François-Joseph Gossec (1734-1829) was a French composer and conductor. His long and distinguished career saw him working in and influencing the Parisian music scene for many decades, from the twilight of the Baroque to the full flower of Romanticism. Early study at home (Vergnies, a former French exclave in the Austrian Netherlands that is now part of Belgium) and in Antwerp led him to Paris in 1751, where he encountered theorist and opera composer Jean-Phillippe Rameau and early symphonist Johann Stamitz in short order. Gossec began writing his own symphonies and operas in Paris, and achieved breakout fame with his Grand Messe des morts in 1760. One of these symphonies was among the first French works to feature clarinets. He also directed and later founded several ensembles. In one of these roles, he was the first person to conduct a Haydn symphony in France in 1773. He was especially fond of wind instruments, and was able to exercise this preference in several pieces for massed bands written during the French Revolution, which he strongly supported despite decades of aristocratic patronage in his early career. There is much more to his story, which can be seen at Wikipedia, Britannica, Artaria, Naxos, and the Berliner Festspiele.
Gossec’s Military Symphony in F dates from 1793, when the French Revolution was in full swing. It was written for the Garde Republicaine band, likely intended for outdoor performance. It uses a three-movement symphonic form that would have been common several decades earlier, as opposed to the four-movement form that the recently-deceased Mozart most often employed. It opens with a regal allegro, followed by a slow 6/8 middle movement and a bombastic finale. However, it has been suggested that Gossec intended a fourth movement to be performed with an added choir, which would make him the progenitor of the choral symphony decades before Beethoven. Regardless, the most accessible published edition of the Military Symphony in F remains the 1950 Mercury Music publication edited by Richard Franko Goldman and Robert L. Leist, which includes only three movements. Kenneth Amis’s original instrumentation edition does the same. There is also a small ensemble arrangement (in B-flat) by Matteo Firmi. The original 1794 edition does still exist at IMSLP. Here is a modern performance of the Goldman/Leist edition:
And the Amis edition, with different tempo choices!
See more at the Wind Repertory Project and the Wind Band Symphony Archive.