(b Versailles, 10 April 1733; d Versailles, 24 Aug 1785). French violinist, flautist, musette player and composer, son of Gabriel Besson. He was given the reversion of his father's appointments as a member of the 24 Violons du Roi, musette player and flautist of the Chamber in 1746, and in 1758 he was in charge of those posts, which were abolished in 1761. He and his father also played the violin in the royal chapel and in court concerts. He taught the violin and harp to Louis XV's daughters Mmes Adélaïde, Sophie and Louise-Marie, and in 1764 he was appointed huissier de la chambre to Mme Victoire. He received substantial pensions in his retirement. Leopold Mozart mentioned him in the journal of his visit to Versailles (1763–4), and his name appears in a letter that Leopold wrote from Salzburg to his son while the latter was in Paris (1778). Besson dedicated two collections of airs from opéras comiques and plays to Mme Victoire, one entitled Airs choisis, arrangés et variés pour le décacorde op.1 (Versailles and Paris, c1784), the décacorde being a ten-string lute-guitar hybrid he had invented, and the other Chansons et ariettes dont les accompagnements [sont] variés pour le décacorde op.2 (Versailles and Paris, c1785).
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L. Vallas: Un siècle de musique et de théâtre à Lyon, 1688–1789 (Lyons, 1932)
W.A. Bauer and O.E. Deutsch, eds.: Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichungen, i (Kassel, 1962), 120; ii (Kassel, 1962), 271
M. Benoit: Versailles et les musiciens du roi, 1661–1733: étude institutionnelle et sociale (Paris, 1971)
D. Tunley: The Eighteenth-century French Cantata (London, 1974)
M. Benoit, ed.: Dictionnaire de la musique en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1992)
ELIZABETH KEITEL/BERNARD BARDET