François Devi­enne was active as a flutist and bas­soon­ist in Paris dur­ing the last quar­ter of the 18^th cen­tury. In addi­tion to per­form­ing as a mem­ber of the Opéra and the Société Olympique, Devi­enne made a num­ber of solo appear­ances at the Con­certs Spir­ituel, play­ing his own com­po­si­tions for flute and bas­soon. In 1790 Devi­enne was invited to join the National Guard Band, the prin­ci­pal post-Revolution mil­i­tary band. In addi­tion to per­form­ing at offi­cial func­tions, this band was charged with teach­ing music to the chil­dren of mil­i­tary per­son­nel. This sec­ondary duty quickly over­took the band’s other respon­si­bil­i­ties. The band evolved into the Free School of Music of the National Guard in 1792, the National insti­tute of Music in 1793, and finally the Paris Con­ser­va­toire in 1795. Devi­enne served as an admin­is­tra­tor in each of these insti­tu­tions in addi­tion to teach­ing flute.

The Sonata in B-flat was pub­lished in 1802 in a set of six bas­soon sonatas. The sonatas were ded­i­cated to François Joseph Del­cam­bre, an oboist in the Opéra and a col­league of Devi­enne at the newly formed Paris Con­ser­va­toire. In the orig­i­nal edi­tion only the solo part and an unfig­ured bass line were pro­vided. The cre­ation of a com­plete key­board accom­pa­ni­ment was left to the key­boardist. The same set of six sonatas was later pub­lished for flute, with only minor changes to the solo parts.

Heitor Villa-Lobos is prob­a­bly the best-known Brazil­ian com­poser of art music. He began his musi­cal train­ing as a cel­list, under the tute­lage of his father. In addi­tion to this early expo­sure to clas­si­cal music, Villa-Lobos was from a young age fas­ci­nated by the tra­di­tional music of Brazil. This love prompted him to learn to play the gui­tar on his own, and to embark on an early career as a street musi­cian. After the death of his father in 1899, Villa-Lobos received no more for­mal musi­cal train­ing. He was essen­tially self-taught as a com­poser, often draw­ing on tra­di­tional Brazil­ian forms and idioms. Villa-Lobos formed many impor­tant friend­ships with com­posers and per­form­ers, such as Dar­ius Mil­haud and Artur Ruben­stein, who influ­enced his music and helped pro­mote it through­out the world.

A ciranda is a type of round-dance, or children’s round-game. It is a tra­di­tion shared by Por­tu­gal and Brazil, with many regional vari­a­tions. Ciranda das sete notas was com­posed in 1933, shortly after Villa-Lobos had been appointed Super­in­ten­dent of Musi­cal and Artis­tic Edu­ca­tion for Rio De Janeiro. The seven-note ascend­ing motive for which the piece is named can be heard through­out — most notably in the open­ing of the piece, the bassoon’s first entrance, and in a more majes­tic set­ting at the very end of the work. Ciranda das sete notas is ded­i­cated to Arminda Neves d’Almeida, Villa-Lobos’s sec­ond wife.

Georg Philipp Tele­mann held a num­ber of musi­cal posi­tions through­out his life, work­ing var­i­ously as a com­poser of sacred music, a court musi­cian and com­poser, and a munic­i­pal music direc­tor. The vast major­ity of his com­po­si­tional out­put comes from the period 1721–1740, when he served as town can­tor for Ham­burg. In this post he super­vised musi­cal edu­ca­tion at the pri­mary school, as well as directed all musi­cal activ­i­ties at the five major churches in Ham­burg. The Sonata in F minor was writ­ten dur­ing Telemann’s years in Ham­burg, first appear­ing in 1728 in “Der getreue Music Meis­ter” a peri­od­i­cal that was pub­lished about every two weeks.

This par­tic­u­lar baroque bas­soon is a copy of a four-keyed bas­soon made ca. 1730 by Johann Hein­rich Eichen­topf. The orig­i­nal resides in the Ger­man­is­ches National­mu­seum in Nurem­berg. This copy, which was made in the work­shop of Philip Levin and Leslie Ross, has been mod­i­fied slightly from the orig­i­nal. To meet the mod­ern baroque pitch stan­dard of A=415 Hz, the instrument’s pitch cen­ter has been raised slightly from the orig­i­nal, which has a pitch cen­ter close to A=405 Hz. This instru­ment also pos­sesses two non-original chro­matic keys, one for low E-flat and one for F-sharp. While these keys are not present on the Eichen­topf bas­soon, they existed on other con­tem­po­rary instru­ments, and are there­fore his­tor­i­cally appropriate.

Ellen Taafe Zwilich began her stud­ies at Florida State Uni­ver­sity, later study­ing com­po­si­tion at Jul­liard with Roger Ses­sions and Elliot Carter. In 1983 she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music, which she was awarded for her Sym­phony No. I (Three Move­ments for Orches­tra). She was named to the first Composer’s Chair in Carnegie Hall in 1995, and named Com­poser of the Year in 1999 by Musi­cal Amer­ica. She cur­rently holds a Fran­cis Eppes Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor­ship at Florida State University.

The Con­certo for Bas­soon was com­mis­sioned by the Pitts­burgh Sym­phony Orches­tra, and ded­i­cated to its prin­ci­pal bas­soon­ist, Nancy Goeres, who also gave the pre­miere in 1993. After review­ing a draft of the first move­ment, Goeres expressed con­cern that the piece would not pos­sess the high degree of dif­fi­culty expected in a solo con­certo. Zwilich more than ade­quately addressed this con­cern in the sec­ond move­ment, which is based on all three octa­tonic scales, and has an ini­tial tempo mark­ing of quar­ter note equals 168 bpm. The con­certo — espe­cially the sec­ond move­ment — involves much inter­play between the soloist and the per­cus­sion sec­tion. When per­formed in recital, a sin­gle player with a multi-percussion set-up per­forms the orches­tral per­cus­sion parts.