François Devienne (1759 - 1803) was a leading French flutist and a founding professor at the Paris Conservatory, which was established by the Revolutionary government in 1795 to standardize musical and compositional training in the new Republic (and also to take it out of the hands of the church). He was part of a line of French flutists and composers who, over a period of a century, had adopted a German innovation, the transverse flute (also known as the German flute), and made it a quintessentially French musical instrument. Devienne followed the path of predecessors such as Michel de la Barre and Michel Blavet in establishing a French school of flute playing and composition.

Devienne wrote literally hundreds of works for the instrument and a famous instructional manual for it. The Seventh is rated as the best of his dozen or more flute concertos.

Devienne composed it in or around 1787. The entire monarchial system of Europe was about to crumble with the simultaneous humiliating defeat of the Holy Roman (Austrian) Empire in war and the overthrow of the French King Louis XVI. The passions of the time seem, in this concerto as in contemporary works of Mozart, to coil around the surface sweetness of the music, particularly when it is in the minor key.

It was the fashion at the time to begin concertos with an exposition of the main material by the orchestra without soloist. Devienne gets around this, and gives his soloist a chance to get a bit warmed up, by sneaking him in, doubling the first violins as they play the second theme of the opening allegro. This theme is gentle, in E major, in contrast with a rather resolute and vigorous opening theme in E minor. Rather than repeat the exposition with the flute taking the melody, Devienne inventively adds a third major theme to the movement and with this lyrical and bird-like theme lets the flute take center stage. Using these three themes, Devienne is able to keep the music unhackneyed and unpredictable. The flute part grows consistently more virtuosic as the movement progresses. The second movement, Adagio, opens in a reserved mood, but an astonishingly long, lyrical melody (requiring immensely well developed breath control) introduces a Romantic mood. Unusually, a cadenza appears as the second half of the movement. The finale is marked Rondo allegretto; Poco moderato. The piece begins in the sedate mood these markings imply. But the tempo is deceptive. It is slow so that the flute can burst into sixteenth notes, triplet sixteenths, and then thirty-second notes, so that the flute is in reality playing presto material of utmost fieriness that seems to anticipate the growth of the coming Romantic virtuoso vogue.

© Joseph Stevenson, All Music Guide