Born in Caracas of a Catholic Venezuelan mother and a Jewish German father, Reynaldo Hahn was the youngest child in a family of nine children who settled in Paris in 1878. At the age of eleven, Reynaldo Hahn entered the Paris Music Conservatory where he became the student of Albert Lavignac and Jules Massenet for composition.

Although today Reynaldo Hahn is mostly remembered for only a few of his more than one hundred vocal compositions, in his day he was recognized for his contribution to opera, operetta, concertos, quartets, ballet, and piano pieces. He had an enormous influence as the director of the Paris Opéra, conductor at the Salzburg Festival, and music critic for Le Figaro. His contribution to wind chamber music comes in the ballet suite Le Bal de Béatrice d’Este, which has become an increasingly popular work ever since its premiere in 1905. Le Bal was commissioned by the prominent French flutist, Georges Barrére and premiered with Hahn conducting from the piano.*

*paragraph taken from the musical score edited by Jared G. Chase