1. Under the tutelage of his father, Jean-Pierre Rampal began playing the flute at the age of 12.
49 Facts About Jean-Pierre Rampal
1. 2.
Jean-Pierre Rampal studied the Altes method at the Conservatoire, where he won first prize in the school's annual flute competition in 1937 at age 16.
3.
At the beginning of the Second World War, Jean-Pierre Rampal duly entered medical school in Marseille, studying there for three years.
4.
In 1959, Jean-Pierre Rampal gave his first concert in New York City, at the Town Hall.
5.
Jean-Pierre Rampal then formed a new and long-running musical partnership with American pianist John Steele Ritter.
6.
Between 1955 and 1962, Jean-Pierre Rampal took up the post of Principal Flute at the Paris Opera, traditionally the most prestigious orchestral position open to a French flautist.
7.
Jean-Pierre Rampal 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.
8.
Jean-Pierre Rampal 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.
9.
Jean-Pierre Rampal studied Quantz and his famous treatise On Playing The Flute, and later acquired an original copy of it.
10.
Whereas Le Roy, Laurent and Barrere had all recorded two or three of Bach's flute sonatas between 1929 and 1939, between 1947 and 1950 Jean-Pierre Rampal recorded all of them for Boite a Musique, and was beginning to regularly perform the complete Bach sonatas in recital, organising them across two evenings.
11.
Jean-Pierre Rampal 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.
12.
In trying to keep the flute before the musical public in the widest sense possible, Jean-Pierre Rampal played in as many groups and combinations as he could, a habit he continued for the rest of his life.
13.
Jean-Pierre Rampal was open to experimentation; once, through laborious over-dubbing, he played all five parts in an early recording of a flute quintet by Boismortier.
14.
Jean-Pierre 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.
15.
Jean-Pierre Rampal extended his researches into the Classical and Romantic eras in order to establish some continuity to the repertoire of his instrument.
16.
In 1948, as part of his debut recital in Paris, Jean-Pierre 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 despite originally having been written for flute.
17.
Later, when preparing a new sheet music edition published by the International Music Company of New York, Jean-Pierre Rampal consulted Russian violinist David Oistrakh to achieve the best result; the piece has since become established as a flute favourite.
18.
Jean-Pierre Rampal's transcribing in 1968, at the composer's own suggestion, of Aram Khachaturian's Violin Concerto showed Rampal's willingness to broaden the flute repertoire further by borrowing from other instruments.
19.
In 1978, the Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhaness wrote his Symphony No 36, which contained a melodic flute part tailored especially for Jean-Pierre Rampal, who gave the premiere performance of the work in concert with the National Symphony Orchestra.
20.
The composer consulted with Jean-Pierre Rampal regularly on shaping the flute part, and the result, in Jean-Pierre Rampal's own words, is "a pearl of the flute literature".
21.
The official world premiere of Poulenc's Sonata for Flute and Piano was performed on 17 June 1957 by Jean-Pierre Rampal, accompanied by the composer, at the Strasbourg Festival.
22.
Jean-Pierre Rampal was the owner of the only solid gold flute made, in 1869, by the great French craftsman Louis Lot.
23.
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.
24.
Jean-Pierre Rampal toured America annually and was a regular presence at the Mostly Mozart Festival at the Lincoln Center in New York.
25.
Jean-Pierre Rampal's range extended well beyond the orthodox: alongside the classical recordings, he recorded Catalan and Scottish folk songs, Indian music with sitarist Ravi Shankar, and, accompanied by the French harpist Lily Laskine, an album of Japanese folk melodies that was named album of the year in Japan.
26.
Jean-Pierre Rampal recorded Scott Joplin rags and Gershwin, and collaborated with French jazz pianist Claude Bolling.
27.
The Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano, written by Bolling especially for Jean-Pierre Rampal, topped the US Billboard charts and remained there for ten years.
28.
Meanwhile, Bolling and Jean-Pierre Rampal came together again for Bolling's Picnic Suite with guitarist Alexander Lagoya, the Suite No 2 for Flute and Jazz Piano, and to perform the instrumental theme song "Goodbye For Now" by Stephen Sondheim for Reds, Warren Beatty's 1981 movie about the Communist revolution in Russia.
29.
Jean-Pierre Rampal maintained a clear opinion about the right balance between "virtuosity" and aspiring to real musical expressiveness.
30.
Each year, they holidayed at their house on Corsica, where Jean-Pierre Rampal was able to indulge his passion for boating, fishing and photography.
31.
Jean-Pierre Rampal 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.
32.
In later years, Jean-Pierre Rampal took up the conductor's baton with more frequency but he continued to play well into his late 70s.
33.
Jean-Pierre Rampal's last recording was made with the Pasquier Trio and flautist Claudi Arimany in Paris in December 1999.
34.
Jean-Pierre Rampal had an ability to imbue sound with texture and clarity and emotional content.
35.
Jean-Pierre Rampal was a dazzling virtuoso, but more than anything he was a supreme poet.
36.
Jean-Pierre Rampal 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.
37.
Jean-Pierre Rampal is buried in the Cimetiere du Montparnasse, Paris.
38.
Jean-Pierre Rampal's honours include his Grand Prix du Disques from l'Academie Charles Cros which included awards for his recording of Vivaldi's Op.
39.
Jean-Pierre Rampal received the "Realite" Oscar du Premier Virtuose Francais, the Edison Prize; the Prix Mondial du Disque; the 1978 Leonie Sonning Prize, 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.
40.
Jean-Pierre Rampal was made a Commandeur de l'Ordre National du Merite and Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres.
41.
Strangely, with his enduring international fame assured, Jean-Pierre Rampal himself came to feel in later years that his own reputation within his native France had in some way diminished.
42.
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.
43.
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.
44.
Jean-Pierre Rampal recorded for a wide range of labels in Europe, America and Japan.
45.
The accompanying notes by Dennis Verroust of the French Flute Association, June 2002, reveal that in the 1949 Boismortier recording Jean-Pierre Rampal is not yet the star but plays the third flute part alongside Fernand Dufrene, Robert Rochut, Alphonse Kenvyn and Georges Lussagnet; it confirms what Jean-Pierre Rampal himself declared in his autobiography 'Music, My Love' that the D major flute quartet by Mozart, with the Trio Pasquier in April 1946, was in fact his first ever recording.
46.
The Association Jean-Pierre Rampal has re-issued a number of early recordings, 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.
47.
Across 56 CDs, this box-set features recordings that Jean-Pierre Rampal made through the second half of his career, between 1969 and 1996, a period that saw his recording interests transferred to the American company CBS after his earlier and lengthy partnership with the French label Erato.
48.
Subramaniam: Violin From the Heart, directed by Jean Henri Meunier, includes a scene of Rampal performing with L Subramaniam.
49.
Jean-Pierre Rampal makes an appearance in the 1977 educational film The Joy of Bach, playing his flute on a rooftop in France.