Jean Joseph Boutmy

Jean Baptiste Joseph Boutmy was an organist, harpsichordist, pianist and composer born in Brussels on 29 April 1725, in the Austrian Netherlands. He was the son of Josse Boutmy, and his career falls at the transition between the late Baroque and the galant style. His output is a useful testimony to this change of taste in northern and central Europe.

By around 1746 he was already teaching harpsichord in Metz. He returned to the Austrian Netherlands in 1755 and settled in Ghent, where in 1757 he obtained the post of organist at St Bavo's Cathedral. He travelled to Paris in 1759, though he returned to Ghent shortly afterwards. In 1764 he moved to The Hague as organist to the Portuguese ambassador and, six years later, went to Kleve, where he worked as court pianist and directed his own orchestra. The date of his death is not known with certainty, only that it took place in Kleve after 1799.

Among his compositions, the most notable are six divertimentos for harpsichord with optional violin accompaniment, probably written for his pupils, and six harpsichord concertos. The divertimentos, in three movements, follow the model of the Italian sonata and display the galant idiom; the violin plays a subordinate role. The concertos, more elaborate, are better suited to the piano, a new instrument at the time, and present a simple sonata form and symmetrical themes, although their finales are somewhat lacking in inventiveness.

Boutmy also published the Traité abrégé de la basse continue, issued in The Hague around 1769 or 1770 in a bilingual French–Dutch edition, in which he combines the French tradition of late Baroque basso continuo with the freer Italian style. His legacy is above all pedagogical and transitional in character, rather than that of a composer of the first rank.