Jules Mouquet was among the group of French composers that actively wrote for flute in the later years of the 19th century and into the 20th century, establishing a repertoire for the relatively newly adopted silver flute. The metal flute began to replace the traditional wood instrument and was particularly favored by the French. The compositional style of “The French School” was conservative yet drew on newly emerging harmonic explorations of the twentieth century. A winner of the Prix de Rome, the Prix de Trémont and the Prix Chartier, it is unfortunate that Mouquet is not better known. La Flûte de Pan is a highly descriptive programmatic sonata which musically illustrates the activities of the god of Greek mythology, Pan, as expressed in short poetic entries provided at the beginning of each movement. Pan, who is credited with gathering reeds together, blowing and creating the flute, is often used as a character in descriptive music for the flute. The sonata was written for flute and piano as well as flute and orchestra. The most common performance of the piece is the version for flute and piano, but the orchestrated edition is worth pursuing as through orchestration the character of Pan as well as his surroundings is further enhanced. The movements are ordered along the lines of a classical sonata: Allegro, Adagio, Allegro molto vivo …
