Duvernoy belonged to that founding generation which established the fame of the French horn players and passed it on through a school of its own. He joined the orchestra of the Comédie-Italienne as a horn player in 1788. In 1797 he moved to the Paris Opera, and from 1799 he worked there as solo horn player. In 1801 he was relieved of normal opera duties, along with other solo wind players, in order to concentrate more fully on solo tasks. From that time on he also played in the "Chapelle Musique", which was re-established by Napoleon Bonaparte, who is said to have been an admirer of Duvernoy. From 1795 he was also a teacher at the Paris Conservatoire de Musique, alongside as many as eight other horn teachers at times.
Various schools of horn playing developed there. There had always been a division into 1st and 2nd horn: the horn player Rudolphe, for instance, favoured a comprehensive use of the whole range, while Kenn and, in particular, later Dauprat favoured a clear division into cor alto and cor basso. Duvernoy took the middle path in the truest sense of the word. Although he too, for instance in his printed horn method, divided playing into high and low horn and recommended differently sized mouthpieces, in solo playing he advocated the "cor mixte". This meant renouncing particularly high and low notes: the middle range (about one and a half octaves) was rarely left, and more value was placed instead on cantabile playing.
In 1816 Duvernoy retired, but kept the position of solo horn player in the Chapelle Musique until 1830. He died in Paris on 19 July 1838. Duvernoy's works (12 concertos for horn and numerous chamber works) were not only printed in Paris but also appeared in Germany, for example with the publishers Simrock and Breitkopf.
Fantaisie No. 2 for Piano and Horn
This work was written as part of a series of at least eight fantasies, roughly after 1820. It was dedicated to the widow of the French general Jean-Victor-Marie Moreau (1763 – 1813). Louis XVIII later granted his widow the title of maréchale and, in 1819, had a monument to Moreau erected in Paris. The fantasy was published after 1820 by the Parisian publisher Richault.
