Claude-Paul Taffanel
Encyclopedia
Claude-Paul Taffanel was a French flautist
, conductor and instructor regarded as the founder of the French Flute School
that dominated much of flute
composition and performance during the mid-20th century.
, France, Taffanel received his first lessons on the flute from his father at the age of nine. After giving his first concert at the age of ten, he studied with Louis Dorus at the Paris Conservatoire. Once he graduated in 1860, he won his first of several awards for flute performance at age sixteen. Taffanel built a substantial career as both soloist and orchestral player over 30 years, becoming known as the foremost flautist of his time and reestablishing the instrument in the mainstream of music.
.
called "idle twittering" with works by Johann Sebastian Bach
and other composers of the 18th century. Until then, French musicians (save for a handful of organists) had ignored the Bach revival that had swept England, Germany and Austria. Alfredo Casella
, who had studied Bach in Italy before coming to Paris, noted that none of his classmates at the Conservatoire knew that composer's music.
Taffanel toured widely in Europe. This placed him ahead of his contemporaries in awareness of baroque repertoire. (His tours had included playing Mozart
concertos at the Gewandhaus
in Leipzig
, a singular honor for a French performer.) Thanks to this awareness, Taffanel's impact on the early music revival in France cannot be overestimated. Louis Fleury writes,
His work sparked and helped fuel a growing interest in France in early music, with editions such as Saint-Saëns
' of music by Jean-Philippe Rameau
. In 1897, Taffanel also became head of the orchestra class at the Conservatoire.
and the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire. Previously these positions had been awarded to string players; Taffanel was the first flautist to hold them. Taffanel's duties at the Opera included directing all new productions, among which during his tenure were French premieres of various Wagner
operas and Verdi
's Otello
. At the Societe des Concerts Taffanel championed Camille Saint-Saëns
and other contemporary French composers. He also gave the world premiere of Verdi's Quattro Pezzi Sacri
. He revised the conservatory's repertoire and teaching methods, putting the music of other, foreign composers, including Bach
, back into the institute's repertoire.
did not escape Taffanel's attention. Founding the Société de musique de chambre pour instruments à vent (Society of Chamber Music for Wind Instruments) in 1879, he revived the wind ensemble music of Mozart
and Beethoven
while also encouraging the composition of many new works, including Charles Gounod
's Petite symphonie. In addition, during the 1880s, Taffanel participated in "historic" concerts, playing his Boehm flute alongside viola de gamba and harpsichord
in performances of baroque music
.
, writing several pieces considered part of standard flute repertoire today. These include:
He also began writing a method book for flute, 17 Grands Exercices Journaliers De Mecanisme, which was finished after his death by two of his students, Louis Fleury
and Philippe Gaubert
. Today, this is considered a standard method book for flute players to study from. Gaubert became the second (after Taffanel) most recognized French flutist and composer
.
had completely remodeled the instrument. He proved the flute fully capable of elegance and extreme expressivness. At the same time, the credo later advocated by the French Flute School
that tone quality was more important than loudness did not always hold true for him. His low register was often described as "powerful and brassy", "ample" or "full." This may have been due in part to Parisian audiences of the period. They expected the flute, along with all the woodwinds, to play with assertiveness. When Hans von Bülow
conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in Paris, critics and audiences alike criticized the tone of the wind instruments as being too small.
Georges Barrère
recalled in 1921 that quality and quantity of tone, as well as fine technique, were not all that set Taffanel's playing apart. Fleury added,
"Rigorous adherence" is a relative term here. By the standards of his time, Taffanel's pulse and rhythm were free from exaggeration. As rhythmic interpretation became more literal in 20th century practice, recordings of Taffanel's contemporaries came to sound relatively free and loose.
Another aspect of flute playing which Taffanel changed was his use of vibrato
, which differed markedly from the standards later developed by the French Flute School. The Taffanel-Gaubert Méthode discouraged vibrato, especially in playing early music. Taffanel himself, however, employed "a light, almost inperceptible vibrato", according to Fleury. Another pupil, Adolphe Hennebains, goes into more detail:
dedicated his Fantasie
to him, Charles-Marie Widor dedicated his Suite, Opus 34 to him, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
intended to write him a flute concerto shortly before his death. Also the Romanian composer George Enescu
dedicated his Cantabile and Presto to Taffanel.
Flautist
A flautist or flutist is a musician who plays an instrument in the flute family. See List of flautists.The choice of "flautist" versus "flutist" is the source of dispute among players of the instrument...
, conductor and instructor regarded as the founder of the French Flute School
French Flute School
The French Flute School, as practiced by pupils of Claude-Paul Taffanel at the Paris Conservatoire, employed a playing style featuring a light tone and vibrato. These flautists used metal flutes of the modified Boehm system by Louis Lot and others...
that dominated much of flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
composition and performance during the mid-20th century.
Early years
Born in BordeauxBordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
, France, Taffanel received his first lessons on the flute from his father at the age of nine. After giving his first concert at the age of ten, he studied with Louis Dorus at the Paris Conservatoire. Once he graduated in 1860, he won his first of several awards for flute performance at age sixteen. Taffanel built a substantial career as both soloist and orchestral player over 30 years, becoming known as the foremost flautist of his time and reestablishing the instrument in the mainstream of music.
Professorship
In 1893, Taffanel became Professor of Flute at the Conservatoire. As Professor, he revised the institute's repertoire and teaching methods, restructuring the traditional masterclass format to give students individual attention while building a reputation as an inspiring teacher. He instructed his students to play in a new, smoother style that included a light and carefully modulated vibratoVibrato
Vibrato is a musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. Vibrato is typically characterised in terms of two factors: the amount of pitch variation and the speed with which the pitch is varied .-Vibrato and...
.
Reviving early music
Taffanel also revamped the required repertoire for his Conservatory students. Beginning in 1894, he replaced much of the 19th-century music his student Louis FleuryLouis Fleury
Louis Fleury was a French flautist, pupil of Paul Taffanel at the Paris Conservatoire. Claude Debussy dedicated the piece for solo flute Syrinx to him, and Fleury performed the première. Fleury was a pioneer in the rediscovery of many forgotten Baroque flute compositions, and in commissioning new...
called "idle twittering" with works by Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
and other composers of the 18th century. Until then, French musicians (save for a handful of organists) had ignored the Bach revival that had swept England, Germany and Austria. Alfredo Casella
Alfredo Casella
Alfredo Casella was an Italian composer, pianist and conductor.- Life and career :Casella was born in Turin; his family included many musicians; his grandfather, a friend of Paganini's, was first cello in the San Carlo Theatre in Lisbon and eventually was soloist in the Royal Chapel in Turin...
, who had studied Bach in Italy before coming to Paris, noted that none of his classmates at the Conservatoire knew that composer's music.
Taffanel toured widely in Europe. This placed him ahead of his contemporaries in awareness of baroque repertoire. (His tours had included playing Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
concertos at the Gewandhaus
Gewandhaus
Gewandhaus is a concert hall in Leipzig, Germany. Today's hall is the third to bear this name; like the second, it is noted for its fine acoustics. The first Gewandhaus was built in 1781 by architect Johann Carl Friedrich Dauthe. The second opened on 11 December 1884, and was destroyed in the...
in Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, a singular honor for a French performer.) Thanks to this awareness, Taffanel's impact on the early music revival in France cannot be overestimated. Louis Fleury writes,
Bach's sonatas, those wonders, long buried in the dust of libraries, awakened to find a real interpreter [in Taffanel]. He was the first, at any rate in France, to find out the meaning of these works, which his colleagues thought dull and badly written for the instrument ... It is a fact, though hardly credible, that down to 1895 Bach sonatas were not taught in the flute class (under Altes) at the conservatoire.
His work sparked and helped fuel a growing interest in France in early music, with editions such as Saint-Saëns
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...
' of music by Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François...
. In 1897, Taffanel also became head of the orchestra class at the Conservatoire.
Conductor
In addition to his teaching duties, Taffanel became an important opera and orchestra conductor, serving from 1890 to 1906 as chief conductor at both the Paris OpéraPalais Garnier
The Palais Garnier, , is an elegant 1,979-seat opera house, which was built from 1861 to 1875 for the Paris Opera. It was originally called the Salle des Capucines because of its location on the Boulevard des Capucines in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, but soon became known as the Palais Garnier...
and the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire. Previously these positions had been awarded to string players; Taffanel was the first flautist to hold them. Taffanel's duties at the Opera included directing all new productions, among which during his tenure were French premieres of various Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
operas and Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
's Otello
Otello
Otello is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's play Othello. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, and was first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on February 5, 1887....
. At the Societe des Concerts Taffanel championed Camille Saint-Saëns
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...
and other contemporary French composers. He also gave the world premiere of Verdi's Quattro Pezzi Sacri
Quattro Pezzi Sacri
The Quattro Pezzi Sacri, or Four Sacred Pieces, are choral works by Giuseppe Verdi. Written separately and with different origins and purposes, they were nevertheless published together, in 1898, and are often performed as a cycle in this sequence:...
. He revised the conservatory's repertoire and teaching methods, putting the music of other, foreign composers, including Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
, back into the institute's repertoire.
Chamber musician
Chamber musicChamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
did not escape Taffanel's attention. Founding the Société de musique de chambre pour instruments à vent (Society of Chamber Music for Wind Instruments) in 1879, he revived the wind ensemble music of Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
and Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
while also encouraging the composition of many new works, including Charles Gounod
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...
's Petite symphonie. In addition, during the 1880s, Taffanel participated in "historic" concerts, playing his Boehm flute alongside viola de gamba and harpsichord
Harpsichord
A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...
in performances of baroque music
Baroque music
Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...
.
Composer and writer
Taffanel was also a fluent composer for the flute and wind quintetWind quintet
A wind quintet, also sometimes known as a woodwind quintet, is a group of five wind players . The term also applies to a composition for such a group....
, writing several pieces considered part of standard flute repertoire today. These include:
- Andante Pastoral et Scherzettino
- Grande Fantasie (Mignon)
- Fantasie, Themes/ Der Freischutz
- Quintette in G minor (for woodwind quintet) (1876)
He also began writing a method book for flute, 17 Grands Exercices Journaliers De Mecanisme, which was finished after his death by two of his students, Louis Fleury
Louis Fleury
Louis Fleury was a French flautist, pupil of Paul Taffanel at the Paris Conservatoire. Claude Debussy dedicated the piece for solo flute Syrinx to him, and Fleury performed the première. Fleury was a pioneer in the rediscovery of many forgotten Baroque flute compositions, and in commissioning new...
and Philippe Gaubert
Philippe Gaubert
Philippe Gaubert was a French musician who was a distinguished performer on the flute, a respected conductor, and a composer, primarily for the flute....
. Today, this is considered a standard method book for flute players to study from. Gaubert became the second (after Taffanel) most recognized French flutist and composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
.
Playing style
Taffanel came at a crucial moment in the flute's history, after Theobald BoehmTheobald Boehm
Theobald Böhm was a German inventor and musician, who perfected the modern Western concert flute and its improved fingering system...
had completely remodeled the instrument. He proved the flute fully capable of elegance and extreme expressivness. At the same time, the credo later advocated by the French Flute School
French Flute School
The French Flute School, as practiced by pupils of Claude-Paul Taffanel at the Paris Conservatoire, employed a playing style featuring a light tone and vibrato. These flautists used metal flutes of the modified Boehm system by Louis Lot and others...
that tone quality was more important than loudness did not always hold true for him. His low register was often described as "powerful and brassy", "ample" or "full." This may have been due in part to Parisian audiences of the period. They expected the flute, along with all the woodwinds, to play with assertiveness. When Hans von Bülow
Hans von Bülow
Hans Guido Freiherr von Bülow was a German conductor, virtuoso pianist, and composer of the Romantic era. He was one of the most famous conductors of the 19th century, and his activity was critical for establishing the successes of several major composers of the time, including Richard...
conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in Paris, critics and audiences alike criticized the tone of the wind instruments as being too small.
Georges Barrère
Georges Barrère
Georges Barrère was a French flautist.-Early life:Georges Barrère was the son of a cabinetmaker, Gabriel Barrère, and Marie Périne Courtet, an illiterate farmer's daughter from Guilligomarc'h. They married in 1874. They had previously had a son Étienne, out of wedlock, in 1872...
recalled in 1921 that quality and quantity of tone, as well as fine technique, were not all that set Taffanel's playing apart. Fleury added,
Elegance, flexibility, and sensitivity were the hallmarks of Taffanel's artistry, and his phenomenal virtuosity was made as inconspicuous as possible. He hated affectation, believing that the text of the music should be respected absolutely, and beneath the supple fluency of his playing there was a rigorous adherence to accuracy of pulse and rhythm.
"Rigorous adherence" is a relative term here. By the standards of his time, Taffanel's pulse and rhythm were free from exaggeration. As rhythmic interpretation became more literal in 20th century practice, recordings of Taffanel's contemporaries came to sound relatively free and loose.
Another aspect of flute playing which Taffanel changed was his use of vibrato
Vibrato
Vibrato is a musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. Vibrato is typically characterised in terms of two factors: the amount of pitch variation and the speed with which the pitch is varied .-Vibrato and...
, which differed markedly from the standards later developed by the French Flute School. The Taffanel-Gaubert Méthode discouraged vibrato, especially in playing early music. Taffanel himself, however, employed "a light, almost inperceptible vibrato", according to Fleury. Another pupil, Adolphe Hennebains, goes into more detail:
When he spoke to us of notes with vibrato or expression, he told us which a mysterious air that these notes, forte or piano, seemed to come from within himself. One had the impression that they came directly from the heart or soul.
Works dedicated to Taffanel
Gabriel FauréGabriel Fauré
Gabriel Urbain Fauré was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th century composers...
dedicated his Fantasie
Fantasia (music)
The fantasia is a musical composition with its roots in the art of improvisation. Because of this, it seldom approximates the textbook rules of any strict musical form ....
to him, Charles-Marie Widor dedicated his Suite, Opus 34 to him, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
intended to write him a flute concerto shortly before his death. Also the Romanian composer George Enescu
George Enescu
George Enescu was a Romanian composer, violinist, pianist, conductor and teacher.-Biography:Enescu was born in the village of Liveni , Dorohoi County at the time, today Botoşani County. He showed musical talent from early in his childhood. A child prodigy, Enescu created his first musical...
dedicated his Cantabile and Presto to Taffanel.
Media
Further reading
- Blakeman, Edward, Taffanel: Genius of the Flute (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). ISBN 978-0-19-517099-3; ISBN 0-19-517099-7.
- Powell, Ardal, The Flute (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002). ISBN 0-300-09341-1.