Joseph Bodin de Boismortier (1689-1755)
- Concerto (en ré majeur) à 5 (c.1730)
Performers: George Zukerman (fagot); Württemberg Chamber Orchestra;
Jörg Faerber (1929-2022, conductor)
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French composer. He spent his childhood in Thionville, and went to Metz
about 1700. In 1713 he was receveur de la régie royale des tabacs for
the Roussillon troops at Perpignan. On 7 November 1720 he married Marie
Valette, the daughter of the city treasurer Guillaume Valette. He
remained in Perpignan until about 1723, when he settled in Paris. In
September 1724 he took out a royal privilege to engrave his works and
began the process of publishing them, which ceased only on his death.
From 1743 to 1745 he was sous-chef and then chef d’orchestre at the
Foire St Laurent, and also, in 1745, at the Foire St Germain. He was a
prolific composer of very profitable works, which according to the
Mercure de France (October 1747) brought him over 500,000 écus, enabling
him to live a life of fame and luxury without holding any official
post. His Christmas motet Fugit nox (now lost), on themes from noëls,
was popular at the Concert Spirituel from 1743 to 1770, with L.-C.
Daquin and C.-B. Balbastre at the organ. His pastorale Daphnis et Chloé,
to a libretto by Pierre Laujon, was well received when it was performed
at the Opéra in September 1747, and was even parodied at the
Comédie-Italienne under the title of Les bergers de qualité when it was
revived on 4 May 1752. After his death his daughter continued to sell
his available works, and also published several more. Boismortier wrote a
great deal of music. Many of his compositions, intended for amateur
ensembles, require only average technical skill and envisage various
possible combinations of instruments, as witness the Sonates pour une
flûte et un violon par accords sans basse op.51 and the sonatas for two
bassoons and four flutes.
He also composed for such fashionable instruments of the time as the
musette, hurdy-gurdy and transverse flute. This last was his favourite
instrument, and he considerably extended its repertory. In his
instrumental pieces he devoted equal attention to the various parts,
which can consist simply of a series of imitations; in his earliest
sonatas for keyboard and flute, op.91 (c.1741-42), the two instruments
are complementary, whereas it was usual in such works at the time for
the harpsichord to dominate. Boismortier adopted the three-movement form
favoured by Italian composers. He wrote concertos for many different
instruments. Some, such as his VI concertos pour cinq flûtes
traversières ou autres instruments sans basse op.15 (1727), are for
unusual ensembles. These are not so much solo concertos as works in the
French style of François Couperin’s Concerts royaux (1722) and Rameau’s
Pièces de clavecin en concert (1741). Boismortier’s pedagogical works
(tutors for the flute and the descant viol) are apparently lost, but the
fact that he wrote them is evidence of a didactic concern also shown in
such instrumental works as his Diverses pièces pour une flûte
traversière seule … propres pour ceux qui commencent à jouer de cet
instrument op.22 (1728), and his Quinque sur l’octave, ou Dictionnaire
harmonique (1734). Boismortier’s music demonstrates great facility, and
one regrets that he wrote so few works on a large scale. It is difficult
not to agree with La Borde, who said: ‘He will always be regarded by
professionals as a good harmonist … anyone who will take the trouble to
excavate this abandoned mine might find enough gold dust there to make
up an ingot’.
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