Fragments de la vie d’un flûtiste, Pierre Gabriel Buffardin (Provence, ca. 1690 – Paris, 13 January 1768)

Abstract

The life of Pierre Gabriel Buffardin (1690-1768) took him from France to Constantinople and further to Dresden, where he seems to constitute one of the starting points of the transverse flute in Germany. His meeting with Johann Jakob Bach the elder brother of J.S. Bach fortuitously happened in Constantinople, and changed Buffardin’s life, and probably the story of the transverse flute. By the way, the travels of this musician, and of some other artists he would meet during his life, show how Europe was crossed by cultural long-distance routes, from Paris to Istanbul, Stockholm, Neaples, or Saint-Peterburg. In the middle of the 18th century, after the times of different schools, or manières, such as French, Italian, or north-german, a new European style is about to be born: classicism.