Francois Devienne's "Nouvelle Methode Theorique et Pratique pour la Flute:" Facsimile of the Original Edition, with an Introduction, Annotated Catalogue of Later Editions, and Translation (review)

François Devienne's Nouvelle Méthode Théorique et Pratique pour la Flute: Facsimile of the Original Edition, with an Introduction, Annotated Catalogue of Later Editions, and Translation. By Jane Bowers. Commentary on the original edition by Thomas Boehm. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 1999. [x, 116, 77 p. ISBN 1-84014-642-7. $78.95.]

This volume comprises an annotated translation of François Devienne's treatise on playing the flute and a facsimile (separately paginated) of the work's first edition, issued in Paris ca. 1794 by Jean-Jêrome Imbault. In an introduction, Jane Bowers provides a short, detailed biography of the flutist, drawn primarily from the work of two previous Devienne scholars: Émile Humblot, Un Musicien joinvillois de l'époque de la Révolution: François Devienne, 1759- 1803 (1909) and William Montgomery, Life and Works of François Devienne, 1759-1803 (2 vols. [Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America, 1975]). In addition, Thomas Boehm describes the original edition's content and tries to place it historically among earlier and later flute methods. Bowers appends a chronological, annotated catalog of later editions of the treatise, beginning with a Viennese edition of ca. 1803 and ending with a Parisian publication of 1950. The treatise itself is somewhat perfunctory, consisting primarily of examples as well as six complete sonatas for two flutes. The actual text of the translation occupies only about twenty-five pages; most of the new material is devoted to commentary and critical apparatus.

Devienne achieved considerable recognition in his day. As a flutist, he advocated the one-keyed transverse instrument throughout his career despite the increasing popularity of multiple-keyed flutes, and it is this instrument for which he clearly intended his treatise. Devienne was active as a composer and a flute and bassoon soloist and often gave public performances of his own concertos at the Concert spirituel. In addition to numerous solo concertos featuring flute or bassoon, his compositions include sonatas for keyboard and flute, duos for two flutes (about 150) and for flute and viola, trios and quartets for flute and strings, and a symphonie concertante for horn and bassoon, as well as attempts at opéra comique.

Devienne's most significant musical appointment occurred during the French Revolution. By 1793 he was a member of the band of the Garde nationale parisienne, whose playing so impressed the delegates drafting the French republic's constitution that they established an Institut national de musique, reorganized in 1795 as the Conservatoire national de musique. Devienne was appointed one of the new institution's nine administrators as well as a professor of flute of the first class.

Devienne wrote his treatise within the tradition of earlier flute methods such as those of Jacques Hotteterre and Michel Corrette, but he also incorporated newer features from later eighteenth-century works, including Amand Vanderhagen's Méthode nouvelle et raisonnée pour la flûte (ca. 1788). His exercises and concepts are by no means revolutionary or comprehensive. But they do focus on the important concerns of previous authors, and, probably largely because of Devienne's association with the Paris Conservatoire and the treatise's numerous reprintings, they continued to form the basis of pedagogy during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Bowers's lucid translation was checked meticulously against that included in Montgomery's dissertation. Boehm's useful overview highlights important aspects of the work's contents. I occasionally disagree with his interpretations of performance practice, as in a discussion (p. 20) that mistakenly conflates what Devienne says (treatise, p. 92) regarding the swelling and diminishing of the tone on long notes (called "messa di voce" by Johann Joachim Quantz in his Versuch einer Anweisung die flöte traversiere zu spielen [1752...