This popular competition piece, requiring both flamboyant virtuosity and impeccable control, was originally written in 1898 for flute and piano for Paul Taffanel, professor of Flute at the Paris Conservatoire, and published the same year by Hamelle & Co., Paris. Almost certainly Taffanel made some emendations to the flute part (“modify as much as you like”, Fauré wrote), but since the autograph has since disappeared details of these are unknown. The orchestration was first performed in 1957 and published by Hamelle in 1958, but the score bristles with serious mistakes in both solo and orchestral parts. A further curiosity is that Clars are marked (ad lib.), but although their first important entry (2–13) is covered by a cue “a déf. Clar.” in Vl 1, subsequent phrases that are even more essential (45, 510) are not. Aubert added rehearsal figures, which of course remain absent in the solo part; these are not conveniently placed, but are simply ten bars apart (fig.1 is bar 11), only shifted from the Allegro (bar 40, fig.4), then ten bars apart from there on.

An Urtext edition of the original version for Fl + Pf, edited by Roy Howat, was published by Peters, London in 1999; all Solo Fl errata listed below are correct there.