Devienne’s sonatas for solo instrument and bass date from between 1788 and 1803, the year of the composer’s death in a lunatic asylum at Charenton. They would certainly have contributed to the didactic material used at the new Paris Conservatoire, established in 1795, whose first professors taught the six-keyed clarinet (then the most widely available instrument) to the large number of military musicians in Napoleon Bonaparte’s regimental bands.