Jacques francois gallay biography

Jacques-François Gallay (8 December 1795 – 18 October 1864) was a French horn player, academic and composer of music for the instrument.
Jacques François Gallay was the last great natural horn specialist in France, renowned for his quality of tone in both open and stopped notes.
Gallay was a noted French horn player who made his debut at the age of fourteen.

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Jacques François Gallay was the last great natural horn specialist in France, renowned for his quality of tone in both open and stopped notes, his certainty of attack and clarity in rapid passages.

He was born in Perpignan, France, the son of Marie Bertin and amateur horn player François Gallay. At age 10, he began to study solfège, the traditional French system for improving aural skills and sight-reading, and two years later he started horn lessons with his father, though he was largely self-taught. When Gallay was just 14, and the horn player at the Perpignan’s theatre went sick, he was already sufficiently skilled to be able to stand in for him. Musicians visiting the city recommended that he should move to Paris to study at the Conservatoire, but his father was reluctant to let him leave home.

Galley composed and performed a horn concerto around 1818 and finally, in June 1820, at the age of 24, he went to Paris to meet Louis-François Dauprat, the Conservatoire’s horn professor. Though Dauprat was keen that Gallay should study with him, special dispensation had to be o

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Jacques-François Gallay: Concerts Cachés, Préludes, Caprices, Fantasies.

An essential skill for instrumentalists was the ability to improvise, to extemporise on popular themes of the day and to prelude before and between works. The art of preluding was widely discussed in treatises of the day. This practice had several roles. Primarily it signalled to the audience that the performance was beginning, either by a commanding, acrobatic prelude that demanded their attention, or by something more surreptitious, that slowly attracted the audience’s ear and seamlessly segued into the main work. It also gave the performer the opportunity to gauge the acoustic of the room, the responsiveness and tuning of his or her instrument, and, importantly, the chance to impress the assembled company with his or her powers of improvisation.

Many performers resented the pressure put on them by audiences to improvise, often on suggested themes. Mendelssohn found it deeply unpleasant and after a performance in Munich was:

annoyed, for I was far from being satisfied with myself, and I am resolved ne
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Jacques-François Gallay
French horn player, academic and composer
Jacques-François Gallay (8 December 1795 – 18 October 1864)^[1] was a French horn player, academic and composer of music for the instrument. His Méthode for the natural horn was published in 1845.
Life
Gallay was born in Perpignan, in the south of France, in 1795; his father was an amateur horn player. His ability was noted during his youth, but he was reluctant to travel to Paris to study.^[2] Eventually in 1820 he entered the Paris Conservatoire, and studied with the horn player Louis Francois Dauprat.^[2]^[3]
He played at the Théâtre-Italien in Paris from 1825, and was a member of the Chapelle royale at about this time. From 1832 he was a member of the band of King Louis Philippe I.^[2] He succeeded Dauprat as professor of the horn at the Conservatoire, remaining in the post until his death in 1864.^[2]^[3]
Works
Gallay wrote Méthode pour le Cor (1845) for the natural horn. He wrote many études and other works for h