Jean-François Sudre, also written Sudré (15 August 1787 – 3 October 1862), was a violinist, composer and music teacher who invented a
musical language called ''la Langue musicale universelle'' or
Solrésol.
Sudre was born in
Albi
Albi (; ) is a commune in France, commune in southern France. It is the prefecture of the Tarn (department), Tarn Departments of France, department, on the river Tarn (river), Tarn, 85 km northeast of Toulouse. Its inhabitants are called ...
in southern France on 15 August 1787. He studied music as a child and, at the age of eighteen, was admitted to the ''
Conservatoire de Paris
The Conservatoire de Paris (), or the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (; CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue Jean Ja ...
'' on 12 May 1806, where he studied violin under
François Habeneck and harmony under
Charles Simon Catel.
Sudre created a group of musicians who were attempting to develop a way of transmitting language through music. He devised Solrésol in 1827. He trained
Édouard Deldevez and Charles Larsonneur to play and interpret his alphabet. A given note would represent a word or a letter of the alphabet. The trio toured France, answering questions from the audience using Sudre's violin. A military application was soon suggested: a bugler on a battlefield could transmit orders to a regiment by playing an appropriate tune. This promising hypothesis came to nothing because the system was too vulnerable to wind and weather. Sudre then offered the military a set of musical
cannon
A cannon is a large-caliber gun classified as a type of artillery, which usually launches a projectile using explosive chemical propellant. Gunpowder ("black powder") was the primary propellant before the invention of smokeless powder during th ...
s, but they declined the suggestion.
[Peter Bloom, ''Music in Paris in the eighteen-thirties'' (1987).]
References
*
Fétis, F. J. (1867).
Biographie Universelle des Musiciens et Bibliographie Générale de la Musique' (Duxième ed.). Tome Huitième. Paris: Firmin-Didot. pp. 465–466.
*Whitwell, David (1995). ''La Téléphonie and the Universal Musical Language''. Northridge, CA: WINDS.
French musicians
Constructed language creators
People from Albi
1787 births
1862 deaths
French male writers
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