Lucien Thévet was born in Beauvais, France, in 1914. His father, a good amateur musician who played the trumpet, started him on the cornet but soon steered him to the horn, for which he showed a real aptitude. In 1933, at the age of 18, Thévet was admitted to the Paris Conservatory, where he studied successively with Fernand Reine and Édouard Vuillermoz. After performing his military service from 1934-1936, he received his Premier Prix from the Paris Conservatory in 1937 and that same year was hired as principal horn with the Paris Radio Orchestra. In 1938 he was named principal horn of the Paris Conservatory Orchestra (l'Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire), a position he held until 1967, when the PCO was disbanded upon the creation of the Orchestre de Paris. In 1941, Thévet was named assistant principal horn of the Paris Opera Orchestra, moving up to principal shortly thereafter. While continuing as principal with the Paris Conservatory Orchestra, he played with the Paris Opera for 33 years, retiring in 1974.

During his entire career he played a Selmer compensating horn in F-Bb with an ascending third valve. He was professor of horn at the Versailles Conservatory from 1948 until 1981, and is the author of a three-volume Méthode complète de cor (published by Alphonse Leduc), as well as the author or editor of a number of other pedagogical works (collections of horn solos, studies, transposition exercises, etc.). Three composers dedicated horn concertos to him: Henri Tomasi (1955), Pierre Max Dubois (1957), and Émile Passani (1969). In November 1945, he gave the French premiere of Britten's Serenade, when Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears visited Paris, and afterward Britten inscribed Thévet's copy of the score: "Pour M. Thévet, with many thanks for his most admirable and poetic playing---merci infiniment!" In March 1951, he gave the French premiere of Richard Strauss' 2nd Horn Concerto as part of a concert of new music in Paris conducted by André Cluytens, with a second performance in Toulouse in June. His very musical playing and trademark shimmering vibrato can be heard on the many recordings made by both the Paris Conservatory Orchestra and the Paris Opera Orchestra during his long tenure with each.

Biography by Steve Salemson