The Paris Con­ser­va­toire’s annu­al con­cours (con­test) has added a great num­ber of solo works to the bas­soon’s reper­toire. From 1797 until 2011, these con­cours award­ed prizes to the top-ranked stu­dents in each dis­ci­pline. Attain­ing a pre­miere prix (first prize) prac­ti­cal­ly guar­an­teed the musi­cian a good job, and at var­i­ous times also earned the play­er a new instru­ment, musi­cal scores, and/or money.

For the first cen­tu­ry of the Con­ser­va­toire’s exis­tence, the pieces for the com­pe­ti­tion were most­ly writ­ten by the bas­soon pro­fes­sors (Wil­lent-Bor­dog­ni, Cokken, Jan­court, etc.). The “gold­en age” of con­cours pieces was 1898–1984, dur­ing which the Con­ser­va­toire most­ly com­mis­sioned new works from estab­lished com­posers. After 1985, new works were only occa­sion­al­ly ordered, and Alexan­dre Ouzounof­f’s NAIROBI, la nuit of 1999 seems to have been the last new­ly-com­mis­sioned work for bas­soon. The main table below is a list of the known bas­soon morceaux de con­cours for the years 1824–2010 (infor­ma­tion for the years 1825–1834, 1837–1839, 1871, and 2011 isn’t avail­able).

After 2011, the Con­ser­va­toire’s exam­i­na­tion process changed, and it stopped award­ing prizes as such. Per Sophie Levy, the Con­ser­va­toire’s Archives Man­ag­er, the clos­est thing to the old con­cours is the end-of-first-year exam in the 2^e Cycle Supérieur, which is akin to a mas­ter’s pro­gram. The pieces used for this exam for 2012–2018 are list­ed in a sep­a­rate table at the bot­tom of the page.

The bulk of the infor­ma­tion for the years 1824–1984 is tak­en from Kris­tine Fletcher’s book, The Paris Con­ser­va­toire and the Con­test Solos for Bas­soon, to which I added just a few minor details.¹ Fletcher’s book is one of the great bas­soon ref­er­ence works, but it has long been out of print and copies are hard to come by today. The sim­ple list below pro­vides only a small frac­tion of the wealth of infor­ma­tion in Fletcher’s book—seek out a copy of it in a uni­ver­si­ty library if you want more details about the Con­ser­va­toire, the con­cours, or any of the indi­vid­ual works or com­posers. If you have access to Pro­Quest Dis­ser­ta­tions and The­ses, her dis­ser­ta­tion pro­vides much—but not all—of the same infor­ma­tion. Infor­ma­tion for the years 1986–2004 comes from Jef­frey Lyman’s arti­cle “The Morceaux de Con­cours for Bas­soon Since 1984: A Parisian Tra­di­tion Con­tin­ues.“² If you’re an IDRS mem­ber (which I’d high­ly rec­om­mend), you should be able to access the arti­cle here. Ryan Romine was kind enough to fill in 1985 for me, from his own cor­re­spon­dence with bas­soon­ist Frédéric Bouteille.³

For the years 2005–2018, I am indebt­ed to Con­ser­va­toire archivist Sophie Levy, who pro­vid­ed me with a list of works and a brief expla­na­tion of the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of the award­ing of prizes after 2011.⁴

Some notes on this list:

• I’ve pro­vid­ed links for pieces which are down­load­able from IMSLP. I’ve uploaded a few pieces myself, and will con­tin­ue to hunt for copies of oth­ers that are in the pub­lic domain. I’ll try to keep on top of adding new links as more pieces are added — please let me know if you add one of the miss­ing pieces to IMSLP.
• The table is sortable by any col­umn (pro­vid­ed you have Javascript enabled). Click a col­umn head­er to sort by that field.
• Works com­mis­sioned specif­i­cal­ly for that year’s con­cours are marked with a blue dag­ger (†).
• Works are for bas­soon and piano, unless oth­er­wise specified.
• From 1970 until 2005 a sec­ond piece, usu­al­ly a stan­dard of the reper­toire, was required each year. I’ve split each of those years into two rows (e.g. 1970a and 1970b) so that the list will remain entire­ly sortable.

 

†: This piece was com­mis­sioned specif­i­cal­ly for that year’s con­cours.

 

Pieces used for the 2^e Cycle Supérieur for the years 2012–2018

(see the note above about how the process changed after 2011)

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1. Kris­tine Klopfen­stein Fletch­er, The Paris Con­ser­va­toire and the Con­test Solos for Bas­soon (Bloom­ing­ton, IN: Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1988). ↩

2. Jef­frey Lyman, “The Morceaux de Con­cours for Bas­soon Since 1984: A Parisian Tra­di­tion Con­tin­ues,” The Dou­ble Reed 28, no. 2 (2005): 101–105. ↩

3. Frédéric Bouteille, e‑mail mes­sage to Ryan Romine, May 5, 2012. ↩

4. Sophie Levy, e‑mail mes­sage to author, March 22, 2019. ↩