Skin Flutes & Velvet Gloves

Joseph Bodin de Boismortier was perhaps the very first free-lance composer in history. Being born in Thionville in Lorraine as the son of a confectioner, he went to Perpignan in 1713 and established himself there as a collector for the Royal Tobacco Excise Office, a position he held the next ten years. He must have received some musical training, though, since in 1721 a drinking song by a 'M. Boismortier de Metz' was published. His musical activities increased and he went to Paris, where he received his first permission to publish music in 1724. He published duos for transverse flute and cantatas, which was the start of a career as France's most prolific composer in the 18th century, whose oeuvre consists of more than 100 opus numbers with instrumental music, and in addition to that cantatas, motets and some stage works. He also was active as a theorist, writing treatises on the transverse flute and the 'pardessus de viole'.