In the early 1730s, he began publishing volumes of pieces for the musette, the Recueils de vaudevilles, menuets, contredanses et autres airs choisis pour la musette. (IMSLP link) There are eight volumes in all, with six suites in each, every suite being given four printed pages. The number of individual pieces varies from volume to volume, and I have not attempted a census, but the grand total is probably ~375.
About the motivation for this large undertaking, it appears to be both pedagogical and commercial.
Bruce Haynes' comments in his history of the oboe apply equally to the musette:
It was in this period that publishers discovered a lucrative amateur market. As a consequence, woodwind music generally became less technically demanding than in the previous period, and it was aimed at middle-of-the-road tastes. Some of this "tabloid" music was thus purposely mediocre, and not representative of the best the period had to offer. (414)
A particularly enthusiastic audience for the musette was aristocratic amateurs following the popularity of the pastoral manner (a cultural phenomenon that was also partly responsible for the prominent place of the gavotte in French contredanses).
Note that Chédeville offered the volumes not just to musette players (see below). Note also that the melodies are supplied with a continuo bass (the basses are figured). In some of the subsequent volumes, the music is written in form of treble duets without bass.
Among the estimated ~375 pieces in the eight volumes are 107 named menuets, the largest group of named pieces in the Recueils. As in other repertoires discussed recently in this blog, there are undoubtedly more menuets (perhaps as many as 40) but I have excluded them because they were given other titles. I should also note that the number of named gavottes is much smaller--perhaps no more than three dozen--but that, since gavottes were heavily favored as contredanses and contredanses were almost always given special titles--my guess (that is, without making an actual census) is that gavottes rival the menuets in total numbers.
For the named menuets, here is the data for formal functions in the first strain:
period N = 64
antecedent + continuation N = 28
sentence N = 5
16-bar period N = 3
16-bar sentence N = 2
presentation-theme (6 bars) N = 2
antecedent theme (6 bars) N = 1
presentation theme (4 bars) N = 1
12-bar period N = 1
The obvious points to make are the strong representation of the antecedent + continuation theme and the very low number of sentences.
Reference: Bruce Haynes, The Eloquent Oboe: A History of the Hautboy 1640-1760. Oxford University Press, 2001.
