Welcome to the second of my translations of the Radio France Musique series on Jean-Pierre Rampal. This week’s episode includes an extended interview with Rampal himself, where he talks about his love of baroque music, his views on historical performance and period instruments, and the extraordinary musicological work he did in bringing forgotten music back into the flute repertoire. It’s a real treat.
To listen to the broadcast, click the play button which will take you through to the programme website.
Jean-Pierre Rampal and the baroque (ep. 2 of 4)
A Radio France Musique podcast series presented by Priscilla Lafitte
Presenter: Jean-Pierre Rampal, you made a particular contribution to the development of Baroque music.
Rampal: Yes, I promoted it. And it developed of its own accord after the war. It was already around in Paris during the last year of the German occupation, but after the war, it really took off. After all the disruption and upheaval in their lives and in society, people really needed soothing music. I think that's why at that time Romantic music gave way to baroque and early music—it met the need to regain a certain balance.
Presenter: You founded the Ensemble Baroque de Paris.
Rampal: Yes, but I'd like to stress that the flute had an ideal position in this context, as it occupies a special place in Baroque literature, right at the forefront. That helped me a lot. There were many factors that contributed. So, when I said at the beginning [in last week’s interview] that my career seemed easy, it's true, but it was also influenced by circumstances.
Jean-Pierre Rampal these days would not be considered a real baroque player insofar as he did not play the traverso, but he is certainly one of the pioneers of the baroque repertoire. The sonata in G minor by Jean-Marie Leclair belongs to the early eighteenth-century repertoire. It was rediscovered and edited by Jean-Pierre Rampal, as was the following sonata for two flutes and piano by Jean-Baptiste Loeillet, recorded for radio in 1948.
Let’s listen to Jean-Baptiste Loeillet's trio sonata in E minor, performed by Fernand Marceau and Jean-Pierre Rampal on flute, with Jean Vigue on piano. [This is the] second movement, Allegro con fuoco.
This is how Denis Verroust, the musician's biographer, describes Jean-Pierre Rampal's approach.
Denis Verroust: He lived at a time when music was really driven by pure passion. He was motivated from the start; it was a given for him because of the influence of his father. He was very drawn towards playing music. As a result, he played practically everything there was. He recounts this experience in his memoirs. Every time he visited a music store, he would buy three new pieces, and when he had exhausted all the flute repertoire, he would turn to the repertoire for violin, cello, or other wind instruments, and play whatever he could find. This gave him an overview of the musical repertoire beyond the flute.
It was the beginning of an exploration, although there was still much to be done. After the war, when [Gian Francesco] Malipiero undertook his research into Vivaldi, things really began to move on. But that was just the beginning, with a huge amount of work still to be done, and Jean-Pierre Rampal was particularly committed to this research enterprise, not only for the flute but also for instrumental ensemble.
Mozart's contemporaries, such as Devienne, Hofmeister, Stamitz, and so on, were little known at the time. He was the first to bring them back to light. His approach was truly that of a musicologist, and in fact he had been a member of the Société Française de Musicologie since 1946 (if I remember correctly). So he was a musicologist at heart, especially in his research. His wife told me that he often spent the whole day working in the library, and that she would prepare his lunch and snacks for the day. This enabled him to discover a large number of previously unpublished pieces, as there were very few editions in those days. But above all, he was very discerning in his discoveries.
Presenter: What well-known works do we owe to him?
Verroust: The Leclair sonatas, for example, are among the best illustrations of his work, as well as a whole collection of German sonatas by Frederick II, Quantz, and others. As far as concertos go, one of his most famous recordings is "La Flûte à Potsdam", in which he plays a concertos by Frederick II, Graun, Quantz and Hasse.
Among Jean-Pierre Rampal's rediscoveries is this flute concerto in A minor by Johann Joachim Quantz, an 18th-century flautist who composed works for the flute and wrote one of the most important musical treatises of his time [On Playing the Flute]. Accompanying him in this exploration of the baroque, keyboard player Robert Veyron-Lacroix proved an ideal partner, adapting his choice of instrument to the music. Thus, when they recorded Bach's sonatas together in 1947, the first was with piano and the next on harpsichord.
Presenter: For a long time you collaborated with Robert Veyron-Lacroix, who was originally a harpsichordist?
Rampal: No, he started out as a pianist. In fact, he was a pupil of Ignace Pleyel. He started playing the harpsichord because of me. Much earlier, we’d recorded a first disc at La Boîte à Musique, Bach's Sonata in B minor, with piano. You can’t buy a record like that now.
Presenter: No-one would dare to do that these days.
Rampal: Exactly, one wouldn’t dare. Anyway, the record was a great success. I’d also played chamber music with the Pasquiers [trio] for the Boîte à Musique [record label]. Jacques-Lévi Alvarez asked me to record another CD featuring, among other things, some more Bach and a Leclair sonata. I said to Robert, "You should play this on the harpsichord." He replied, "You’d better think about that, I'm not a harpsichordist." I said, "Listen, a great pianist like you can adapt to the instrument, it's not complicated." He had all the skills to play the harpsichord. He'd won first prize for harmony and could read figured bass at sight. He took the plunge, really enjoyed it, and was wonderful from the start. Then, gradually, he became more of a harpsichordist than a pianist.
Here, alongside Robert Veyron-Lacroix on harpsichord, Jean-Pierre Rampal performs François Couperin's fourth Concert Royal. Couperin, like Telemann, Leclair and Boismortier, was a gold mine for a flutist seeking a new repertoire after the war.
All Rampal’s musical choices were influenced by events at the end of the war. In the spring of 1945, he was called to Paris to play Jacques Ibert's concerto with the Orchestre National de France. But Jean-Pierre Rampal left the family home in Marseille with a promise to his mother that he would return to finish his medical studies.
Presenter: Did you imagine later, when everything was falling into place, when you were in demand all over the world, that you might have devoted yourself to a career as a doctor?
Rampal: No, but I had nightmares. I’d had promised my mother when I moved to Paris that I would enrol in medical school here in Paris. But 10 years passed and I still hadn’t. And for a long time afterwards, I sometimes had nightmares of being forced to take the third-year medical exam, at my age. I haven't had that nightmare for a few years now, but at the time, it was terrible because I said to myself in the nightmare, I don't know anything anymore, what's going to happen? And it's true, I didn't know anything anymore.
In Paris, the young man from Marseille was reunited with the circle of musicians he had met earlier in his home town. First amongst them was Henri Thomasi, a friend of his father Joseph Rampal, a native of Marseille and Corsican choirboy who became a composer and deputy conductor of the Orchestre National de France. Another musical mentor who encouraged Jean-Pierre Rampal in his early Paris days was Manuel Rosenthal, who had also met him in Marseille and didn't forget him when he became director of Radio France. However, it would be simplistic to regard Jean-Pierre Rampal merely as a baroque pioneer or as a hero of contemporary music. What he sought above all was good music, and since Mozart gave the flute works of great beauty, he didn’t hesitate to perform them.
His very first recording after the war was Mozart's quartet in D major, for the La Boîte à Musique label, directed by Jacques-Lévi Alvarez. The year was 1946, and although the flutist had just graduated from the Conservatoire, his name was already well known in the Parisian music scene. The young musician dared to ask the most prominent trio of the time, the Pasquier trio, to record Mozart's quartet K.285 with him in Paris.
Presenter: And you also established the Quintette à vent français?
Rampal: Yes, I also started playing a lot with them, even during the war, at the Club d'Essai. As you probably know, it was a club where we played and recorded a lot of music to send to the United States. A lot of forbidden music by Jewish composers was played there. I remember we did sessions there with the Quintet even back then, with my friends who had already graduated from the Conservatoire, like Pierre Pierlot [flute], Jacques Lancelot [clarinet] and Maurice Allard [bassoon]. We’d already recorded a lot of things.
Presenter: Did you know that Club d'Essai was the forerunner of Radio France Musique?
Rampal: Really? I didn't know that. We did a lot of sessions at that time, playing music we couldn't play anywhere else. We played Hindemith, Milhaud, Schoenberg, and other works like that.
That was Jean-Pierre Rampal talking about the timeline of his career. He began by responding to radio requests to play Arnold Schoenberg and Darius Milhaud during the war. Later, he premiered compositions by Jacques Ibert and André Jolivet. He then seized the opportunity to record Mozart for the La Boîte à Musique label. He also frequented the Société Française de Musicologie, read the works of Marc Pincherle and discovered tremendous riches: several concerti da camera by Vivaldi—the perfect opportunity to restore the flute to its former glory.
Next we hear Vivaldi's concerto in G minor for recorder and bassoon, performed by Jean-Pierre Rampal, Pierre Pierlot, and Paul Ong.
Rampal: We had decided to do this because I had discovered in Turin a dozen Vivaldi concertos written for flute, violin, oboe, bassoon and basso continuo. I thought they were wonderful, so I had photos taken of the scores, and we made a first recording calling ourselves "Ensemble Vivaldi". I don't think it was even released in its entirety. On the one hand, there was the Ensemble Vivaldi, and on the other, the Ensemble Baroque de Paris. It was for the label La Boîte à Musique. Naturally, I invited Robert Veyron-Lacroix, who was the harpsichordist, and my friends, to form the French ensemble. Later, we created the Ensemble Baroque de Paris, with which we toured extensively.
Presenter: You were one of the few to work on...
Rampal: ...baroque music, yes.
Presenter: There were string ensembles. But ensembles mixing strings and wind instruments...
Rampal: We were the first, thanks to Vivaldi.
Presenter: We’ve arrived at a time when composers start specifying precisely which instruments are to be used.
Rampal: Oh yes, but we've always played original works. All these Vivaldi concertos were written for specific instruments. But that didn't really matter in the 18th century. You played the music with whatever instrument was available. We took the music that was there and adapted it to our instruments. Adaptation could mean adjusting by the key, transcribing if necessary, transposing by an octave or in another key. Or adaptation could simply mean playing as it was, without transposition. Anything was possible.
And now, another Allegro.
We've just heard an archive recording from 1955 with the Ensemble Baroque de Paris. It's interesting to compare it with performances of Vivaldi given in concert in Hamburg almost twenty years later, in 1972, with Claudio Scimone's ensemble I Solisti Veneti. Clearly, his relationship with the score has been nourished by his own musicological research. The ornamentation has gained in virtuosity. Next, let's listen to a recording of a Vivaldi concerto recorded in 1982.
Rampal: I was one of the first, along with Nicolas and a whole era of friends, to study eighteenth-century methods carefully, to work on ornaments and to get into the habit of improvising on adagios, even improvising cadenzas, long before the last twenty years when people started telling us how to play Baroque music. We played it that way, even on silver or gold flutes. We played it well, despite everything. It was good to go back, because we clarified certain things that the Romantic era had completely obscured. I'm not blaming them; it was their way of interpreting early music, classical music. But I think that at the end of the 19th century, it was interpreted in a rather romantic way. Since the beginning of this century, however, there have been groups who, although not Baroque, have been able to interpret Baroque music perfectly, such as Claude Crussard's Ars Rediviva ensemble, which used modern instruments. I can assure you it wasn't boring at all; it was totally stylistic. Claude Crussard was an exceptional musician who knew how to express the essence of Baroque music perfectly.
How did people play in those days? Nobody really knows. In fact, between you and me, nobody knows how music was played in the 18th century. No treatise or method specifies that one should modulate the intensity of the breath or avoid vibrato. I've never found any such indications. I'd love someone to prove it to me and show me where it says to play without vibrato.
Presenter: So where does this idea come from?
Rampal: When the first Baroque ensembles were formed, it has to be said, they weren't professionals. They were amateur musicians. After that, a whole generation of young musicians turned to these instruments, and I must say they showed a lot of courage—a courage I never had. They did what they could, playing in a way that seemed right and proper. They adopted similar playing practices to those used in modern music, including avoiding vibrato. But when we speak, we naturally use vibrato. It's a normal phenomenon. If you record a voice and slow it down, you'll clearly hear the vibrato. It's impossible to speak without vibrato; it comes from the diaphragm. I think it's the same for string instruments like the violin.
He respected the historical approach, but where he didn't connect with the baroque vogue was the idea that music should henceforth be played in this strict way.
Denis Verroust, biographer of Jean-Pierre Rampal:
Verroust: Unfortunately, that's how it was. He was sometimes inspired by them, but he didn't want to play on those instruments. For him, music was made with what was available today, and he communicated with the audience through modern instruments. He wasn't opposed to the idea of concerts on period instruments, and even attended a few, but it wasn't a priority for him. His approach was more historical. What mattered most to him was personal musical expression and authenticity, far more than strict instrumental fidelity.
So it would be inaccurate to think that Jean-Pierre Rampal wasn't sensitive to questions of ornamentation and that he didn't closely follow the debates that occupy the baroque crowd. On the contrary, as you have heard, he also ornaments early music and questions the appropriate use of vibrato. However, he refuses to play on a traverso, refusing to turn back the clock on decades of technical progress made to the flute, even when playing works by Johann Sebastian Bach with a promising young gambist named Jordi Savall.
Presenter: This period of Baroque music, for you, Jean-Pierre Rampal, was a very favourable time.
Rampal: Yes, we weren't playing on early instruments, we weren't yet ostracized by the society of early music purists. Now I know there's a lot of controversy about it.
Presenter: What's your true opinion?
Rampal: I believe that clothes don't make the man, and the mere fact of playing on old instruments doesn't guarantee an interpretation more faithful to the style of the composers of the time. We're 20th-century people, we take showers, we don't live like we did in the 18th century, so I don't see why we should go back to olden times. That said, I've got nothing against Baroque enthusiasts—it's fun to listen to them from time to time, but not too often. If instruments have progressed so much over the last two centuries, it's because they had to. There's no need to shroud it in mystery.
Personally, I don't quite understand the craze for one-key wooden flutes. A lot of people complained about the flute. Mozart hated it. He said he hated the flute because it was out of tune. If he listened to today's flutes, he wouldn't hate them at all. So I don't quite understand this tendency to claim that only old instruments count. Unfortunately, this trend is also spreading in the media… Now it's even spreading to Berlioz. I heard recently that the English are planning to play Berlioz's works on period instruments. I'm waiting for the day when the organizers decide that it's no longer possible to play a Chopin concerto on a good Steinway, Pleyel, or Bösendorfer, and that a period piano should be used, even if those of Chopin's time were admittedly rather mediocre.
"L'habit ne fait pas le moine" [which I translate here as "clothes don't make the man"], Jean-Pierre Rampal declares in this archive interview from 1988 on France Musique. We'll come back next week to his choice of instrument, the gold flute, or rather flutes, as Jean-Pierre Rampal owned several. But I'll leave you with this sonata in E minor by Johann Sebastian Bach, the result of a 1995 encounter between flautist Robert Veyron-Lacroix and the dashing Jordi Savall, who breathes a lively tempo and sense of urgency into this sonata. It shows Jean-Pierre Rampal as an outstanding musician carried away by the play of the baroque.
PROGRAMME
Antonio Vivaldi
Concerto n°6 op 10 3. Allegro
with I Solisti Veneti conducted by Claudio Scimone
Jean-Marie Leclair
Sonate in G minor, book 2, 1. Allegro
Jean-Baptiste Lœillet
Trio sonata for two flutes and piano in E minor
Jean-Pierre Rampal, Fernand Marseau (flutes), Jean Vigue (piano), 1948
Johann Joachim Quantz
Concerto in C minor QV 5 : 32 : 2. Arioso ma mesto
with Ensemble orchestrale de Paris conducted by Jean-Pierre Wallez
Johann Sebastian Bach
Sonate in B min. BWV. 1030 1. Andante
Jean-Pierre Rampal and Robert Veyron-Lacroix
François Couperin
Concert royal n°4 in E major, 5. Sarabande
Jean-Pierre Rampal and Robert Veyron-Lacroix
Jacques Ibert
Concerto for flute
with Orchestre des Concerts Lamoureux conducted by Louis de Froment
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Quartet in D major KV 285 1. Allegro
with Trio Pasquier: Jean Pasquier (violon), Pierre Pasquier (viola), Etienne Pasquier (cello)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Quartet in D major KV 285 2. Adagio
with Trio Pasquier: Jean Pasquier (violon), Pierre Pasquier (viola), Etienne Pasquier (cello)
Antonio Vivaldi*
Concerto in G minor*
with Ensemble baroque de Paris, 1955
Antonio Vivaldi
Concerto in D major n°3 op. 10 RV 428 2. Cantabile
with I Solisti Veneti conducted by Claudio Scimone, 1972
Antonio Vivaldi
Concerto in D major n°3 op. 10 RV 428 : 3. Allegro
with I Solisti Veneti conducted by Claudio Scimone, 1972
Georg Philipp Telemann
Fantaisie n°8 in E minor TWV 40 : 9 - 1. Largo - 2. Spirituoso - 3. Allegro
Georg Philipp Telemann
Suite en la min TWV 55 : a2 : 5. Réjouissance
with Jerusalem Music Center Chamber Orchestra
Johann Sebastian Bach
Sonate in E minor, BWV 1034 : 1. Adagio ma non tanto
Jean-Pierre Rampal, Robert Veyron-Lacroix (harpsichor), Jordi Savall (viola da gamba)
Johann Sebastian Bach
Sonate in E minor, BWV 1034: 3. Andante
Jean-Pierre Rampal, Robert Veyron-Lacroix (harpsichor), Jordi Savall (viola da gamba)
Johann Sebastian Bach
Sonate in E minor, BWV 1034 : 2. Andante
Jean-Pierre Rampal, Robert Veyron-Lacroix (harpsichor), Jordi Savall (viola da gamba)