Joseph Bodin de Boismortier - Biography, A Quote, Principal Works, Selected discography

Musician and composer, born in Thionville, NE France. He travelled extensively in France, married in 1720, and produced the first editions of his works in Paris in 1724. He composed a great variety of works, including operas, ballets, suites, sonatas, motets, and cantatas, gaining success and fortune. He introduced the term concerto in three sections with a work for flutes (1727), his favourite instrument, with musette and hurdy-gurdy to produce a rustic sound. His music is unfailingly charming and elegant, and his productivity even earned him some satirical epigrams - ‘Bienheureux Boismortier, dont la fertile plume, Peut tous les mois sans peine enfanter un volume... ’.

Boismortier was purely a composer and one of the first to have no patrons: he made his living simply by writing new works of music.

Biography

The Boismortier family moved from the composer's birthplace in Thionville (in Lorraine) to the town of Metz where he received his musical education from Joseph Valette de Montigny, a well-known composer of motets. The Boismortier family then followed Montigny and moved to Perpignan in 1713 where Boismortier found employment in the Royal Tobacco Control.

Boismortier was the first French composer to use the Italian concerto form, in his six concertos for five flutes op. Boismortier and Rameau who both lived during the Rococo era of Louis XV upheld the French tradition, composing music of beauty and sophistication that was widely appreciatd by the French musical public.

A Quote

The music theorist Jean-Benjamin de la Borde wrote in his Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne (Essay on ancient and modern music) in 1780 about Boismortier: Bienheureux Boismortier, dont la fertile plume peut tous les mois, sans peine, enfanter un volume. (Happy be Boismortier whose fertile pen can give birth without pain to a new piece of music every month.)

To such criticism, it is said that Boismortier would simply answer: "I'm earning money."

Principal Works

Les Quatre Saisons, cantatas (1724) Les Voyages de l'Amour, opera ballet (1736) Don Quichotte chez la duchesse, comic ballet 1743) Daphnis et Chloé, opera ballet (1747) Cinquante-neuvieme Oeuvre de M.Boismortier, Contenant Quatre Suites de Pieces de Clavecin for harpsichord Daphné (1748) Les Quatre Parties du Monde (1752) Les Gentillesses, cantatilles (short cantatas) Numerous concerti and sonatas

Selected discography

Ballets de Villages (2000) performed by Le Concert Spirituel under the direction of Hervé Niquet (Naxos 554295) Sonates à deux flûtes traversières sans basse (2001) played by Stéphan Perreau and Benjamin Gaspon (Pierre Verany PV 700023) Sonatas for flute and harpsichord, op. Chloe (2002) performed by Le Concert Spirituel under the direction of Hervé Niquet (Glossa GCD 921605) Sonates Pour Basses (2005) performed by Le Concert Spirituel under the direction of Hervé Niquet (Glossa GCD 921609) French Music for Two Harpsichords (2000) played Hervé Niquet and Luc Beauséjour (Analekta 23079)