Louis Fleury

Louis François Fleury (Lyon, 1878 – Paris, 1926) was one of the most distinguished French flautists of his generation and an active scholar of music for his instrument.

Trained at the Paris Conservatoire under Paul Taffanel, he won the first prize in 1900, which opened the doors to Parisian musical life at the beginning of the twentieth century.

In 1902 he joined the Société Moderne des Instruments à Vent and, in 1905, succeeded Georges Barrère as its director. Over the following twenty years he encouraged the commissioning of more than a hundred new chamber works. Although he had some experience as an orchestral player, unlike most flautists of the period he preferred to devote himself to solo and chamber repertoire, achieving success across much of Europe and in America. In 1913 he premiered Debussy's Syrinx, a work originally titled La flûte de Pan, which was dedicated to him.

His playing was noted for its elegance, and his wide cultural interests also made him a perceptive writer and scholar. He recovered and edited much of the flute music of the eighteenth century and frequently wrote about the instrument and musical life in specialist journals. He also completed the article on the flute that Taffanel had planned for the Encyclopédie de la musique et Dictionnaire du Conservatoire by Lavignac.