Jean-Joseph Rodolphe was an Alsatian horn player

Horn (instrument)

The horn is a brass instrument consisting of about of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. A musician who plays the horn is called a horn player ....

, violin

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

ist and composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

.

A pupil of Jean-Marie Leclair

Jean-Marie Leclair

Jean-Marie Leclair l'aîné, also known as Jean-Marie Leclair the Elder, was a Baroque violinist and composer. He is considered to have founded the French violin school...

 in Paris, he travelled to Parma

Parma

Parma is a city in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna famous for its ham, its cheese, its architecture and the fine countryside around it. This is the home of the University of Parma, one of the oldest universities in the world....

 in 1754, to Stuttgart in 1761, where he played in the ducal court orchestra and studied with Niccolò Jommelli

Niccolò Jommelli

Niccolò Jommelli was an Italian composer. He was born in Aversa and died in Naples. Along with other composers mainly in the Holy Roman Empire and France, he made important changes to opera and reduced the importance of star singers.-Early life:Jommelli was born to Francesco Antonio Jommelli and...

  There he provided the music for Jean-Georges Noverre

Jean-Georges Noverre

Jean-Georges Noverre was a French dancer and balletmaster, and is generally considered the creator of ballet d'action, a precursor of the narrative ballets of the 19th century...

's ballet of Jason et Médée

Jason et Médée

Jason et Médée is a ballet d'action choreographed by Jean-Georges Noverre to music by Jean-Joseph Rodolphe. The ballet was first staged in the Stuttgart Opera House on Friday, 11 February 1763, in celebration of the Duke of Württemberg's birthday. The plot follows the myth of Jason and the Golden...

(premiere, 11 February 1763). By 1767 he was once again in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, where he composed music for the stage, both ballet

Ballet

Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...

s and opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

s, and horn music and taught. From 1798 he was a professor at the Paris Conservatory. He popularized the horn as a solo instrument and was probably the first in Paris to use the technique of hand-stopping

Hand-stopping

Hand-stopping is a technique by which a natural horn can be made to produce notes outside of its normal harmonic series. By inserting the hand, cupped, into the bell, the player can reduce the pitch of a note by a semitone or more...

, by which a natural horn can be made to produce notes outside of its normal harmonic series. None of his music survives in the modern concert repertory.

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