Woodwind instruments in France, 1690-1750: their makers, theoreticians, and music

Abstract

Woodwind instruments played an important and varied role in French music during the reign of Louis XIV. The years 1690-1750 were vital in the development of woodwind instrument making the major advances took place in France and the individual who was an instrument maker, theoretician, virtuoso, and composer was uniquely typical of this period.

The recorder and musette were the fashionable-instruments of Parisian society. Important people had lessons on them, and professionals featured them in pastoral ballets. The Hautbois et Musetten du Poitou were included in the Royal Band. These instrumental traditions gave French woodwind making an unparalleled stimulus-towards now inventions and remodeling the old, consort and band instruments. The results the emergence of the classical woodwind-types.

The opening Chapters of Volume I deal with various aspects of Woodwind production in and around Paris c, 1700, Chapter I describes the birth of the woodwind industry in France at this time, and quotas from original documents (not previously published'in English) on-the formation of Instrument makers' unions. ' Chapter 2 recounts the achievements of French makers in Instrument construction and design. Although relying to some extent on modern sources of this Chapter collates widely-dispersed information unavailable in any other single source. Material from an instrument maker's manual is translated and commented on in Chapter 39 and in the same Chapter the professional approach is contrasted with Jacques Hottaterre's instructions for the amateur on the maintenance of a musette. Chapter 4 takes principles of wind instrument tuning suggested by Theo Wyatt and J. C. Nederveen and applies them to instruments of the Hotteterre era in an analysis of early fingering charts.

Chapters 5 to 7 summarize and comment on interpretive information given in French woodwind tutors of the period-1690-1750. Fingering charts are compared in an extension of D. Lasocki's work on tabulating fingerings from all early tutors. Tongueing patterns are discussed in relation to (i) rhythmic alteration, and (ii) the performance of notes inegales in wind music. The section on ornamentation assembles all early French woodwind source material, and attempts to distinguish specifically woodwind performance practices. Chapter 7 presents three new fingering charts for the one-keyed transverse flute, two or three-keyed oboe, and the musette.

An assessment of'the music in which the instrument making techniques and theorising discussed in previous chapters were involved is given in Chapters 8 to 10. A broad survey of composers' output for woodwinds during the period 1690-1750 in attempted in. Chapter 8, and this includes previously uncollated information on Court musical organisations and productions from the writings of Carlez, Thoinan, Mauger, Cucuel, Brenet, and others. Chapter 9 discusses orchestral scoring for winds, illustrated by transcriptions from original Mss. The development of wind scoring in traced from the sedate Mersenne, through', the instrumental transformations of the Hotteterre group c. 1700, to the galant twitterings of the flutes in Rameau's 'Ramage don ciseaux"from La Temple de Ia Glolre. Chapter 10 deals with a most important aspect of the French wind tradition established by Freillon-Poncein, Hotteterre, and Boismortier - the beginnings of a French wind concerto tradition. As illustration, Boismortier's Concerto for five flutes op. 15, No. 1 has been newly transcribed from the original edition.

Volume II presents a short anthology of unpublished French woodwind music written c. 1700. Introductory notes accompany each section, and a detailed Textual Commentary concludes the Volume. At least two composers anticipated particular aspects of Jacques Hotteterre's compositions for woodwinds, and'the first four extracts in Volume II juxtapose the music of Hotteterre with that of his models: Charles Borjon's musette music and Freillon- Poncein's unaccompanied solo Preludes for woodwinds. The musical examples from the second part of Jacques Hotteterre's Methode pour la Musette were studiously ornamented for an amateur public, and most were suitable for any melodic instrument.