Joseph Rampal

Joseph Rampal (1898–1983) was a distinguished flutist in his own right, albeit better known as the father of the internationally renowned soloist Jean-Pierre Rampal.

Born in Provence, France, the son of a Marseille jeweller, Joseph showed musical talent as a youngster and in 1913 was sent to Paris, with silver flute in hand, to further his studies. His elder brother Jean-Baptiste was already in the capital, studying painting with Auguste Renoir at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Joseph was to become another star graduate of the legendary French Flute School. Along with Marcel Moyse, Rene le Roy, Georges Laurent, Gaston Blanquart, Georges Delangle, he studied at the Paris Conservatoire under the celebrated flutist Adolphe Hennebains (1862–1914), who was himself a pupil of Paul Taffanel.

At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Joseph and his brother joined the army. Within just a few weeks, Jean-Baptiste was killed on the Marne. Joseph himself was wounded twice in 1916 but survived and in 1918 returned to Paris to continue his flute studies at the Conservatoire. In 1919, playing Busser’s ‘Thème Varie’, Joseph was awarded the Conservatoire’s First Prize. A young Marcel Moyse was on the jury.

Having lost an elder brother at the outset of the war, Joseph decided in 1919 that it was important for him to return to be with his family in Marseille rather than pursue a career in Paris. It was an understandable choice, but one which probably imposed limitations on the range of his success as a musician on the national stage. Jean-Pierre reports that Moyse considered Joseph “one of the best musicians of his era and that, had he stayed in Paris, he would have made a distinguished career.”

Back in Marseille from 1919, Joseph joined the Marseille Radio Orchestra and began teaching flute at the Marseille Conservatoire. Eventually he rose to become flute professor at that institution, and also became Principal Flute with the Marseille Symphony Orchestra (Orchestre des Concerts Classiques de Marseille). Each summer, from 1928, he also played first flute in the Orchestre de Theatre du Grand Casino at the Vichy summer music festival.

As a teacher, he presided over the emergence of his only son, Jean-Pierre, as a musical talent who would eventually go on to achieve true international celebrity as a flute soloist. At first, however, he was reluctant to encourage Jean-Pierre to pursue a career in music, despite the youngster’s evident enthusiasm and early ability. Joseph’s wife Andrée considered that her husband’s “patchwork quilt of positions and appointments” with orchestras and on radio and in theatres held too much uncertainty as a career path for their only child. Instead, they recommended a career in medicine for him. Nevertheless, Joseph privately encouraged his son’s learning of the flute at their apartment home at 20 rue Brochier, Marseille.

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