years of musicological research. Every historical period
includes a number of brilliant composers who upstage
innumerable other composers in the eyes of modern
audiences, while today there is, for the first time, a fuller
awareness of the past and a truly critical attitude towards
cultural history. In the so-called classical period, work by
Mozart and Haydn represents the spirit of an age in which
both the audience and the concert underwent changes:
halls became larger to provide room for growing middleclass
audiences, the pianoforte became established as the
leading instrument on the eve of romanticism and the
opera had become the most important form for a
composers social standing. The fact that the two central
figures of the period wrote relatively little for wind
instruments is in itself probably sufficient reason for
musicians and researchers now to show more interest in
work by their contemporaries. This work is fascinating in
that, through instrumental analysis and considerations of
national differences, new light is brought to bear on the
development of the styles and personalities of the great
virtuosi.
Among these last we must include Franois Devienne,
who was born in 1759 in Joinville (Haute-Marne) and
died in 1803, a most fascinating figure. Thanks to research
by Emile Humblot at the beginning of the twentieth
century, we now have a fair amount of biographical
information about him. He seems, at the early age of ten,
to have been a member of the Regiment Royale des
Cravates, a military band and therefore a usual school for
brass or woodwind players at the time. He settled in Paris
in 1779 and took up his first position as bassoonist with
the Opra de Paris. At the same time, he was also studying
the flute with Flix Rault. It seems that he entered the
service of the Cardinal de Rohan as a chamber musician
and was a member of the orchestra of the Loge Olympique.
After a period with the Swiss Guard, in 1788 he joined the
orchestra of the Thtre de Monsieur as second, later first
bassoonist, and at the same time played with the Paris
Garde Nationale, which was to be active in setting up the
Paris Conservatoire in 1795, where Devienne would
become one of the first flute teachers.
Deviennes compositions for flute, revived by Jean-
Pierre Rampal in the 1960s, are now better known to
flautists, but still not, unfortunately, to the public at large.
As well as extensive educational work, including the
well-known Mthode of 1794, with its extremely
interesting articles on technique and style of the time, his
collected work also includes eight books of sonatas for
flute or bassoon, a variety of chamber music and no less
than seventeen concertos. The brilliant and melodic style
of these last makes them perfect examples of the
concertante classical genre, comparable only to work by
the Viennese composer Franz Anton Hoffmeister (1754-
1812), who himself wrote some 25 concertos for flute.
Deviennes concertos, however, are, remarkably enough,
frequently closer to the spirit of Mozart, who while in
Paris had attended the Concerts spirituels. It was there
that Devienne frequently, and with great success, played
his compositions, which were brilliant reflections of the
elegant tone of Paris at the time. Concerto No.2 in D
major is an example of grace and balance, two
characteristics to be found in the fine portrait of the
composer by Jacques-Louis David, qualities which are
associated with Mozart, explaining why Devienne was
called the French Mozart.