This guitar Maestro was a Frenchman formely believed to have been born in 1806, but now known, since the discovery of relevant birth registers, to have entered the world on June 27th 1805. His mother was his first teacher, she was an accomplished guitarist. Jean-François Coste, the mayor of the village of Amondans, was Napoléon's father. A military man it seems he gave the name of his esteemed Emperor, Napoléon Bonaparte to his son.

Napoléon Coste's career began when he was a teenager, with him teaching and performing in many concerts. He moved to the capital, Paris where he studied under Fernando Sor at the age of 24 and quickly established himself as the leading French virtuoso guitarist. Sor and Coste played at least one concert together, and the former dedicated his last composition, the duet for two guitars Op. 63 Souvenir de Russie to Coste. The publication Revue et Gazette Musicale de Paris compared Coste very favourably with Sor in his performance and composition in 1838

.He was friendly with fellow guitar illuminaries Dionisio Aguado, Matteo Carcassi and Fernando Carulli, all of whom resided in the French capital at the time.

In this era patronage by an aristocratic peer was usually necessary for commercial survival, as a artist. Coste had difficulties in finding such patrons, partially as a consequence of the general decline in popularity of the guitar in this period. Napoléon Coste's performing brilliance provided financial stability but he failed to find a publisher for his compositions, and found it necessary to fund the publications himself.