Phillipe Gaubert was the premiere flutist and conductor in Paris during his time. He was Paul Taffanel's best student at the Paris Conservatoire, winning the conservatory's premier prix for flute in 1894. Gaubert began playing in the orchestras of the Paris Opera and the Societe des Concerts, and immediately developed an interest in conducting as well. By the end of World War II, he was serving as principal conductor in both orchestras and had also taken over his former flute teacher's professorship at the Conservatoire. Throughout his life he composed prolifically, not only for the flute, but also operas, ballets, and other large works. In 1905, he won second prize in the Prix de Rome. His compositional style is somewhat similar to his contemporaries Faure and Dukas.
The rarely-heard flute Sonatine is written in the typical two-movement, fantasy-like style of the French Conservatoire-commissioned pieces. Both movements are rhapsodic and sectionalized. The second movement begins with a theme and variations written in the style of Schumann, using an offbeat piano pedal employed in one of his piano works. The following sections return to thematic material from the first movement to close the work.
Ibert was a young composer in France when Les Six, an upstart group of young French composers associated with Jean Cocteau, escaped the constraints of tradition and expectation by basing their art on the everyday. Although not affiliated with the group, he was friends with several of its members, most notably Honegger, and his music shared with theirs a modernity and freshness of style. His most influential teacher at the Paris Conervatory was Gedalge, from whom he learned counterpoint and orchestration. He won the Prix de Rome on his first try in 1919 after spending much time away from composing during World War I. Although known today mostly for his orchestral works, particularly the well-loved flute and saxopohone concerti, Ibert was a prolific composer of stage works, including operas, ballets, and film scores. Ibert's very personal compositional style is similar to that of the Classical Era in every way except the harmony. His music often sounds jazzy because of his use of 9th, 11th, 13th, and altered and added-note chords. Despite a high level of chromaticism, a tonal center is always audibly retained.
Ibert's music is often highly contrapuntal. This is evident in the flute Concerto, which is often driven by a continuous 16th-note pulse passed between the flute and piano/orchestra. The soloist is also given an obbligato countermeolody in parts of both the first and second movements, turning the tables to draw our ears to some of the composer's most beautiful writing. The concerto also showcases Ibert's large pallette of moods, changing dramatically from the excitement of the first movement to the intimacy of the second and playfulness of the third.
American composer, educator, and pianist Vincent Persichetti studied from age five to twenty at Combs Conservatory in Philadelphia. It was there that he met his most influential composition teacher, Russell King Miller. He later taught at Combs while completing his education in composition, piano, and conducting at the Philadelphia Conservatory and the Curtis Institute. Persichetti joined the faculty of the Juilliard School in 1947. His music is often non-categorizable, written in a multitude of styles from complex atonality to simple diatonicism, and often combining seemingly disparate elements. He believed that a composer in his era should strive to integrate the wealth of material placed at a composer's disposal by the expansion of musical language during the twentieth century into a single fluent working vocabulary. This belief is evident in his teaching and writing as well as his compositions. Some of Persichetti's early influences included Bartok, Stravinsky, Hindemith, and Copland. However when his own voice arose in the 1950s, his music began to show a stark duality which the composer himself identified as his graceful side versus his gritty side. Persichetti's most significant contributions to the repertoire are his many solo piano works and his pieces for wind ensemble, a medium long ignored by important composers.
The Parable for solo flute, written in 1965, is the first in a series of compositions using the same name spanning a period of over twenty-five years. Persichetti defined the Parables as non-programmatic musical essays about a single germinal idea. The other twenty-five Parables include numerous solo instrumental works, a string quartet, a work for band, and an opera. The composer indicated that the first Parable may be played on either alto or regular C flute, probably because the alto flute is a somewhat unusual instrument. The more transparent quality of the alto seems to convey the eerie quality of the music more effectively. It also creates the graceful vs. gritty contrast between the rich suppleness of the low register and the urgency of the altissima range. The music is characterized, like much of Persichetti's, by sparse gestures with subtle relations, playful rhythms, and spinning out of simple musical ideas.
In the 30s, after Varese had returned to the U.S., Jolivet entered his magic period, in which his works focused heavily on ritual, incantation, and initiation practices. Seeking influence from Africa and East Asia, Jolivet began to include heavily syncopated, primitive rhythms which would reamain a disctinctive characteristic of his works. Olivier Messiaen, whose music held similar aesthetics, became a great champion of Jolivet's music, stating that it express the new aspiration to integrate spiritual concerns and a wider emotional range into modern music. The two, along with Daniel-Lesur and later Yves Baudier founded the avante-garde groups La Spirale and La Jeune France. The latter rejected the neo-classical movement, Satie and Les Six, and central European nationalist movements, all compositional trends they were sometimes lumped in with. After WWII, Jolivet served as musical director of the Comedie Francaise, allowing him to travel to East Asia, Polynesia, and Africa, and study other cultures' music. Drawing influences from other lands' musical traditions allowed him to continue the tradition of French Exoticism established by Bizet, Chabrier, Debussy, Ravel, and Messiaen. In an article written in 1946, Jolivet confirmed theories about his music by saying his goal was to discover music's original ancient meaning. The composer taught at the Paris Conservatoire from 1961 until his death in 1974.
Chant de Linos was written in 1944, after Jolivet had spent WWII experimenting with a more lyrical style. The title refers to an ancient Greek funeral lament that includes crying and dancing. The empassioned, furious crying can be heard at the beginning and at several interspersed sections within, as well as in the slow, lyrical passages. The frenetic dancing is depicted in the two 7/ 8 sections. La Flem's influence betrays itself in the independence of the flute and piano lines throughout. The ambiguity of rhythm in the slow sections in particular conveys a strong feeling of loss.