Jean-Pierre Rampal
Encyclopedia
Jean-Pierre Louis Rampal (7 January 1922 – 20 May 2000) was a French flautist
. He has been personally "credited with returning to the flute
the popularity as a solo classical instrument it had not held since the 18th century."
, the only child of Andrée (née Roggero) and flautist Joseph Rampal
, Jean-Pierre Rampal became the first exponent of the solo flute in modern times to establish it on the international concert circuit, and to attract acclaim and large audiences comparable to those enjoyed by celebrity singers, pianists, and violinists. As it was unusual for solo flute to be featured widely in orchestral concerts, this was not easily done in the immediate years after World War II
; however, Rampal's flair and presence—he was a big man to wield such a slim instrument—paved the way for the next generation of flautist superstars such as James Galway
and Emmanuel Pahud
.
Rampal was a player in the classical French flute tradition, although behind his superior technical facility lay the cavalier 'Latin' temperament of the Mediterranean south, rather than the more formal character of the elite north Parisian institutions. His father was taught by Hennebains, who also taught Rene le Roy and Marcel Moyse
.Joseph Rampal studied flute at the Paris Conservatoire where Adolphe Hennebains (1862–1914) had in 1909 succeeded Paul Taffanel as professor of flute. Joseph Rampal went on to win the First Prize in the Conservatoire's annual flute competition in 1919. His playing style was characterised by a bright sound, a sonorous elegance of phrasing lit up by a rich palette of subtle tone colours. He exuded a dashing, lightly articulated virtuosity that thrilled audiences in his heyday, and his natural vibrato varied according to the emotion of the music he played. Additionally, Rampal was able to breathe in the middle of extended rapid passages without losing the sweep of his rendition. His upper register and wide dynamic range were particularly notable, and the lightness and crispness of his staccato articulation (his "détaché"), heard on his early recordings, was the envy of many.
Rampal is best known for popularising the flute in the post–World War II years, recovering a vast number of flute compositions from the Baroque
era, and spurring contemporary composers, such as Francis Poulenc
, to create new works that have become modern standards in the flautist's repertoire.
However, his remarkable career in music—which was to span more than half a century—began without the full encouragement of his parents. Rampal's mother and father encouraged him to become a doctor or surgeon, as they felt those professions were more reliable than becoming a professional musician. At the beginning of the Second World War, Rampal duly entered medical school in Marseille, studying there for three years. In 1943, authorities of the Nazi Occupation of France drafted him for forced labour in Germany. To avoid this, he fled to Paris, where it was easier to avoid detection, by frequently changing his lodgings.
While in Paris, Rampal auditioned for flute classes at the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied with Gaston Crunelle from January 1944. (Years later, he succeeded Crunelle as flute professor at the Conservatoire.) After just four months, Rampal's performance of Jolivet
's Le Chant de Linos won him the coveted first prize in the conservatory's annual flute competition, an achievement that emulated that of his father Joseph in 1919.Joseph won first prize playing Busser's "Thème Varié".
, Rampal was invited by the composer Henri Tomasi
—then conductor of the Orchestre National de France
—to perform the demanding Flute Concerto by Jacques Ibert
, written for Marcel Moyse
in 1934, live on French National Radio. It launched his concert career overnight and was the first of many such broadcasts. In promoting the flute as a solo concert instrument at this time, Rampal acknowledged that he took his cue from Moyse. Moyse himself had enjoyed considerable popularity between the wars, although not on a truly international scale. Nevertheless, he was a role model in that he had "definitely established a tradition for the solo flute"; Moyse, Rampal said, "unlocked a door that I continued to push open."
With the war over, Rampal embarked on a series of performances: at first, within France; and then, in 1947, in Switzerland
, Austria
, Italy
, Spain
, and the Netherlands
. Almost from the beginning, he was accompanied by pianist and harpsichordist Robert Veyron-Lacroix
, whom he had met at the Paris Conservatoire in 1946. By contrast with, as Rampal saw it, his own somewhat emotional Provençal temperament, Veyron-Lacroix was a more refined character (a "true upper class Parisian"), but each immediately found with the other a musical partnership in perfect balance. The appearance of this duo after the war has been described as a "complete novelty", allowing them to make a rapid impact on the music-going public in France and elsewhere. In March 1949, in the face of some scepticism, they hired the Salle Gaveau in Paris to perform what then seemed the radical idea of a recital programme made up solely of chamber music for flute. It was one of the first flute/piano recitals the city had seen, and caused a "sensation". The success encouraged Rampal to continue along that track. The recital was repeated the following year in Paris, and news of the young flute-player's virtuosity spread. Throughout the early 1950s, the duo made regular radio broadcasts and gave concerts within France and elsewhere in Europe. Their first international tour came in 1953: an island-hopping journey through Indonesia where ex-pat audiences received them warmly. From 1954 onwards came his first concerts in eastern Europe—most significantly in Prague, where he premiered Jindrich Feld's Flute Concerto in 1956. In the same year, he appeared in Canada—where, at the Menton festival, he played for the first time in concert with violinist Isaac Stern, who not only became a lifelong friend but also proved a considerable influence on Rampal's own approach to musical expression.
By now, Rampal had America in his sights, and on 14 February 1958 he and Veyron-Lacroix made their US debut with a recital of Poulenc
, Bach
, Mozart, Beethoven, and Prokofiev in Washington, D.C.
at the Library of Congress
. Afterwards, Day Thorpe, music critic for the Washington Star, wrote: "Although I have heard many great flute players, the magic of Rampal still seems to be unique. In his hands, the flute is three or four music makers - dark and ominous, bright and pastoral, gay and salty, amorous and limpid. The virtuosity of the technique in rapid passages simply cannot be indicated in words." In 1959, Rampal gave his first important concert in New York City
, at the Town Hall. Rampal's successful partnership with Veyron-Lacroix produced many award-winning recordings, notably their 1962 double LP of the complete Bach flute sonatas. They performed and toured together for some 35 years, until the early 1980s, when Veyron-Lacroix was forced to retire owing to ill-health. Rampal then formed a new and also long-running musical partnership with American pianist John Steele Ritter
.
Even as he pursued his career as a soloist, Rampal remained a dedicated ensemble player throughout his life. In 1946, he and oboist
Pierre Pierlot founded the Quintette a Vent Francais (French Wind Quintet), formed of a group of musical friends who had made their way through the war: Rampal, Pierlot, clarinettist Jacques Lancelot
, bassoonist Paul Hongne, and horn
-player Gilbert Coursier. Early in 1944 they had played together, broadcasting at night from a secret "cave" radio station at the Club d’essai in rue de Bec, Paris—a programme of music outlawed by the Nazis, including works with Jewish links by composers such as Hindemith
, Schoenberg
and Milhaud
. The Quintet remained active until the 1960s.
Between 1955 and 1962, Rampal took up the post of Principal Flute at the Paris Opera, traditionally the most prestigious orchestral position open to a French flautist. Having been married in 1947 and now a father of two, the post offered him a regular income to offset the vagaries of the freelance life, even though his solo career as a recording artist was developing rapidly. That career was to take him away from the Paris Opera House for extended periods during his tenure there.
was to remain his principal love ("Mozart, it is true, is a god for me", he said in his autobiography), but Mozart by no means formed the cornerstone of Rampal's works. A key element in Rampal's success in the years immediately after World War II—aside from his evident ability—was his passion for the music of the Baroque
era. Aside from a few works by Bach
and Vivaldi
, Baroque music was still largely unrecognised when Rampal started out. He was well aware that his determination to promote the flute as a prominent solo instrument required a wide and flexible repertoire to support the endeavour. Accordingly, he seems to have been clear in his own mind from the beginning about the importance, as a ready-made resource, of the so-called "Golden Age of the Flute", as the Baroque era had become known. Hundreds of concerto
s and chamber works
written for the flute in the 18th century had fallen into obscurity, and he recognised that the sheer abundance of this early material might offer long-term possibilities for an aspiring soloist.
However, Rampal was not the first flute player to have taken an interest in the Baroque. The catalogue of flute music recorded on 78 rpm discs reveals that there was some prior taste for the music of Vivaldi, Telemann
, Handel
, Pergolesi
, Scarlatti
, Leclair
, Loeillet
, and others. Claude-Paul Taffanel
, widely held to be the father of the French Flute School
, had a liking for the music of the Baroque and was the first to revive interest in the flute sonatas of J.S. Bach and the flute concertos of Mozart. Taffanel's pupil Louis Fleury
continued this interest through his Société des Concerts d’Autrefois and his performances with the Société Moderne des Instruments à Vent, and he also supervised the publication of a number of scores. Marcel Moyse, who took the flute to a new level of popularity between the First and Second World Wars, recorded pieces by Telemann, Schultze, and Couperin
; of Bach's work, he recorded the Brandenburg concertos
, the Suite No. 2 in B Minor for flute and orchestra, and the Trio Sonata for Flute, Violin, and Bass. Likewise, Rene le Roy, an equally celebrated soloist in Europe and America during the 1930s and 1940s, achieved success with performances of Baroque sonatas, and also made interpreting Bach's Partita in A minor for unaccompanied flute
a personal speciality after the piece was rediscovered in 1917.
Rampal pursued his passion for the Baroque repertoire systematically and with extraordinary enthusiasm. Even before World War II, he had begun collecting obscure sheet music from the Baroque—making himself familiar with original publishers and catalogues, even though very few published editions were then available. He went on to research in libraries and archives in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Turin, and every other major city he performed in, and corresponded with others across the musical world. From original sources, he developed a detailed understanding of the Baroque style. He studied Quantz
and his famous treatise On Playing The Flute (1752), and later acquired an original copy of it. For Rampal, the Baroque legacy was fuel to set alight a renewed interest in the flute, and it was his energy in pursuing this goal that set him apart from his forbears. Whereas Le Roy, Laurent and Barrère had all recorded two or three of Bach's flute sonatas between 1929 and 1939, between 1947 and 1950 Rampal recorded all of them for Boîte à Musique, and was beginning to regularly perform the complete Bach sonatas in recital, organising them across two evenings. Also, as early as 1950-51 he became the first to record all six of Vivaldi's Op.10 concertos, an exercise he was to repeat several times in later years.
Rampal had sensed that the time was right. In an interview with the New York Times, he offered one explanation for the appeal of Baroque music after the war: "With all this bad mess we had in Europe during the war, people were looking for something quieter, more structured, more well balanced than Romantic music."
In the process of excavating forgotten works for performance, Rampal also had to discover new ways of playing that era's music. He applied his own bright tone and the liveliness and freedom of his style to the original texts, developing along the way a very individual approach to interpretation and, after the Baroque style, to improvised ornamentation.His 1970s recording of four Tartini concertos (ERATO STU 71061) is a good example of this enterprise, although the manner of the decorated repeats, as played by Rampal, was based on original notes and directions by Tartini himself and not simply the result of some loosely imagined Baroque "style". Throughout, Rampal was never tempted to perform on a period instrument; the movement that championed "authentic" instruments for "true" performance of Baroque music had not yet emerged. Instead, he drew on the full range of effects offered by the modern flute to reveal fresh elegance and nuance to Baroque compositions. It was this modernity–the richness and clarity of his sound and the freedom and personality in his expression–combined with a sense of hidden treasures being shared that caught the attention of a wider musical public. "Enchantment is the best possible word to describe this concert", said one Canadian reviewer for Le Devoir in 1956; "Rampal's playing struck me through its variety, its flexibility, its colour and above all its liveliness." This striking effect can be heard on his earliest recordings, between 1946 and 1950. During this period, Rampal quickly benefited from the birth of the long-playing gramophone record. Before 1950, all of his recordings were on 78 rpm discs. After 1950, the 33⅓ rpm long-playing
era allowed much greater freedom to accommodate the rate at which he was committing performances to record. At the same time, the birth of the television age ensured Rampal a wider prominence in France than any previous flute-player, through his many concert and recital appearances in the late 1950s and beyond.
Thus, even in the first 15 years after the war, Rampal covered a huge amount of ground in this enterprise, and the post-war rediscovery of the Baroque became inseparable from Rampal's own developing solo career. A great deal of the material Rampal performed and recorded he also published, supervising sheet music collections in both Europe and the US. In his autobiography, he remarked that he had felt it part of his "duty" to expand as much as possible the repertoire for fellow flautists as well as for himself. In trying to keep the flute before the musical public in the widest sense possible, Rampal also played in as many groups and combinations as he could, a habit he continued for the rest of his life.
In 1952 he founded the Ensemble Baroque de Paris, featuring Rampal himself, Veyron-Lacroix, Pierlot, Hongne, and violin
ist Robert Gendre. Remaining together over almost three decades, the ensemble proved one of the first musical groups to bring to light the chamber repertoire of the 18th century.
, and Pergolesi
(often collaborating with Claudio Scimone and I Solisti Veneti), and French composers including Devienne, Leclair
, and Loeillet
, as well as other works from the Potsdam court of the flute-playing king Frederick the Great. His 1955 collaboration in Prague with Czech flautist, composer, and conductor Milan Munclinger
resulted in an award-winning recording of flute concertos by Benda
and Richter
. In 1956, with Louis Froment, he recorded concertos in A minor and G major by C.P.E. Bach. Other composers of the era, such as Haydn, Handel
, Stamitz
, and Quantz, also figured significantly in his repertoire. He was open to experimentation; once, through laborious over-dubbing, he played all five parts in an early recording of a flute quintet by Boismortier. Rampal was the first flautist to record most, if not all, of the flute works by Bach, Handel, Telemann, Vivaldi, and other composers who now comprise the core repertoire for flute players.
Despite his commitment to the Baroque, Rampal extended his researches into the Classical and Romantic eras in order to establish some continuity to the repertoire of his instrument. For example, his first "recital" LP, released in both America and Europe, featured music from Bach, Beethoven, Hindemith, Honegger, and Dukas. Aside from recording familiar composers such as Mozart, Schumann
, and Schubert, Rampal also helped bring the works of composers such as Reinecke
, Gianella, and Mercadante
back into view. Additionally, while the Baroque had provided the platform for his revival of the flute, Rampal was well aware that the health of its continuing appeal depended on him and others displaying the whole range of the repertoire. From the start, his recital programmes included modern compositions as well. Rampal gave the first Western performance of Prokofiev's Sonata for Flute and Piano in D, which in the 1940s was in danger of being co-opted for the violin, but which has since become established as a flute favourite. Over his career, he performed all of the flute masterpieces that were composed in the first half of the 20th century, including works by Debussy, Ravel, Roussel
, Ibert, Milhaud
, Martinů
, Hindemith, Honegger, Dukas, Françaix
, Damase
, Kuhlau, and Feld
.
By the early 1960s, Rampal was established as the first truly international modern flute virtuoso, and was performing with many of the world's leading orchestras. Just before his first recital tour of Australia in 1966, a leading newspaper said: "he is to the flute what Rubinstein is to the piano and Oistrakh to the violin". Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Rampal's publicity in America continued to hail his celebrity; one newspaper hailed him as "the prince of flute-players".
As a chamber musician, he continued to collaborate with numerous other soloists, forming particularly close and long-lasting collaborations with violinist Isaac Stern
and cellist
Mstislav Rostropovich
. A number of composers wrote especially for Rampal, including Henri Tomasi
(Sonatine pour flûte seule, 1949), Jean Françaix
(Divertimento, 1953), Andre Jolivet
(Concerto, 1949), Jindřich Feld
(Sonata, 1957), and Jean Martinon
(Sonatine). Others included Jean Rivier
, Antoine Tisne, Serge Nigg
, Charles Chaynes
, and Maurice Ohana
. In addition, he premiered a large number of works by contemporary composers such as Leonard Bernstein
, Aaron Copland
, Ezra Laderman
, David Diamond
, and Krzysztof Penderecki
. His transcribing in 1968, at the composer's own suggestion, of Aram Khatchaturian's Violin Concerto
(recorded 1970) showed Rampal's willingness to broaden the flute repertoire further by borrowing from other instruments. In 1978, the Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhaness
wrote his Symphony No. 36, which contained a melodic flute part tailored especially for Rampal, who gave the premiere performance of the work in concert with the National Symphony Orchestra.
The only piece dedicated to Rampal that he never publicly performed was the Sonatine (1946) by Pierre Boulez
, which—with its spiky, explosive figures and extravagant use of flutter-tonguing—he found too abstract for his taste.It was left for Severino Gazzelloni
to premiere the Sonatine in 1954. Elsewhere, when sometimes criticised for not playing enough contemporary avant-garde work—"Avant garde of what?" he would ask—Rampal confirmed his aversion to music that looked "like the blueprints for a plumber... pieces that go tweak, twonk, thump, snort—this doesn't inspire me."
One piece in particular, written with Rampal in mind, has since become a modern standard in the essential flute repertoire. Rampal's compatriot Francis Poulenc
was commissioned by the Coolidge Foundation of America in 1957 to write a new flute piece. The composer consulted with Rampal regularly on shaping the flute part, and the result, in Rampal's own words, is "a pearl of the flute literature". The official world premiere of Poulenc's Sonata for Flute and Piano was performed on 17 June 1957 by Rampal, accompanied by the composer, at the Strasbourg Festival. Unofficially, however, they had performed it a day or two earlier to a distinguished audience of one: the pianist Artur Rubinstein, a friend of Poulenc's, was unable to stay in Strasbourg for the evening of the concert itself, and so the duo obliged him with a private performance. Poulenc was then unable to travel to Washington for the US premiere on 14 February 1958, so Veyron-Lacroix took his place, and the sonata became a key offering in Rampal's US recital debut, helping launch his long-lived trans-Atlantic career.
. With family help, Rampal raised enough funds to rescue the precious instrument, and went on to perform and record with it for 11 years. In interviews, Rampal said he thought the gold—by contrast with silver—made his naturally bright, sparkling sound "a little darker; the colour is a little warmer, I like it". Only in 1958, when presented during his debut US tour with a 14-carat gold instrument made after the Lot pattern by the William S. Haynes
Flute Company of Boston, did Rampal stop using the 1869 original. After one final recording in London, he consigned the golden Lot to the safety of a bank vault in France, and thereafter made the Haynes his concert instrument of choice.
in New York. At his busiest, he performed between 150 and 200 concerts a year.
His range extended well beyond the orthodox: alongside the outpouring of classical recordings, he recorded Catalan and Scottish folk songs, Indian Music with sitarist Ravi Shankar
, and, accompanied by the distinguished French harpist Lily Laskine
, an album of Japanese folk melodies that was named album of the year in Japan, where he became adored by a new generation of budding flute-players. He also recorded Scott Joplin
rags and Gershwin, and collaborated with French jazz pianist Claude Bolling
. The Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano
(1975), written by Bolling especially for Rampal, went to the top of the US Billboard charts
and remained there for ten years. This raised his profile with the American public even further and led, in January 1981, to a TV appearance on Jim Henson
's The Muppet Show
, where he played "Lo, Hear the Gentle Lark" with Miss Piggy
—and, suitably attired, "Ease on Down the Road" in a scene loosely based on the folktale of the Pied Piper.
Back on the classical stage, he was not afraid to be, as he put it, "a bit of a ham"; when performing Scott Joplin
's Ragtime Dance and Stomp as a concert hall encore, for example, he provided extra percussion by stamping his feet rhythmically on stage in time to the music.
Meanwhile, Bolling and Rampal came together again for Bolling's Picnic Suite (1980) with guitarist Alexander Lagoya, the Suite No. 2 for Flute and Jazz Piano (1987), and also to perform the instrumental theme song "Goodbye For Now" by Stephen Sondheim for Reds, Warren Beatty
's Oscar-winning 1981 movie about the Communist revolution in Russia. His reputation as a celebrity soloist in America became such that, as Esquire
reported, one critic dubbed him "the Alexander of the flute, with no new worlds to conquer." Following a performance of Mozart's Concerto for Flute, Harp, and Orchestra
with the New York Philharmonic in 1976, New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg
wrote "Mr. Rampal, with his effortless long line, his sweet and pure tone and his sensitive musicianship, is of course one of the great flutists in history." Throughout these years of mounting celebrity, Rampal continued to research and edit sheet-music editions of flute works for publishing houses including Georges Billaudot in Paris and the International Music Company in the US.
Calling Rampal "an indisputably major artist", the New York Times said "Rampal's popularity was grounded in qualities that won him consistent praise from critics and musicians in the first decades of his career: solid musicianship, technical command, uncanny breath control, and a distinctive tone that eschewed Romantic richness and warm vibrato in favor of clarity, radiance, focus and a wide palette of colorings. Younger flutists assiduously studied and tried to copy his approaches to tonguing, fingering, embouchure (the position of the lips on the mouthpiece) and breathing."
Rampal remained unapologetic about his use of modern instruments, often wondering aloud whether Bach or Mozart would have tolerated the Baroque instrument ("little more than an awkward pipe") if they'd had its more perfectly tuned and better constructed modern equivalent at their disposal. In answer to the conundrum of Mozart's well-known remark that he couldn't bear the flute, for example, Rampal once said in an interview: "I don't think that statement by Mozart is to be taken too seriously. At the time he wrote it, Mozart had troubles with love and with money. His patron wasn't satisfied with the composer's first try and almost threw the composition back in Mozart's face. Remember, Mozart always wrote on commission, and at the time the flute was one of the instruments that most bad amateurs could play just a little. Mozart didn't detest the flute, he detested bad flautists."
Aside from his own recorded legacy, it was as much through his inspiration of other musicians that Rampal's contribution can be appreciated. Throughout the busiest years of his concert career, Rampal continued to find time to teach others, encouraging his students to listen not only to other flute players, but also to take inspiration from other great musical interpreters—be they pianists, violinists, or singers. He maintained a clear opinion about the right balance between "virtuosity" and aspiring to real musical expressiveness. "Of course", he said, "you have to master all the problems of technique to be free to express yourself through your instrument. You can have a big imagination and a big heart but you cannot express it without technique. But the first quality you must have to be good, to be inspiring, is the sound. Without the sound you cannot achieve anything. The tone, the sound, the sonorité is most important. Otherwise, with the fingers alone it is not enough... everyone these days has the fingers, the virtuosity... but the sound, the tone, that's not so easy."
Following the foundation of the Nice Summer Academy in 1959, Rampal held classes there annually until 1977. In 1969 he succeeded Gaston Crunelle as flute professor at the Paris Conservatoire, a position he held until 1981. When 21-year-old James Galway
sought Rampal out in Paris in the early 1960s, Galway felt that he was going to meet "the master". As Galway says in his own autobiography, "For me, of course, it was simply a sensation to meet this great musician; like a fiddler meeting Heifetz
."
Rampal took Galway along to the Paris Opera to watch him play, and, said Galway, inspired him rather than taught him on the occasions they were together. William Bennett
, too, has commented on Rampal's infectious enthusiasm for music-making: "his repute came more from his musical sparkle and the happy personality which radiated to the audience". Bennett had also sought Rampal out for lessons in Paris and was "instantly delighted with him—his humour, and his generosity—especially for his sharing my enthusiasm for other great players such as Moyse, Dufrene & Crunelle".
Rampal's principal American students include concert and recording artist Robert Stallman and Ransom Wilson
, who has followed in his mentor's footsteps as conductor as well as flautist. Wilson said: "Rampal's greatest gift was his very spirit. Yes, he was one of the greatest flutists in history, but that achievement paled in comparison to his infectious joie de vivre. He had such musical passion that every audience member felt they were being given a private concert. He was magic!"
Rampal and his harpist wife Françoise, née Bacqueryrisse,Françoise is the daughter of harpist Odette Le Dentu. were married on 7 June 1947. They made their home in Paris, living in the appropriately named Avenue Mozart. They have two children, Isabelle and Jean-Jacques. Each year they holidayed at their house on Corsica, where Jean-Pierre was able to indulge his passion for boating, fishing and photography. Well-known for his love of good food, he liked to maintain a private rule wherever he went on tour that he would eat "only the cuisine of the country" he was in, and he looked forward to his post-concert dinners with relish. He developed a particular fondness for Japanese cuisine, and in 1981 wrote an introduction to The Book of Sushi written by a chef and a master sushi teacher.
Rampal's autobiography Music, My Love appeared in 1989 (published by Random House).
After Rampal died in Paris of heart failure in May 2000 at age 78, French President Jacques Chirac
led the tributes, saying "his flute spoke to the heart. A light in the musical world has just flickered out." Isaac Stern
, who had collaborated extensively with Rampal, recalled: "Working with him was pure pleasure, sheer joy, exuberance. He was one of the great musicians of our time, who really changed the world's perception of the flute as a solo instrument." Flautist Eugenia Zukerman
observed: "He played with such a rich palette of color in a way that few people had done before and no one since. He had an ability to imbue sound with texture and clarity and emotional content. He was a dazzling virtuoso, but more than anything he was a supreme poet." The trustees and staff of Carnegie Hall in New York, where Rampal had performed 45 times over a 29-year period, hailed him as "one of the greatest flutists of the 20th Century and one of the greatest musical spirits of our time." The obituary in Le Monde claimed him to be no less than "L'inventeur de la flute" and celebrated all the musical characteristics that charmed audiences worldwide: "la sonorite sublime, la vivacite des phrases, la virtuosite laissaient une impression de bonheur, de joie a ses auditeurs".
James Galway
, Rampal's globally known successor as "The Man with the Golden Flute", dedicated performances to him and recalled elsewhere how as a teenager he had been captivated by the sound of Rampal's "fluid technique" and "the beauty of his tone". For a young musician in the 1960s, he said, listening to Rampal's recordings "was a step into the stars as far as flute playing was concerned." He recalled also the generous encouragement Rampal gave him following their meetings in Paris. Of the passing of his "hero", Galway added: "He was the first major influence in my life and I am still grateful for everything he ever did for me. He was a great influence on the flute world and the musical world in general, bringing to ordinary folk through his music making a charm which enhanced their everyday lives."
At Rampal's funeral, fellow flautists played the Adagio from Boismortier's Second Flute Concerto in A Minor in recognition of his lifelong passion for Baroque music in general and Boismortier in particular.
Jean-Pierre Rampal is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris.
from l'Académie Charles Cros
included awards for his recording of Vivaldi's Op. 10 flute concertos (1954), his recording of concertos by Benda and Richter (1955) with the Chamber Orchestra of Prague (Milan Munclinger), and in 1976 the Grand Prix ad honorem du Président de la République for his overall recording career to date. He also received the "Réalité" Oscar du Premier Virtuose Francais (1964), the Edison Prize; the Prix Mondial du Disque; the 1978 Leonie Sonning Prize (Denmark), the 1980 Prix d’Honneur of the 13th Montreux World Recording Prize for all his recordings; and the Lotos Club
Medal of Merit for his lifetime's achievement. In 1988, he was created President d’honneur of the French Flute Association "La Traversière", while in 1991 the National Flute Association of America gave him its inaugural Lifetime Achievement award.
State honours included being made Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (1966) and Officier de la Légion d’Honneur (1979). He was also made a Commandeur de l’Ordre National du Mérite (1982) and Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres (1989). The City of Paris presented him with the Grande Médaille de la Ville Paris (1987), and in 1994 he received the Trophée des Arts from the Franco-American French Institute Alliance Française "for bridging French and American Cultures through his magnificent music". In 1994 the Ambassador of Japan presented Rampal with the Order du Tréasor Sacre, the highest distinction presented by the Japanese government, in recognition of having inspired a new generation of aspiring flute-players in that country. Strangely, with his enduring international fame assured, Rampal himself came to feel in later years that his own reputation within his native France had in some way diminished. It was "curious", he wrote in Le Monde in 1990, that no French music critics appeared to take any notice of his latest recordings: "Everything continues as if I didn't exist", he said; "This doesn't matter; I still play to full houses."
But after his death, there was no shortage of public accolades to reflect the fact that he was indeed a source of national pride.
The Jean-Pierre Rampal Flute Competition, begun in his honour in 1980 and open to flautists of all nationalities born after 8 November 1971, is held tri-annually as part of the Concours internationaux de la Ville de Paris.
In June 2005, the Association Jean-Pierre Rampal was founded in France to perpetuate the study and appreciation of Rampal's contribution to the art of flute-playing. Among other projects, which include maintaining the Jean-Pierre Rampal Archive, the Association has collaborated in the re-release on the Premier Horizons label of a number of early Rampal performances on CD.
This proliferation proved bewildering even to Rampal himself. In his autobiography he referred to his own "enormous discography, one that I can't even keep track of myself." One collector has made an attempt.
The compact disc
set Jean-Pierre Rampal: Le premier virtuose moderne, issued in France in 2002 in collaboration with the Association Française de la Flûte, contains rare early performances from 78 rpm records made from 1946 to 1959.
Since then, the Association Jean-Pierre Rampal has re-issued a number of early recordings (on the Premier Horizons label and elsewhere), including his 1954 recording of the concerto by Feld, and a range of recordings he made between 1954 and 1966 with orchestras conducted by Karl Ristenpart, with whom he enjoyed a close collaboration. These include works by Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Tartini, Mozart, Arma, and Jolivet.
Jean-Pierre Rampal
Francis Poulenc and Friends
The Art of Jean-Pierre Rampal 1956-1966
Bolling: Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano
, together with the two unedited original interviews with Rampal that it draws on (both recorded by Griffiths in London, in January 1981 and November 1982, at the Westbury Hotel, off Regent Street, where Rampal normally stayed).
.)
Rampal also makes an appearance in the 1977 educational film The Joy of Bach, playing his flute on a rooftop in France.
. It is controversial to refer to the Marseilles group of flute players as a "school" distinct from the more widely acknowledged "French Flute School" in which Marcel Moyse and his predecessors Gaubert and Taffanel are central figures, but Cohen's study is an attempt to give Joseph Rampal, together with his son Jean-Pierre and others, some formal credit for an identifiable style of playing that became appreciated right around the musical world. As signature characteristics of this style, Cohen points in particular to a "poetic approach to expressive phrasing as a foundation to develop musical artistry, creative practice methods, breath control tone, articulation, and technique, all while searching to free the artist from within." The book, which draws on the contents of Jean-Pierre Rampal's masterclasses, includes 34 etudes, 33 solo movements and a set of daily studies used as teaching materials by both Rampal and by Marion. Sheryl Cohen, Professor Emerita of Music at the University of Alabama, has since extended her study by also running a Fellowship at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis in Provence entitled The Flute School of Marseille: The Rampal Lineage. The course chronicles "the development and influence of the school of Joseph Rampal on flute playing in the twentieth century" in order to "preserve the vast philosophical and pedagogical project mounted by the school, and establish Joseph Rampal's proper place in the history of the flute."
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...
. He has been personally "credited with returning to the flute
Western concert flute
The Western concert flute is a transverse woodwind instrument made of metal or wood. It is the most common variant of the flute. A musician who plays the flute is called a flautist, flutist, or flute player....
the popularity as a solo classical instrument it had not held since the 18th century."
Early years
Born in MarseilleMarseille
Marseille , known in antiquity as Massalia , is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of...
, the only child of Andrée (née Roggero) and flautist Joseph Rampal
Joseph Rampal
Joseph Rampal was a distinguished flutist in his own right, albeit better known as the father of the internationally renowned soloist Jean-Pierre Rampal.- Graduate of the French Flute School :...
, Jean-Pierre Rampal became the first exponent of the solo flute in modern times to establish it on the international concert circuit, and to attract acclaim and large audiences comparable to those enjoyed by celebrity singers, pianists, and violinists. As it was unusual for solo flute to be featured widely in orchestral concerts, this was not easily done in the immediate years after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
; however, Rampal's flair and presence—he was a big man to wield such a slim instrument—paved the way for the next generation of flautist superstars such as James Galway
James Galway
- External links : IMGArtists.com 15 September 2008. AllAboutJazz.com 5 August 2008.*...
and Emmanuel Pahud
Emmanuel Pahud
Emmanuel Pahud is a Swiss flute player.He was born in Geneva, Switzerland. His father is of French and Swiss background and his mother is French. The Berlin-based flutist is most known for his baroque and classical flute repertory....
.
Rampal was a player in the classical French flute tradition, although behind his superior technical facility lay the cavalier 'Latin' temperament of the Mediterranean south, rather than the more formal character of the elite north Parisian institutions. His father was taught by Hennebains, who also taught Rene le Roy and Marcel Moyse
Marcel Moyse
Marcel Moyse was a famous French flutist. Many works were composed for Moyse including the 1934 Flute Concerto by Jacques Ibert...
.Joseph Rampal studied flute at the Paris Conservatoire where Adolphe Hennebains (1862–1914) had in 1909 succeeded Paul Taffanel as professor of flute. Joseph Rampal went on to win the First Prize in the Conservatoire's annual flute competition in 1919. His playing style was characterised by a bright sound, a sonorous elegance of phrasing lit up by a rich palette of subtle tone colours. He exuded a dashing, lightly articulated virtuosity that thrilled audiences in his heyday, and his natural vibrato varied according to the emotion of the music he played. Additionally, Rampal was able to breathe in the middle of extended rapid passages without losing the sweep of his rendition. His upper register and wide dynamic range were particularly notable, and the lightness and crispness of his staccato articulation (his "détaché"), heard on his early recordings, was the envy of many.
Rampal is best known for popularising the flute in the post–World War II years, recovering a vast number of flute compositions from the Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
era, and spurring contemporary composers, such as Francis Poulenc
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...
, to create new works that have become modern standards in the flautist's repertoire.
Beginnings
Under the tutelage of his father, who was professor of flute at the Marseille Conservatoire and Principal Flute of the Marseille Symphony Orchestra, Rampal began playing the flute at the age of 12. He studied the Altès method at the Conservatoire, where he went on to win first prize in the school's annual flute competition in 1937 at age 16. This was also the year of his first public recital at the Salle Mazenod in Marseille. By then, Rampal was playing second flute alongside his father in the Orchestre des Concertes Classiques de Marseille; privately, they played duets together almost every day.However, his remarkable career in music—which was to span more than half a century—began without the full encouragement of his parents. Rampal's mother and father encouraged him to become a doctor or surgeon, as they felt those professions were more reliable than becoming a professional musician. At the beginning of the Second World War, Rampal duly entered medical school in Marseille, studying there for three years. In 1943, authorities of the Nazi Occupation of France drafted him for forced labour in Germany. To avoid this, he fled to Paris, where it was easier to avoid detection, by frequently changing his lodgings.
While in Paris, Rampal auditioned for flute classes at the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied with Gaston Crunelle from January 1944. (Years later, he succeeded Crunelle as flute professor at the Conservatoire.) After just four months, Rampal's performance of Jolivet
André Jolivet
André Jolivet was a French composer. Known for his devotion to French culture and musical thought, Jolivet's music draws on his interest in acoustics and atonality as well as both ancient and modern influences in music, particularly on instruments used in ancient times...
's Le Chant de Linos won him the coveted first prize in the conservatory's annual flute competition, an achievement that emulated that of his father Joseph in 1919.Joseph won first prize playing Busser's "Thème Varié".
Post-war success
In 1945, following the liberation of ParisLiberation of Paris
The Liberation of Paris took place during World War II from 19 August 1944 until the surrender of the occupying German garrison on August 25th. It could be regarded by some as the last battle in the Battle for Normandy, though that really ended with the crushing of the Wehrmacht forces between the...
, Rampal was invited by the composer Henri Tomasi
Henri Tomasi
Henri Tomasi was a French classical composer and conductor.- The early years :Henri Tomasi was born in Marseille, France, in the working class neighborhood on August 17, 1901. His father Xavier Tomasi and mother Josephine Vincensi were originally from La Casinca, Corsica...
—then conductor of the Orchestre National de France
Orchestre National de France
The Orchestre national de France is a symphony orchestra run by Radio France. It has also been known as the Orchestre national de la Radiodiffusion française and Orchestre national de l'Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française .Since 1944, the orchestra has been based in the Théâtre...
—to perform the demanding Flute Concerto by Jacques Ibert
Jacques Ibert
Jacques François Antoine Ibert was a French composer. Having studied music from an early age, he studied at the Paris Conservatoire and won its top prize, the Prix de Rome at his first attempt, despite studies interrupted by his service in World War I.Ibert pursued a successful composing career,...
, written for Marcel Moyse
Marcel Moyse
Marcel Moyse was a famous French flutist. Many works were composed for Moyse including the 1934 Flute Concerto by Jacques Ibert...
in 1934, live on French National Radio. It launched his concert career overnight and was the first of many such broadcasts. In promoting the flute as a solo concert instrument at this time, Rampal acknowledged that he took his cue from Moyse. Moyse himself had enjoyed considerable popularity between the wars, although not on a truly international scale. Nevertheless, he was a role model in that he had "definitely established a tradition for the solo flute"; Moyse, Rampal said, "unlocked a door that I continued to push open."
With the war over, Rampal embarked on a series of performances: at first, within France; and then, in 1947, in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, and the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
. Almost from the beginning, he was accompanied by pianist and harpsichordist Robert Veyron-Lacroix
Robert Veyron-Lacroix
Robert Veyron-Lacroix was a French harpsichordist and pianist whose post-war career was defined by his musical partnership with the celebrated French flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal....
, whom he had met at the Paris Conservatoire in 1946. By contrast with, as Rampal saw it, his own somewhat emotional Provençal temperament, Veyron-Lacroix was a more refined character (a "true upper class Parisian"), but each immediately found with the other a musical partnership in perfect balance. The appearance of this duo after the war has been described as a "complete novelty", allowing them to make a rapid impact on the music-going public in France and elsewhere. In March 1949, in the face of some scepticism, they hired the Salle Gaveau in Paris to perform what then seemed the radical idea of a recital programme made up solely of chamber music for flute. It was one of the first flute/piano recitals the city had seen, and caused a "sensation". The success encouraged Rampal to continue along that track. The recital was repeated the following year in Paris, and news of the young flute-player's virtuosity spread. Throughout the early 1950s, the duo made regular radio broadcasts and gave concerts within France and elsewhere in Europe. Their first international tour came in 1953: an island-hopping journey through Indonesia where ex-pat audiences received them warmly. From 1954 onwards came his first concerts in eastern Europe—most significantly in Prague, where he premiered Jindrich Feld's Flute Concerto in 1956. In the same year, he appeared in Canada—where, at the Menton festival, he played for the first time in concert with violinist Isaac Stern, who not only became a lifelong friend but also proved a considerable influence on Rampal's own approach to musical expression.
By now, Rampal had America in his sights, and on 14 February 1958 he and Veyron-Lacroix made their US debut with a recital of Poulenc
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...
, Bach
Bạch
Bạch is a Vietnamese surname. The name is transliterated as Bai in Chinese and Baek, in Korean.Bach is the anglicized variation of the surname Bạch.-Notable people with the surname Bạch:* Bạch Liêu...
, Mozart, Beethoven, and Prokofiev in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
at the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
. Afterwards, Day Thorpe, music critic for the Washington Star, wrote: "Although I have heard many great flute players, the magic of Rampal still seems to be unique. In his hands, the flute is three or four music makers - dark and ominous, bright and pastoral, gay and salty, amorous and limpid. The virtuosity of the technique in rapid passages simply cannot be indicated in words." In 1959, Rampal gave his first important concert in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, at the Town Hall. Rampal's successful partnership with Veyron-Lacroix produced many award-winning recordings, notably their 1962 double LP of the complete Bach flute sonatas. They performed and toured together for some 35 years, until the early 1980s, when Veyron-Lacroix was forced to retire owing to ill-health. Rampal then formed a new and also long-running musical partnership with American pianist John Steele Ritter
John Steele Ritter
John Steele Ritter is an American classical keyboardist and teacher.A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, he went on to graduate studies at the University of Southern California...
.
Even as he pursued his career as a soloist, Rampal remained a dedicated ensemble player throughout his life. In 1946, he and oboist
Oboist
An oboist is a musician who plays the oboe or any oboe family instrument, including the cor anglais, oboe d'amore, shawm and oboe musette....
Pierre Pierlot founded the Quintette a Vent Francais (French Wind Quintet), formed of a group of musical friends who had made their way through the war: Rampal, Pierlot, clarinettist Jacques Lancelot
Jacques Lancelot
Jacques Lancelot born in Rouen France in 1920He studied at the conservatory of Caen with Fernand Blachet, and at the Paris conservatory with Auguste Périer et Fernand Oubradous were he graduated in 1939, and is considered an exponent of the traditional French Clarinet School with a clear and...
, bassoonist Paul Hongne, and horn
Horn (instrument)
The horn is a brass instrument consisting of about of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. A musician who plays the horn is called a horn player ....
-player Gilbert Coursier. Early in 1944 they had played together, broadcasting at night from a secret "cave" radio station at the Club d’essai in rue de Bec, Paris—a programme of music outlawed by the Nazis, including works with Jewish links by composers such as Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
, Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
and Milhaud
Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud was a French composer and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and make use of polytonality...
. The Quintet remained active until the 1960s.
Between 1955 and 1962, Rampal took up the post of Principal Flute at the Paris Opera, traditionally the most prestigious orchestral position open to a French flautist. Having been married in 1947 and now a father of two, the post offered him a regular income to offset the vagaries of the freelance life, even though his solo career as a recording artist was developing rapidly. That career was to take him away from the Paris Opera House for extended periods during his tenure there.
Recovering the Baroque
Rampal's first commercial recording, made in 1946 for the Boite a Musique label in Montparnasse, Paris, was of Mozart's Flute Quartet in D, with the Trio Pasquier. Among composers, MozartWolfgang 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...
was to remain his principal love ("Mozart, it is true, is a god for me", he said in his autobiography), but Mozart by no means formed the cornerstone of Rampal's works. A key element in Rampal's success in the years immediately after World War II—aside from his evident ability—was his passion for the music of the Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
era. Aside from a few works by 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 Vivaldi
Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi , nicknamed because of his red hair, was an Italian Baroque composer, priest, and virtuoso violinist, born in Venice. Vivaldi is recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread over Europe...
, Baroque music was still largely unrecognised when Rampal started out. He was well aware that his determination to promote the flute as a prominent solo instrument required a wide and flexible repertoire to support the endeavour. Accordingly, he seems to have been clear in his own mind from the beginning about the importance, as a ready-made resource, of the so-called "Golden Age of the Flute", as the Baroque era had become known. Hundreds of concerto
Concerto
A concerto is a musical work usually composed in three parts or movements, in which one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra.The etymology is uncertain, but the word seems to have originated from the conjunction of the two Latin words...
s and chamber works
Chamber 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...
written for the flute in the 18th century had fallen into obscurity, and he recognised that the sheer abundance of this early material might offer long-term possibilities for an aspiring soloist.
However, Rampal was not the first flute player to have taken an interest in the Baroque. The catalogue of flute music recorded on 78 rpm discs reveals that there was some prior taste for the music of Vivaldi, Telemann
Georg Philipp Telemann
Georg Philipp Telemann was a German Baroque composer and multi-instrumentalist. Almost completely self-taught in music, he became a composer against his family's wishes. After studying in Magdeburg, Zellerfeld, and Hildesheim, Telemann entered the University of Leipzig to study law, but eventually...
, Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
, Pergolesi
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was an Italian composer, violinist and organist.-Biography:Born at Iesi, Pergolesi studied music there under a local musician, Francesco Santini, before going to Naples in 1725, where he studied under Gaetano Greco and Francesco Feo among others...
, Scarlatti
Alessandro Scarlatti
Alessandro Scarlatti was an Italian Baroque composer especially famous for his operas and chamber cantatas. He is considered the founder of the Neapolitan school of opera. He was the father of two other composers, Domenico Scarlatti and Pietro Filippo Scarlatti.-Life:Scarlatti was born in...
, Leclair
Jean-Marie Leclair
Jean-Marie Leclair l'aîné, also known as Jean-Marie Leclair the Elder, was a Baroque violinist and composer. He is considered to have founded the French violin school...
, Loeillet
Jean Baptiste Loeillet of Ghent
Jean Baptiste Loeillet , who later styled himself Loeillet de Gant, was a Belgian composer, born in Ghent. He spent the largest part of its life in France in services to the archbishop of Lyon, Paul-François de Neufville de Villeroy. He wrote many works for flute, including trio sonatas,...
, and others. Claude-Paul Taffanel
Claude-Paul Taffanel
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....
, widely held to be the father 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...
, had a liking for the music of the Baroque and was the first to revive interest in the flute sonatas of J.S. Bach and the flute concertos of Mozart. Taffanel's pupil 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...
continued this interest through his Société des Concerts d’Autrefois and his performances with the Société Moderne des Instruments à Vent, and he also supervised the publication of a number of scores. Marcel Moyse, who took the flute to a new level of popularity between the First and Second World Wars, recorded pieces by Telemann, Schultze, and Couperin
Couperin
The Couperin family were a musical dynasty of professional composers and performers. They were the most prolific family in French musical history, active during the Baroque era...
; of Bach's work, he recorded the Brandenburg concertos
Brandenburg concertos
The Brandenburg concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach are a collection of six instrumental works presented by Bach to Christian Ludwig, margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt, in 1721 . They are widely regarded as among the finest musical compositions of the Baroque era...
, the Suite No. 2 in B Minor for flute and orchestra, and the Trio Sonata for Flute, Violin, and Bass. Likewise, Rene le Roy, an equally celebrated soloist in Europe and America during the 1930s and 1940s, achieved success with performances of Baroque sonatas, and also made interpreting Bach's Partita in A minor for unaccompanied flute
Partita in A minor for solo flute
Partita in A minor for solo flute by Johann Sebastian Bach is a partita in 4 movements, probably composed around 1718. The title, however, is the work of 20th-century editors. The title in the only surviving 18th-century manuscript is "Solo p[our une] flûte traversière par J. S. Bach"...
a personal speciality after the piece was rediscovered in 1917.
Rampal pursued his passion for the Baroque repertoire systematically and with extraordinary enthusiasm. Even before World War II, he had begun collecting obscure sheet music from the Baroque—making himself familiar with original publishers and catalogues, even though very few published editions were then available. He went on to research in libraries and archives in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Turin, and every other major city he performed in, and corresponded with others across the musical world. From original sources, he developed a detailed understanding of the Baroque style. He studied Quantz
Johann Joachim Quantz
Johann Joachim Quantz was a German flutist, flute maker and composer.-Biography:Quantz was born in Oberscheden, near Göttingen, Germany, and died in Potsdam....
and his famous treatise On Playing The Flute (1752), and later acquired an original copy of it. For Rampal, the Baroque legacy was fuel to set alight a renewed interest in the flute, and it was his energy in pursuing this goal that set him apart from his forbears. Whereas Le Roy, Laurent and Barrère had all recorded two or three of Bach's flute sonatas between 1929 and 1939, between 1947 and 1950 Rampal recorded all of them for Boîte à Musique, and was beginning to regularly perform the complete Bach sonatas in recital, organising them across two evenings. Also, as early as 1950-51 he became the first to record all six of Vivaldi's Op.10 concertos, an exercise he was to repeat several times in later years.
Rampal had sensed that the time was right. In an interview with the New York Times, he offered one explanation for the appeal of Baroque music after the war: "With all this bad mess we had in Europe during the war, people were looking for something quieter, more structured, more well balanced than Romantic music."
In the process of excavating forgotten works for performance, Rampal also had to discover new ways of playing that era's music. He applied his own bright tone and the liveliness and freedom of his style to the original texts, developing along the way a very individual approach to interpretation and, after the Baroque style, to improvised ornamentation.His 1970s recording of four Tartini concertos (ERATO STU 71061) is a good example of this enterprise, although the manner of the decorated repeats, as played by Rampal, was based on original notes and directions by Tartini himself and not simply the result of some loosely imagined Baroque "style". Throughout, Rampal was never tempted to perform on a period instrument; the movement that championed "authentic" instruments for "true" performance of Baroque music had not yet emerged. Instead, he drew on the full range of effects offered by the modern flute to reveal fresh elegance and nuance to Baroque compositions. It was this modernity–the richness and clarity of his sound and the freedom and personality in his expression–combined with a sense of hidden treasures being shared that caught the attention of a wider musical public. "Enchantment is the best possible word to describe this concert", said one Canadian reviewer for Le Devoir in 1956; "Rampal's playing struck me through its variety, its flexibility, its colour and above all its liveliness." This striking effect can be heard on his earliest recordings, between 1946 and 1950. During this period, Rampal quickly benefited from the birth of the long-playing gramophone record. Before 1950, all of his recordings were on 78 rpm discs. After 1950, the 33⅓ rpm long-playing
LP record
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
era allowed much greater freedom to accommodate the rate at which he was committing performances to record. At the same time, the birth of the television age ensured Rampal a wider prominence in France than any previous flute-player, through his many concert and recital appearances in the late 1950s and beyond.
Thus, even in the first 15 years after the war, Rampal covered a huge amount of ground in this enterprise, and the post-war rediscovery of the Baroque became inseparable from Rampal's own developing solo career. A great deal of the material Rampal performed and recorded he also published, supervising sheet music collections in both Europe and the US. In his autobiography, he remarked that he had felt it part of his "duty" to expand as much as possible the repertoire for fellow flautists as well as for himself. In trying to keep the flute before the musical public in the widest sense possible, Rampal also played in as many groups and combinations as he could, a habit he continued for the rest of his life.
In 1952 he founded the Ensemble Baroque de Paris, featuring Rampal himself, Veyron-Lacroix, Pierlot, Hongne, and violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
ist Robert Gendre. Remaining together over almost three decades, the ensemble proved one of the first musical groups to bring to light the chamber repertoire of the 18th century.
Collaborations
Through his recordings for labels including L'Oiseau-Lyre and, from the mid-1950s, Erato, Rampal continued to give new currency to many "lost" concertos by Italian composers such as Tartini, Cimarosa, SammartiniGiovanni Battista Sammartini
Giovanni Battista Sammartini was an Italian composer, organist, choirmaster and teacher. He counted Gluck among his students, and was highly regarded by younger composers including Johann Christian Bach...
, and Pergolesi
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was an Italian composer, violinist and organist.-Biography:Born at Iesi, Pergolesi studied music there under a local musician, Francesco Santini, before going to Naples in 1725, where he studied under Gaetano Greco and Francesco Feo among others...
(often collaborating with Claudio Scimone and I Solisti Veneti), and French composers including Devienne, Leclair
Jean-Marie Leclair
Jean-Marie Leclair l'aîné, also known as Jean-Marie Leclair the Elder, was a Baroque violinist and composer. He is considered to have founded the French violin school...
, and Loeillet
Jean Baptiste Loeillet of Ghent
Jean Baptiste Loeillet , who later styled himself Loeillet de Gant, was a Belgian composer, born in Ghent. He spent the largest part of its life in France in services to the archbishop of Lyon, Paul-François de Neufville de Villeroy. He wrote many works for flute, including trio sonatas,...
, as well as other works from the Potsdam court of the flute-playing king Frederick the Great. His 1955 collaboration in Prague with Czech flautist, composer, and conductor Milan Munclinger
Milan Munclinger
Milan Munclinger was a significant Czech flautist, conductor, composer and musical scientist.-Biographical:...
resulted in an award-winning recording of flute concertos by Benda
Franz Benda
Franz Benda was a Czech violinist and composer. He was the brother of Jiří Antonín Benda, and he worked for much of his life at the court of Frederick the Great....
and Richter
Franz Xaver Richter
Franz Xaver Richter, known as François Xavier Richter in France was an Austro-Moravian singer, violinist, composer, conductor and music theoretician who spent most of his life first in Austria and later in Mannheim and in Strasbourg, where he was music director of the cathedral...
. In 1956, with Louis Froment, he recorded concertos in A minor and G major by C.P.E. Bach. Other composers of the era, such as Haydn, Handel
HANDEL
HANDEL was the code-name for the UK's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges. The reason behind this was to provide a back-up if anything failed....
, Stamitz
Johann Stamitz
Jan Václav Antonín Stamic was a Czech composer and violinist. Johann was the father of Carl Stamitz and Anton Stamitz, also composers...
, and Quantz, also figured significantly in his repertoire. He was open to experimentation; once, through laborious over-dubbing, he played all five parts in an early recording of a flute quintet by Boismortier. Rampal was the first flautist to record most, if not all, of the flute works by Bach, Handel, Telemann, Vivaldi, and other composers who now comprise the core repertoire for flute players.
Despite his commitment to the Baroque, Rampal extended his researches into the Classical and Romantic eras in order to establish some continuity to the repertoire of his instrument. For example, his first "recital" LP, released in both America and Europe, featured music from Bach, Beethoven, Hindemith, Honegger, and Dukas. Aside from recording familiar composers such as Mozart, Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
, and Schubert, Rampal also helped bring the works of composers such as Reinecke
Carl Reinecke
Carl Heinrich Carsten Reinecke was a German composer, conductor, and pianist.-Biography:Reinecke was born in Altona, Hamburg, Germany; until 1864 the town was under Danish rule. He studied with his father, Johann Peter Rudolph Reinecke, a music teacher...
, Gianella, and Mercadante
Saverio Mercadante
Giuseppe Saverio Raffaele Mercadante was an Italian composer, particularly of operas. While Mercadante may not have retained the international celebrity of Gaetano Donizetti or Gioachino Rossini beyond his own lifetime, he composed as impressive a number of works as either; and his development of...
back into view. Additionally, while the Baroque had provided the platform for his revival of the flute, Rampal was well aware that the health of its continuing appeal depended on him and others displaying the whole range of the repertoire. From the start, his recital programmes included modern compositions as well. Rampal gave the first Western performance of Prokofiev's Sonata for Flute and Piano in D, which in the 1940s was in danger of being co-opted for the violin, but which has since become established as a flute favourite. Over his career, he performed all of the flute masterpieces that were composed in the first half of the 20th century, including works by Debussy, Ravel, Roussel
Albert Roussel
Albert Charles Paul Marie Roussel was a French composer. He spent seven years as a midshipman, turned to music as an adult, and became one of the most prominent French composers of the interwar period...
, Ibert, Milhaud
Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud was a French composer and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and make use of polytonality...
, Martinů
Bohuslav Martinu
Bohuslav Martinů was a prolific Czech composer of modern classical music. He was of Czech and Rumanian ancestry. Martinů wrote six symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. Martinů became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic...
, Hindemith, Honegger, Dukas, Françaix
Jean Françaix
Jean René Désiré Françaix was a French neoclassical composer, pianist, and orchestrator, known for his prolific output and vibrant style.-Life:...
, Damase
Jean-Michel Damase
Jean-Michel Damase is a French pianist, conductor and composer of classical music.Damase was studying with Marcel Samuel-Rousseau at age five and composing by age nine...
, Kuhlau, and Feld
Jindrich Feld
Jindřich Feld was a Czech composer of classical music.-Biography:Feld was born into a musical family, his father a well-known professor of violin at the Prague Conservatory which followed the tradition of Otakar Ševčík, the master of Jan Kubelík. His mother was a violinist...
.
By the early 1960s, Rampal was established as the first truly international modern flute virtuoso, and was performing with many of the world's leading orchestras. Just before his first recital tour of Australia in 1966, a leading newspaper said: "he is to the flute what Rubinstein is to the piano and Oistrakh to the violin". Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Rampal's publicity in America continued to hail his celebrity; one newspaper hailed him as "the prince of flute-players".
As a chamber musician, he continued to collaborate with numerous other soloists, forming particularly close and long-lasting collaborations with violinist Isaac Stern
Isaac Stern
Isaac Stern was a Ukrainian-born violinist. He was renowned for his recordings and for discovering new musical talent.-Biography:Isaac Stern was born into a Jewish family in Kremenets, Ukraine. He was fourteen months old when his family moved to San Francisco...
and cellist
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
Mstislav Rostropovich
Mstislav Rostropovich
Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich, KBE , known to close friends as Slava, was a Soviet and Russian cellist and conductor. He was married to the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. He is widely considered to have been the greatest cellist of the second half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest of...
. A number of composers wrote especially for Rampal, including Henri Tomasi
Henri Tomasi
Henri Tomasi was a French classical composer and conductor.- The early years :Henri Tomasi was born in Marseille, France, in the working class neighborhood on August 17, 1901. His father Xavier Tomasi and mother Josephine Vincensi were originally from La Casinca, Corsica...
(Sonatine pour flûte seule, 1949), Jean Françaix
Jean Françaix
Jean René Désiré Françaix was a French neoclassical composer, pianist, and orchestrator, known for his prolific output and vibrant style.-Life:...
(Divertimento, 1953), Andre Jolivet
André Jolivet
André Jolivet was a French composer. Known for his devotion to French culture and musical thought, Jolivet's music draws on his interest in acoustics and atonality as well as both ancient and modern influences in music, particularly on instruments used in ancient times...
(Concerto, 1949), Jindřich Feld
Jindrich Feld
Jindřich Feld was a Czech composer of classical music.-Biography:Feld was born into a musical family, his father a well-known professor of violin at the Prague Conservatory which followed the tradition of Otakar Ševčík, the master of Jan Kubelík. His mother was a violinist...
(Sonata, 1957), and Jean Martinon
Jean Martinon
Jean Martinon was a French conductor and composer.-Biography:Martinon was born in Lyon, where he began his education, going on to the Conservatoire de Paris to study under Albert Roussel for composition, under Charles Munch and Roger Désormière for conducting, under Vincent d'Indy for harmony,...
(Sonatine). Others included Jean Rivier
Jean Rivier
Jean Rivier was a French composer of classical music.He composed over two hundred works, including music for orchestra, chamber groups, chorus, piano, and solo instruments....
, Antoine Tisne, Serge Nigg
Serge Nigg
-Biography:After initial studies with Ginette Martenot, Nigg entered the Paris Conservatory in 1941 and studied harmony with Olivier Messiaen and counterpoint with Simone Plé-Caussade. In 1945, he met René Leibowitz, who introduced him to the twelve-tone technique of composition...
, Charles Chaynes
Charles Chaynes
- Biography :Chaynes studied at the Conservatoire de Paris with Darius Milhaud and Jean Rivier. In 1951 he won the Prix de Rome with the cantata Et l'homme se vit les portes rouvrir...
, and Maurice Ohana
Maurice Ohana
Maurice Ohana was an Anglo-French composer of Sephardic Jewish origin.Ohana was born in Casablanca, Morocco. He was a British citizen until 1976, as his father had been born in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. He originally studied architecture, but abandoned this in favour of a...
. In addition, he premiered a large number of works by contemporary composers such as Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
, Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
, Ezra Laderman
Ezra Laderman
Ezra Laderman is an American composer of classical music.-Biography:His parents, Isidor and Leah, both emigrated to the United States from Poland. Though poor, the family had a piano. Ezra writes, "At four, I was improvising at the piano; at seven, I began to compose music, writing it down...
, David Diamond
David Diamond (composer)
David Leo Diamond was an American composer of classical music.-Life and career:He was born in Rochester, New York and studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Eastman School of Music under Bernard Rogers, also receiving lessons from Roger Sessions in New York City and Nadia Boulanger in...
, and Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki , born November 23, 1933 in Dębica) is a Polish composer and conductor. His 1960 avant-garde Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for string orchestra brought him to international attention, and this success was followed by acclaim for his choral St. Luke Passion. Both these...
. His transcribing in 1968, at the composer's own suggestion, of Aram Khatchaturian's Violin Concerto
Violin Concerto (Khachaturian)
Aram Khachaturian's Violin Concerto in D minor was completed in 1940 and dedicated to the great Russian violinist David Oistrakh, who premièred the concerto in Moscow on November 16, 1940. Oistrakh advised Khachaturian on the composition of the solo part and also wrote his own cadenza that markedly...
(recorded 1970) showed Rampal's willingness to broaden the flute repertoire further by borrowing from other instruments. In 1978, the Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhaness
Alan Hovhaness
Alan Hovhaness was an Armenian-American composer.His music is accessible to the lay listener and often evokes a mood of mystery or contemplation...
wrote his Symphony No. 36, which contained a melodic flute part tailored especially for Rampal, who gave the premiere performance of the work in concert with the National Symphony Orchestra.
The only piece dedicated to Rampal that he never publicly performed was the Sonatine (1946) by Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...
, which—with its spiky, explosive figures and extravagant use of flutter-tonguing—he found too abstract for his taste.It was left for Severino Gazzelloni
Severino Gazzelloni
Severino Gazzelloni , was an Italian flute player. He was born in Roccasecca and died in Cassino. Gazzelloni was the principal flute in the RAI orchestra for 30 years and dedicatee of many works. Composers including Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Bruno Maderna and Igor Stravinsky wrote pieces for...
to premiere the Sonatine in 1954. Elsewhere, when sometimes criticised for not playing enough contemporary avant-garde work—"Avant garde of what?" he would ask—Rampal confirmed his aversion to music that looked "like the blueprints for a plumber... pieces that go tweak, twonk, thump, snort—this doesn't inspire me."
One piece in particular, written with Rampal in mind, has since become a modern standard in the essential flute repertoire. Rampal's compatriot Francis Poulenc
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...
was commissioned by the Coolidge Foundation of America in 1957 to write a new flute piece. The composer consulted with Rampal regularly on shaping the flute part, and the result, in Rampal's own words, is "a pearl of the flute literature". The official world premiere of Poulenc's Sonata for Flute and Piano was performed on 17 June 1957 by Rampal, accompanied by the composer, at the Strasbourg Festival. Unofficially, however, they had performed it a day or two earlier to a distinguished audience of one: the pianist Artur Rubinstein, a friend of Poulenc's, was unable to stay in Strasbourg for the evening of the concert itself, and so the duo obliged him with a private performance. Poulenc was then unable to travel to Washington for the US premiere on 14 February 1958, so Veyron-Lacroix took his place, and the sonata became a key offering in Rampal's US recital debut, helping launch his long-lived trans-Atlantic career.
L'homme à la flûte d'or
As the owner of the only solid gold flute (No. 1375) made, in 1869, by the great French craftsman Louis Lot, Rampal was the first internationally renowned "Man With the Golden Flute". Rumours of the survival of the 18-carat gold Lot had been circulating in France for years before the Second World War, but no one knew where the piece had gone. In 1948, almost by chance, Rampal acquired the instrument from an antiques dealer who had wanted to melt the instrument down for the gold—evidently unaware that he was in possession of the flute equivalent of a StradivariusStradivarius
The name Stradivarius is associated with violins built by members of the Stradivari family, particularly Antonio Stradivari. According to their reputation, the quality of their sound has defied attempts to explain or reproduce, though this belief is controversial...
. With family help, Rampal raised enough funds to rescue the precious instrument, and went on to perform and record with it for 11 years. In interviews, Rampal said he thought the gold—by contrast with silver—made his naturally bright, sparkling sound "a little darker; the colour is a little warmer, I like it". Only in 1958, when presented during his debut US tour with a 14-carat gold instrument made after the Lot pattern by the William S. Haynes
William S. Haynes
William S. Haynes was the founder of the William S. Haynes Flute Company of Boston. The company was founded in 1888 and is one of the world's leading makers of concert flutes...
Flute Company of Boston, did Rampal stop using the 1869 original. After one final recording in London, he consigned the golden Lot to the safety of a bank vault in France, and thereafter made the Haynes his concert instrument of choice.
Celebrity
Throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Rampal remained especially popular in the US and Japan (where he had first toured in 1964). He toured America annually, performing at every leading venue—from Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall to the Hollywood BowlHis first concert there was in 1973.—and was a regular presence at the Mostly Mozart Festival at the Lincoln CenterLincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of New York City's Upper West Side. Reynold Levy has been its president since 2002.-History and facilities:...
in New York. At his busiest, he performed between 150 and 200 concerts a year.
His range extended well beyond the orthodox: alongside the outpouring of classical recordings, he recorded Catalan and Scottish folk songs, Indian Music with sitarist Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar , often referred to by the title Pandit, is an Indian musician and composer who plays the plucked string instrument sitar. He has been described as the best known contemporary Indian musician by Hans Neuhoff in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.Shankar was born in Varanasi and spent...
, and, accompanied by the distinguished French harpist Lily Laskine
Lily Laskine
Lily Laskine was one of the most prominent harpists of the twentieth century. She was a frequent performing partner of several distinguished French flautists, including Marcel Moyse and Jean-Pierre Rampal. Laskine also served as professor of harp at the Conservatoire de Paris from 1948 to 1958...
, an album of Japanese folk melodies that was named album of the year in Japan, where he became adored by a new generation of budding flute-players. He also recorded Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin was an American composer and pianist. Joplin achieved fame for his ragtime compositions, and was later dubbed "The King of Ragtime". During his brief career, Joplin wrote 44 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas...
rags and Gershwin, and collaborated with French jazz pianist Claude Bolling
Claude Bolling
Claude Bolling , is a renowned French jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and occasional actor.He was born in Cannes, studied at the Nice Conservatory, then in Paris. A child prodigy, by age 14 he was playing jazz piano professionally, with Lionel Hampton, Roy Eldridge, and Kenny Clarke...
. The Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano
Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano
Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano is a "crossover" composition by the jazz pianist and composer Claude Bolling. The composition, originally written in 1973, is a suite of seven songs, written for a classical flute, and a jazz piano trio .The suite was recorded in 1975 by Bolling, classical flautist...
(1975), written by Bolling especially for Rampal, went to the top of the US Billboard charts
Billboard charts
The Billboard charts tabulate the relative weekly popularity of songs or albums in the United States. The results are published in Billboard magazine...
and remained there for ten years. This raised his profile with the American public even further and led, in January 1981, to a TV appearance on Jim Henson
Jim Henson
James Maury "Jim" Henson was an American puppeteer best known as the creator of The Muppets. As a puppeteer, Henson performed in various television programs, such as Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, films such as The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper, and created advanced puppets for...
's The Muppet Show
The Muppet Show
The Muppet Show is a British television programme produced by American puppeteer Jim Henson and featuring Muppets. After two pilot episodes were produced in 1974 and 1975, the show premiered on 5 September 1976 and five series were produced until 15 March 1981, lasting 120 episodes...
, where he played "Lo, Hear the Gentle Lark" with Miss Piggy
Miss Piggy
Miss Piggy is a Muppet character who was primarily played by Frank Oz on The Muppet Show. In 2001, Eric Jacobson began performing the role, although Oz did not officially retire until 2002....
—and, suitably attired, "Ease on Down the Road" in a scene loosely based on the folktale of the Pied Piper.
Back on the classical stage, he was not afraid to be, as he put it, "a bit of a ham"; when performing Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin was an American composer and pianist. Joplin achieved fame for his ragtime compositions, and was later dubbed "The King of Ragtime". During his brief career, Joplin wrote 44 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas...
's Ragtime Dance and Stomp as a concert hall encore, for example, he provided extra percussion by stamping his feet rhythmically on stage in time to the music.
Meanwhile, Bolling and Rampal came together again for Bolling's Picnic Suite (1980) with guitarist Alexander Lagoya, the Suite No. 2 for Flute and Jazz Piano (1987), and also to perform the instrumental theme song "Goodbye For Now" by Stephen Sondheim for Reds, Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty born March 30, 1937) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director. He has received a total of fourteen Academy Award nominations, winning one for Best Director in 1982. He has also won four Golden Globe Awards including the Cecil B. DeMille Award.-Early life and...
's Oscar-winning 1981 movie about the Communist revolution in Russia. His reputation as a celebrity soloist in America became such that, as Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
reported, one critic dubbed him "the Alexander of the flute, with no new worlds to conquer." Following a performance of Mozart's Concerto for Flute, Harp, and Orchestra
Concerto for Flute, Harp, and Orchestra (Mozart)
The Concerto for Flute, Harp, and Orchestra in C major, K. 299 is a piece by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for flute, harp, and orchestra. It is one of only two true double concertos that he wrote, as well as the only piece of music that Mozart wrote that contains the harp...
with the New York Philharmonic in 1976, New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg
Harold C. Schonberg
Harold Charles Schonberg was an American music critic and journalist, most notably for The New York Times. He was the first music critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism...
wrote "Mr. Rampal, with his effortless long line, his sweet and pure tone and his sensitive musicianship, is of course one of the great flutists in history." Throughout these years of mounting celebrity, Rampal continued to research and edit sheet-music editions of flute works for publishing houses including Georges Billaudot in Paris and the International Music Company in the US.
Achievement
Of the primal appeal of the flute, Rampal once told the Chicago Tribune: "For me, the flute is really the sound of humanity, the sound of man flowing, completely free from his body almost without an intermediary[...] Playing the flute is not as direct as singing, but it's nearly the same." Through him, the full range of expressive powers of which the flute was capable were convincingly displayed to a wider public.Calling Rampal "an indisputably major artist", the New York Times said "Rampal's popularity was grounded in qualities that won him consistent praise from critics and musicians in the first decades of his career: solid musicianship, technical command, uncanny breath control, and a distinctive tone that eschewed Romantic richness and warm vibrato in favor of clarity, radiance, focus and a wide palette of colorings. Younger flutists assiduously studied and tried to copy his approaches to tonguing, fingering, embouchure (the position of the lips on the mouthpiece) and breathing."
Rampal remained unapologetic about his use of modern instruments, often wondering aloud whether Bach or Mozart would have tolerated the Baroque instrument ("little more than an awkward pipe") if they'd had its more perfectly tuned and better constructed modern equivalent at their disposal. In answer to the conundrum of Mozart's well-known remark that he couldn't bear the flute, for example, Rampal once said in an interview: "I don't think that statement by Mozart is to be taken too seriously. At the time he wrote it, Mozart had troubles with love and with money. His patron wasn't satisfied with the composer's first try and almost threw the composition back in Mozart's face. Remember, Mozart always wrote on commission, and at the time the flute was one of the instruments that most bad amateurs could play just a little. Mozart didn't detest the flute, he detested bad flautists."
Aside from his own recorded legacy, it was as much through his inspiration of other musicians that Rampal's contribution can be appreciated. Throughout the busiest years of his concert career, Rampal continued to find time to teach others, encouraging his students to listen not only to other flute players, but also to take inspiration from other great musical interpreters—be they pianists, violinists, or singers. He maintained a clear opinion about the right balance between "virtuosity" and aspiring to real musical expressiveness. "Of course", he said, "you have to master all the problems of technique to be free to express yourself through your instrument. You can have a big imagination and a big heart but you cannot express it without technique. But the first quality you must have to be good, to be inspiring, is the sound. Without the sound you cannot achieve anything. The tone, the sound, the sonorité is most important. Otherwise, with the fingers alone it is not enough... everyone these days has the fingers, the virtuosity... but the sound, the tone, that's not so easy."
Following the foundation of the Nice Summer Academy in 1959, Rampal held classes there annually until 1977. In 1969 he succeeded Gaston Crunelle as flute professor at the Paris Conservatoire, a position he held until 1981. When 21-year-old James Galway
James Galway
- External links : IMGArtists.com 15 September 2008. AllAboutJazz.com 5 August 2008.*...
sought Rampal out in Paris in the early 1960s, Galway felt that he was going to meet "the master". As Galway says in his own autobiography, "For me, of course, it was simply a sensation to meet this great musician; like a fiddler meeting Heifetz
Heifetz
Heifetz is a Jewish surname from Belarus and Lithuania. It derives from Hebrew חפץ . It is also spelled Chafets, Chaffetz, Chaifetz, Chofets. It may refer to:* Jascha Heifetz, Lithuanian-born violinist...
."
Rampal took Galway along to the Paris Opera to watch him play, and, said Galway, inspired him rather than taught him on the occasions they were together. William Bennett
William Bennett (flautist)
William Bennett, OBE is a British flute player, who has played with most of the major British orchestras, the London Symphony Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra and the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, and was a frequent guest artist in the Melos Ensemble. He also has a career as a soloist...
, too, has commented on Rampal's infectious enthusiasm for music-making: "his repute came more from his musical sparkle and the happy personality which radiated to the audience". Bennett had also sought Rampal out for lessons in Paris and was "instantly delighted with him—his humour, and his generosity—especially for his sharing my enthusiasm for other great players such as Moyse, Dufrene & Crunelle".
Rampal's principal American students include concert and recording artist Robert Stallman and Ransom Wilson
Ransom Wilson
Ransom Wilson is an American flutist and conductor. Studying at the Juilliard School in New York City, he formed a close friendship with Jean-Pierre Rampal...
, who has followed in his mentor's footsteps as conductor as well as flautist. Wilson said: "Rampal's greatest gift was his very spirit. Yes, he was one of the greatest flutists in history, but that achievement paled in comparison to his infectious joie de vivre. He had such musical passion that every audience member felt they were being given a private concert. He was magic!"
Family life
Rampal's autobiography Music, My Love appeared in 1989 (published by Random House).
Leaving the stage
In later years, Rampal took up the conductor's baton with more frequency, but he continued to play well into his late 70s. The last work of importance dedicated to him was Krzysztof Penderecki's Flute Concerto, which he premiered in Switzerland in 1992, followed by its first performance in America at the Lincoln Centre. Rampal's last public recital was held at the Theatres des Champs-Élysées in Paris in March 1998, when he was 76; he performed works by Mozart, Beethoven, Czerny, Poulenc, and Franck. His last recording was made with the Pasquier Trio and flautist Claudi Arimany (trio and quartets by Mozart and Hoffmeister) in Paris in December 1999.After Rampal died in Paris of heart failure in May 2000 at age 78, French President Jacques Chirac
Jacques Chirac
Jacques René Chirac is a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He previously served as Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988 , and as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.After completing his studies of the DEA's degree at the...
led the tributes, saying "his flute spoke to the heart. A light in the musical world has just flickered out." Isaac Stern
Isaac Stern
Isaac Stern was a Ukrainian-born violinist. He was renowned for his recordings and for discovering new musical talent.-Biography:Isaac Stern was born into a Jewish family in Kremenets, Ukraine. He was fourteen months old when his family moved to San Francisco...
, who had collaborated extensively with Rampal, recalled: "Working with him was pure pleasure, sheer joy, exuberance. He was one of the great musicians of our time, who really changed the world's perception of the flute as a solo instrument." Flautist Eugenia Zukerman
Eugenia Zukerman
Eugenia Rich Zukerman is an American flutist, writer, and journalist. An internationally renowned flute virtuoso, Mrs Zukerman has been performing with major orchestras and at major music festivals internationally for more than three decades...
observed: "He played with such a rich palette of color in a way that few people had done before and no one since. He had an ability to imbue sound with texture and clarity and emotional content. He was a dazzling virtuoso, but more than anything he was a supreme poet." The trustees and staff of Carnegie Hall in New York, where Rampal had performed 45 times over a 29-year period, hailed him as "one of the greatest flutists of the 20th Century and one of the greatest musical spirits of our time." The obituary in Le Monde claimed him to be no less than "L'inventeur de la flute" and celebrated all the musical characteristics that charmed audiences worldwide: "la sonorite sublime, la vivacite des phrases, la virtuosite laissaient une impression de bonheur, de joie a ses auditeurs".
James Galway
James Galway
- External links : IMGArtists.com 15 September 2008. AllAboutJazz.com 5 August 2008.*...
, Rampal's globally known successor as "The Man with the Golden Flute", dedicated performances to him and recalled elsewhere how as a teenager he had been captivated by the sound of Rampal's "fluid technique" and "the beauty of his tone". For a young musician in the 1960s, he said, listening to Rampal's recordings "was a step into the stars as far as flute playing was concerned." He recalled also the generous encouragement Rampal gave him following their meetings in Paris. Of the passing of his "hero", Galway added: "He was the first major influence in my life and I am still grateful for everything he ever did for me. He was a great influence on the flute world and the musical world in general, bringing to ordinary folk through his music making a charm which enhanced their everyday lives."
At Rampal's funeral, fellow flautists played the Adagio from Boismortier's Second Flute Concerto in A Minor in recognition of his lifelong passion for Baroque music in general and Boismortier in particular.
Jean-Pierre Rampal is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris.
Honours
During his lifetime, Rampal had many honours bestowed upon him. His several Grand Prix du DisqueGrand Prix du Disque
The Grand Prix du Disque is the premier French award for musical recordings. The award was inaugurated by l'Académie Charles Cros in 1948 and offers prizes in various categories. The categories vary from year to year, and multiple awards are often made in any one category in the same year...
from l'Académie Charles Cros
L'Académie Charles Cros
The Académie Charles-Cros, is an organization in France that acts as an intermediary between government cultural policy makers and professionals in music and the recording industry....
included awards for his recording of Vivaldi's Op. 10 flute concertos (1954), his recording of concertos by Benda and Richter (1955) with the Chamber Orchestra of Prague (Milan Munclinger), and in 1976 the Grand Prix ad honorem du Président de la République for his overall recording career to date. He also received the "Réalité" Oscar du Premier Virtuose Francais (1964), the Edison Prize; the Prix Mondial du Disque; the 1978 Leonie Sonning Prize (Denmark), the 1980 Prix d’Honneur of the 13th Montreux World Recording Prize for all his recordings; and the Lotos Club
Lotos Club
The Lotos Club is a gentleman's club in New York City. Founded in 1870 by a young group of writers and critics, Mark Twain, an early member, called it the "Ace of Clubs"...
Medal of Merit for his lifetime's achievement. In 1988, he was created President d’honneur of the French Flute Association "La Traversière", while in 1991 the National Flute Association of America gave him its inaugural Lifetime Achievement award.
State honours included being made Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (1966) and Officier de la Légion d’Honneur (1979). He was also made a Commandeur de l’Ordre National du Mérite (1982) and Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres (1989). The City of Paris presented him with the Grande Médaille de la Ville Paris (1987), and in 1994 he received the Trophée des Arts from the Franco-American French Institute Alliance Française "for bridging French and American Cultures through his magnificent music". In 1994 the Ambassador of Japan presented Rampal with the Order du Tréasor Sacre, the highest distinction presented by the Japanese government, in recognition of having inspired a new generation of aspiring flute-players in that country. Strangely, with his enduring international fame assured, Rampal himself came to feel in later years that his own reputation within his native France had in some way diminished. It was "curious", he wrote in Le Monde in 1990, that no French music critics appeared to take any notice of his latest recordings: "Everything continues as if I didn't exist", he said; "This doesn't matter; I still play to full houses."
But after his death, there was no shortage of public accolades to reflect the fact that he was indeed a source of national pride.
The Jean-Pierre Rampal Flute Competition, begun in his honour in 1980 and open to flautists of all nationalities born after 8 November 1971, is held tri-annually as part of the Concours internationaux de la Ville de Paris.
In June 2005, the Association Jean-Pierre Rampal was founded in France to perpetuate the study and appreciation of Rampal's contribution to the art of flute-playing. Among other projects, which include maintaining the Jean-Pierre Rampal Archive, the Association has collaborated in the re-release on the Premier Horizons label of a number of early Rampal performances on CD.
Discography
Rampal's earliest recordings, 1946–1950, were on 78 rpm discs, many for the Parisian "Boite a Musique" label. With the opening of the 33 rpm LP era, he recorded for over 20 different labels between 1950 and 1970. Among the most significant of these was the French Erato label, founded in 1953, for whom he made approximately 100 recordings. In 1964 alone he recorded 17 albums, including three complete sets of flute pieces by Mozart, Handel, and Beethoven, in addition to concertos and other works. In 1979, he signed an exclusive contract with the CBS label (later Sony Classical), and he made over 60 albums for them.This proliferation proved bewildering even to Rampal himself. In his autobiography he referred to his own "enormous discography, one that I can't even keep track of myself." One collector has made an attempt.
The compact disc
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
set Jean-Pierre Rampal: Le premier virtuose moderne, issued in France in 2002 in collaboration with the Association Française de la Flûte, contains rare early performances from 78 rpm records made from 1946 to 1959.
Since then, the Association Jean-Pierre Rampal has re-issued a number of early recordings (on the Premier Horizons label and elsewhere), including his 1954 recording of the concerto by Feld, and a range of recordings he made between 1954 and 1966 with orchestras conducted by Karl Ristenpart, with whom he enjoyed a close collaboration. These include works by Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Tartini, Mozart, Arma, and Jolivet.
Rampal on TV and DVD
Rampal made a great many television concert appearances in France from the late 1950s onwards, and later elsewhere—especially in America and Japan, where his reputation and following remained highest. As the first televised flute-player of any age, the medium contributed to his worldwide popularity in the decades after World War II. By comparison with the vast number of his CD and vinyl recordings in circulation, however, commercially available video and DVD footage of Rampal is relatively scarce, but collectors will be especially interested in four DVDs that contain live or recorded performances by him:Jean-Pierre Rampal
- EMI "Classic Archive" DVB 51089991; released 2007 in collaboration with the Association Jean-Pierre Rampal
- This presents a collection of fine early performances filmed for French TV between 1958 and 1965 and still held in the Institut National de l'Audiovisuel, the national French television archive. The earliest footage was broadcast on 17 March 1958, in the musical TV series Les Grandes Interprètes, soon after Rampal had returned from his successful debut tour of the US.
- He begins with Handel's Sonata in F (HWV.369), then plays Debussy's The Little Shepherd and Ravel's Pièce en forme de habanera, both transcribed for flute and piano; and also Jolivet's Incantation C for unaccompanied flute. For the Handel, Debussy, and Ravel pieces, he is accompanied by the programme's presenter, pianist Bernard Gavoty. After a performance of Vivaldi's La Notte concerto in G minor RV 439 with the Collegium Musicum de Paris (broadcast 8 October 1963) comes a rendition of J.S. Bach's Suite in C minor BWV 997 (Paris, 16 April 1963) and the opening Allegro from Bach's Sonata in G minor BWV 1020 (Paris, broadcast 28 December 1964), both with Veyron-Lacroix at the harpsichord. More of this duo in recital at the Salle Gaveau in Paris (19 March 1964) appears from the TV series Les Jeunesses Musicales de France, featuring Couperin's Concert Royal No. 4, parts of J. S. Bach's Partita in A minor for solo flute and a sonata in B flat, K.15, by Mozart. The two concerto performances that complete the collection, both with the Orchestre Philharmonique de l'ORTF conducted by Rampal's long-time collaborator Louis de Froment, are of Mozart's Concerto No. 1 in G, K.313 (Paris, 5 May 1965), and the Ibert flute concerto (Paris, 8 April 1962). Of the Mozart concertos, Rampal said in a BBC Radio 4 interview that he did not like his 1966 recording with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra for ERATO because his playing was adversely affected by the uncomfortably high orchestral pitch insisted upon in Vienna. By contrast, he said he preferred his 1978 recording with the ‘Israel Symphony Orchestra’, even though it does not compare particularly well with the earlier TV performance.
Francis Poulenc and Friends
- EMI 'Classic Archive' DVB 3102019
- Rampal, playing the Poulenc flute sonata, is featured twice in this compilation, once with Poulenc himself in 1959 and again after the composer's death in 1963. The initial footage, preserved in the national French TV archive, is of a televised concert given by Poulenc in Paris at the Salle Gaveau in 1959. After a brief interview with the composer, Poulenc is joined on set by Rampal to perform the slow Cantilena from the flute Sonata. Rampal is seen again later in footage from a TV broadcast in which he plays the complete Flute Sonata, this time accompanied by Veyron-Lacroix. Additional performances of Poulenc's music are provided by artists including pianist Jacques Février, cellist Maurice Gendron, baritone Gabriel Bacquier, organist Jean-Jacques Grunenwald, soprano Denise Duval and others, together with the ORTF National Orchestra conducted by Georges Prêtre.
The Art of Jean-Pierre Rampal 1956-1966
- Video Artists International
- This is a two-volume DVD compilation featuring a series of Radio-Canada "Telecasts", broadcast and recorded during the years when Rampal was at the peak of his fame. In this rare footage, retrieved from the archives of CBC Montreal, Rampal is accompanied by Veyron-Lacroix and the McGill Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Alexander Brott. The first volume of this set of live broadcasts includes: Boccherini's Concerto for Flute and Orchestra in D major (broadcast 1 March 1956); Haydn's Concerto for flute, harpsichord and string orchestra in F major, with Debussy's Syrinx for unaccompanied flute (broadcast March 28, 1957); Couperin's Concert Royal IV, with J. S. Bach's Sonata for flute and harpsichord in G minor, BWV 1020 (broadcast 27 December 1961). Volume two features Mozart's Flute Concerto No. 2 in D major, K.314, together with the Flute Concerto No. 1 in G major, K.313 (broadcast 24 February 1966).
Bolling: Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano
- This features a live televised performance from 1976 of Claude Bolling's cross-over Suite (1973), written for Jean-Pierre Rampal (who plays a classical line to Bolling's jazz piano) and which by then had become a runaway success in the Billboard charts. Special guest double-bass player Max Hediguer is also featured.
Radio
Apart from the many French Radio broadcasts of performances by Rampal, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a 45-minute profile, Rampal–"Prince of Flute Players", on 11 October 1983 in the 20:20–21:05 documentary slot. It contained extracts from an interview with Rampal himself, rare for the fact that Rampal gave very few interviews of any length in English. Rampal talks about his life and times and his approach to music-making. Also featured are interviews with English flautist William Bennett, American flautist and Rampal's sometimes-pupil Elena Duran, and violinist Isaac Stern—who was Rampal's long-time friend and musical collaborator. The Radio Times billing read: "Rampal–'Prince of Flute Players'. 'The Alexander of the flute with no new worlds to conquer…' American reviewers have sung the praises of the French flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal for over two decades. He's probably made more records than any other soloist, he's been given personal credit for making the flute the popular instrument it is today, yet in Britain he remains something of a neglected personality. Musician Andrew Marriner meets Jean-Pierre Rampal and, with help from William Bennett, Elena Duran, Isaac Stern and many recordings, presents a portrait of this celebrated flute player. Written and produced by Peter Griffiths." The programme is kept in the BBC Sound ArchiveBBC Sound Archive
The BBC Sound Archive is a collection of audio recordings maintained by the BBC and founded in 1936. Its recordings date back to the late 19th century and include many rare items including contemporary speeches by public and political figures, folk music, British dialects and sound...
, together with the two unedited original interviews with Rampal that it draws on (both recorded by Griffiths in London, in January 1981 and November 1982, at the Westbury Hotel, off Regent Street, where Rampal normally stayed).
Films
L. Subramaniam: Violin From the Heart (1999), directed by Jean Henri Meunier, includes a scene of Rampal performing with L. SubramaniamL. Subramaniam
Dr. Lakshminarayana Subramaniam is an acclaimed Indian violinist, composer and conductor, trained in the classical Carnatic music tradition and Western classical music, and renowned for his virtuoso playing techniques and compositions in orchestral fusion.-Early years:Subramaniam was born to V...
.)
Rampal also makes an appearance in the 1977 educational film The Joy of Bach, playing his flute on a rooftop in France.
Further reading
Bel Canto Flute: The Rampal School (2003; Winzer Press) by Sheryl Cohen is a study of Rampal's methods and influence by an American flautist and teacher who studied with both Jean-Pierre Rampal and his fellow Marseille flautist Alain MarionAlain Marion
Alain Marion was a French flutist, and considered one of the world's best flute players of the late twentieth century.-Biography:...
. It is controversial to refer to the Marseilles group of flute players as a "school" distinct from the more widely acknowledged "French Flute School" in which Marcel Moyse and his predecessors Gaubert and Taffanel are central figures, but Cohen's study is an attempt to give Joseph Rampal, together with his son Jean-Pierre and others, some formal credit for an identifiable style of playing that became appreciated right around the musical world. As signature characteristics of this style, Cohen points in particular to a "poetic approach to expressive phrasing as a foundation to develop musical artistry, creative practice methods, breath control tone, articulation, and technique, all while searching to free the artist from within." The book, which draws on the contents of Jean-Pierre Rampal's masterclasses, includes 34 etudes, 33 solo movements and a set of daily studies used as teaching materials by both Rampal and by Marion. Sheryl Cohen, Professor Emerita of Music at the University of Alabama, has since extended her study by also running a Fellowship at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis in Provence entitled The Flute School of Marseille: The Rampal Lineage. The course chronicles "the development and influence of the school of Joseph Rampal on flute playing in the twentieth century" in order to "preserve the vast philosophical and pedagogical project mounted by the school, and establish Joseph Rampal's proper place in the history of the flute."
External links
- L'Association Jean-Pierre Rampal
- Jean Pierre-Rampal Flute Competition The 8th Jean-Pierre Rampal International Flute Competition is to be held in Paris, from 23 September to 4 October 2008, as part of the Concours internationaux de la Ville de Paris.
- Fanfaire tributes to Rampal
- Photographs of Jean-Pierre Rampal at the Académie Internationale d'Eté in Nice, 1968 & 1970
- Photographs of Rampal in rehearsal with Aaron Copland at Saratoga Springs, New York, 1979
- Tributes to Rampal following his death including that from James Galway