Nicolas Chédeville

He began playing the oboe and musette (a bagpipe-like instrument commonly used in French baroque music) in the Paris Opera orchestra in the 1720s.

When he was nearly 70, he married the younger daughter of a valet who had once worked for the Duc d'Orléans, and was still describing himself as musette player to the king.

Jean-Benjamin de la Borde called him "the most celebrated musette player France had ever had", though he mistakenly held the opinion that he was dead by 1780, two years before he met his end.

Chédeville's compositions were intended for the amusement and pleasure of wealthy amateur musicians; the French aristocracy of the time found pleasure in playing rustic instruments while living a romantic fantasy of peasant life (before the French Revolution presented a rather different perspective).

In 1737 he made a secret agreement with his cousin Jean-Noël Marchand to publish a collection of his own compositions as Antonio Vivaldi's op.

Vivaldi scholars had doubted the authenticity of Il pastor fido since at least the 1950s, but the forgery was only conclusively proven by French musicologist Philippe Lescat in 1989.

[2] Chédeville's interest in Italian music led to his receiving, in August 1739, a privilege to publish arrangements for the musette, hurdy-gurdy or flute of concertos and sonatas by ten specific Italian composers, in addition to Johann Joachim Quantz and Antoine Mahaut.