Marcel Moyse was born Marcel Joseph on May 17th, 1889, in an orphanage in southern France. His mother, Christine Josephine, died just seventeen days after his birth. Josephine’s parents, Felicite and Alfred Moyse, were mistakenly led to believe that Marcel had died with his mother, and he remained in the care of the orphanage until he was seven years old.

Growing up in a catholic orphanage, Marcel was fascinated by the chiming of the church steeple bells. His first taste of music was when he was allowed to accompany the steeple master to the top of the tower to witness first hand the chiming of the bells. After that, he avidly announced that he wanted to become the town bell ringer.

Shortly after Marcel’s seventh birthday, through a series of unfortunate and bizarre events, his grandparents discovered he was alive and promptly came to claim him. During the time of Marcel’s upbringing, France was in a flurry of nationalism; fervently promoting it’s artistic and creative mediums, as a result of its defeat in the Franco-Prussian war. Alfred Moyse was a passionate nationalist, and he attended numerous operas and other musical events, more often than not with Marcel in tow. By the time of His tenth birthday, Marcel had been to see possibly forty operas, and new many of arias by heart. During this time, Marcel also met and was befriended by two of his uncles, Eugene and Joseph, who were both highly talented musicians. Joseph, a highly acclaimed cellist, so moved Marcel with his playing that it set the groundwork for a life long love of music that inspired one of the most important flautists of the last two hundred years.
In 1904, Joseph Moyse invited Marcel to come to Paris to live with him, where the musical and artistic possibilities far exceeded those of southern France. Joseph was a cellist with the Paris Opera, and in 1904 introduced Marcel to the Principle Flautist in the opera, Adolphe Hennebains.

Hennebains was an outside (that is adjunct) faculty member at the Paris Conservatoire, which at that time was the pre-eminent music school in the world. Through Hennebains’ instruction, Marcel auditioned for and was accepted into study with Paul Taffanel at the Conservatoire. Marcel studied only one year at the Conservatoire, which happened to be the first year that Faure, an extremely influential flute player and the school-hired composer began his career at the conservatoire. Faure’s compositions had a profound impact on Marcel’s playing and musical ideas.

As a modern flautist, Moyse’s treatises and technical books form the base of the flute cannon. Almost all American flute players are subjected to the Moyse studies. The current flute cannon is vastly composed of French style repertoire and studies. Moyse’s studies can be directly linked in the “royal lineage” of the French flute cannon composers. He studied with Hennebain, Paul Taffanal, and Philip Goubert; all three considered the Fathers of modern flute technique.

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