Joseph-Henri Altès
Joseph-Henri Altès (18 January 1826 – 24 July 1895) was a 19th-century French flautist, composer and pedagogue.
Joseph-Henri Altès | |
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![]() Photograph of Joseph-Henri Altès by Pierre Petit in 1860. | |
Born | 18 January 1826 |
Died | 24 July 1895 69) Paris | (aged
Occupation | Flautist Composer Pedagogue |
Biography
Born in Rouen, Joseph-Henri Altès was the son of a soldier. Violinist and conductor Ernest Eugène Altès was his younger brother. He began studying the flute at the age of ten and enrolled in the Conservatoire de Paris in December 1840.
![](../I/m/Degas_l'orchestre.jpg)
Joseph-Henri Altès plays the flute, left of bassoonist Désiré Dihau.
Like his teacher, Jean-Louis Tulou, he played a flute with four valves and only later changed to a Theobald Boehm model. As early as 1841, in the competition of the Conservatory, he received a second prize and the following year a First Prize. From 1848 to 1872, he was first flautist at the Orchestre de l'Opéra national de Paris and in 1868 he was the successor of Louis Dorus as a flute teacher at the Conservatoire, where he remained until 1893. Among his pupils were Georges Barrère and Adolphe Hennebains.
Altès is the author of a method of flute, Célèbre méthode complète de flûte[1] (1880) and left about 40 compositions, including six solos for the entrance competition at the Paris Conservatory and transcriptions or fantasies on opera themes.
Altès was a friend of the painter Edgar Degas, who depicted him in 1870 on the painting entitled L'Orchestre de l'Opéra housed at the Musée d'Orsay.[2]
He died in Paris. He was buried on the cimetière de Montmartre (33rd division) with his wife, the opera singer Émilie-Francisque Ribault.
References
- Célèbre Méthode complète de Flûte
- Edgar Degas, L'Orchestre de l'Opéra, musée d'Orsay (Read online)
Bibliography
- (in German) U. Pešek et Ž. Pešek, Flötenmusik aus drei Jahrhunderten (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1990)
- (in German) A. Goldberg, Porträts und Biographien hervorragender Flöten-Virtuosen -Dilettanten und -Komponisten (Celle: Moeck, 1987 (reprint of 1906 original)
- (in German) Julia Soriano Rodríguez (ed.), Lexikon der Flöte (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2009), ISBN 978-3-89007-545-7