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Jean-Philippe Rameau

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Jean-Philippe Rameau, by Jacques André Joseph Aved, 1728

Jean-Philippe Rameau (September 25, 1683 - September 12, 1764) was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera, and was attacked by those who preferred Lully's style.

Life and work

Early years 1683-1732

Rameau's early years are obscure. His father Jean worked as an organist in several churches around Dijon. His mother, Claudine Demartinécourt, was the daughter of a notary. The couple had eleven children, of which Jean-Philippe was the seventh to be born. Rameau was taught music before he could read or write. He was not a good school pupil and disrupted classes with his singing. He claimed that his passion for opera had begun at the age of twelve.[1] Rameau decided he wanted to be a musician and his father sent him to Italy where he stayed for a short while in Milan. On his return he worked as a violinist in travelling companies and then as an organist in provincial cathedrals before moving to Paris.[2] Here in 1706 he published his earliest known compositions: the harpsichord works that make up his first book of Pièces de clavecin. In 1709, he moved back to Dijon to take over his father's job as organist in the main church, followed by similar posts in Lyon and Clermont. During this period he composed motets for church performance as well as secular cantatas. In 1722 he returned to Paris where he published his most important work of music theory, Traité de l'harmonie (Treatise on Harmony). This soon won him a great reputation and it was followed in 1726 by his Nouveau système de musique théorique.[3] He also published two more collections of harpsichord pieces in 1724 and 1729 or 1730.[4] Rameau took his first tentative steps into composing stage music when the writer Alexis Piron asked him to provide songs for his popular comic plays written for the Paris Fairs. Four collaborations followed, beginning with L'Endriague in 1723. None of the music has survived.[5] In 1726, Rameau married the 19-year old Marie-Louise Mangot. The couple would have four children. In spite of his fame as a music theorist, Rameau had trouble finding a post as an organist in Paris.[6]

Later years 1733-1764

It was not until he was approaching fifty that Rameau decided to embark on the operatic career on which his fame as a composer mainly rests. He had been inspired to try his hand at the prestigious genre of tragédie en musique after seeing Montéclair's Jephté in 1732. Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie, premiered at the Académie Royale de Musique on 1 October, 1733. It was immediately recognised as the most significant opera to appear in France since the death of Lully, but audiences were split over whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. Some, such as the composer André Campra were stunned by its originality and wealth of invention; others found its harmonic innovations discordant and saw the work as an attack on the French musical tradition. The two camps, the so-called "Lullistes" and "Rameauneurs", fought a pamphlet war over the issue for the rest of the decade.[7]

Around this time Rameau made the acquaintance of the powerful financier La Pouplinière who became his patron until 1753. La Pouplinière's mistress (and later wife) Thérèse des Hayes was Rameau's pupil and a great admirer of his music. La Pouplinière's salon enabled Rameau to meet some of the leading cultural figures of the day. [8]Rameau also began to collaborate with Voltaire. Their first project, the tragédie en musique Samson, was abandoned because an opera on a religious theme by Voltaire, a notorious critic of the Church, was likely to be banned by the authorities.[9] Meanwhile Rameau had introduced his new musical style into the lighter genre of the opéra-ballet with the highly successful Les Indes galantes. It was followed by two tragédies en musique, Castor et Pollux (1737) and Dardanus (1739), and another opéra-ballet, Les fêtes d'Hébé (also 1739). All these operas of the 1730s are among Rameau's most highly regarded works.[10]

1745 was an important year in Rameau's career. He received three commissions from the court for works to celebrate the French victory at the Battle of Fontenoy and the marriage of the Dauphin to a Spanish princess. Rameau produced his most important comic opera Platée as well as two collaborations with Voltaire: the opéra-ballet Le temple de la gloire and the comédie-ballet La Princesse de Navarre.[11] They gained Rameau official recognition: he was granted the title "Compositeur du Cabinet du Roi" and given a substantial pension.[12] 1745 also saw the beginning of the bitter enmity between Rameau and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Though best known today as a thinker, Rousseau had ambitions to be a composer. He had written an opera, Les muses galantes, inspired by Rameau's Indes galantes, but Rameau had been unimpressed by this musical tribute. At the end of 1745, Voltaire and Rameau, who were busy on other works, commissioned Rousseau to turn La Princesse de Navarre into a new opera with linking recitative called Les fêtes de Ramire. Rousseau then claimed the two had stolen the credit for the words and music he had contributed, though musicoligists have been able to identify almost nothing of the piece as Rousseau's work. Nevertheless, the embittered Rousseau nursed a grudge against Rameau for the rest of his life.[13]

Rousseau was a major participant in the second great quarrel which erupted over Rameau's work, the so-called Querelle des Bouffons of 1752-54, which pitted French tragédie en musique against Italian opera buffa. This time Rameau was accused of being out of date and his music too complicated in comparison with the simplicity and "naturalness" of a work like Pergolesi's La serva padrona.[14] In the mid-1750s Rameau criticised Rousseau's contributions to the musical articles in the Encyclopédie which led him into a quarrel with the leading philosophes d'Alembert and Diderot.[15] As a result, Rameau became a character in Diderot's - then unpublished - dialogue Le neveu de Rameau (Rameau's Nephew). Rameau had composed prolifically in the late 1740s and the early 1750s. After that his rate of productivity dropped off, probably due to old age and ill health, though he was still able to write another comic opera Les Paladins in 1760. This was due to be followed by a final tragédie en musique, Les Boréades, but for unknown reasons, the opera was never produced and had to wait until the late 20th century for a proper staging.[16] Rameau died on 12 September, 1764 after suffering from a fever. He was buried in the church of St. Eustache, Paris the following day.[17]

Jean-Philippe Rameau.

Reputation and influence

By the end of his life Rameau's music had come under attack in France from theorists who favoured Italian models. However, foreign composers working in the Italian tradition were increasingly looking towards Rameau as a way of reforming their own leading operatic genre, opera seria. Tommaso Traetta produced two operas setting translations of Rameau libretti which show the French composer's influence: Ippolito ed Aricia (1759) and I Tintaridi (based on Castor et Pollux, 1760).[18] Traetta had been advised by Count Francesco Algarotti, a leading proponent of reform according to French models. Algarotti was a major influence on the most important "reformist" composer, Christoph Willibald von Gluck. Gluck three Italian reform operas of the 1760s, Orfeo ed Euridice, Alceste and Paride ed Elena reveal a knowledge of Rameau's works. For instance, both Orfeo and the 1737 version of Castor et Pollux open with the funeral of one of the leading characters who later comes back to life.[19] Many of the operatic reforms advocated in the preface to Gluck's Alceste were already present in Rameau's works. Rameau had used accompanied recitative and the overture in his later operas reflected the action to come.[20] So when Gluck arrived in Paris in 1774 to produce a series of six French operas, he could be seen as continuing in the tradition of Rameau. Nevertheless, while Gluck's popularity survived the French Revolution, Rameau's did not. By the end of the 18th century his operas had vanished from the repertoire.[21]

For most of the 19th century Rameau's music remained unplayed, known only by reputation. Hector Berlioz investigated Castor et Pollux and particularly admired the aria "Tristes apprêts", but "whereas the modern listener readily perceives the common ground with Berlioz's music, he himself was more conscious of the gap which separated them".[22] French humiliation in the Franco-Prussian War brought about a change in Rameau's fortunes. As the Rameau biographer J.Malignon wrote: "...the German victory over France in 1870-71 was the grand occasion for the digging up of great heroes of the French past. Rameau, like so many others, was flung into the enemy's face to bolster our courage and our faith in the national destiny of France".[23] In 1894 composer Vincent d'Indy founded the Schola Cantorum to promote French national music. The society put on several revivals of works by Rameau. Among the audience was Claude Debussy, who especially cherished Castor et Pollux , which was revived in 1903: "Gluck's genius was deeply rooted in Rameau's works. (...) a detailed comparison allows us to affirm that Gluck could replace Rameau on the French stage only by assimilating the latter's beautiful works and making them his own." [1] Camille Saint-Saëns and Paul Dukas were two other important French musicians who gave practical championship to Rameau's music in their day. But interest in Rameau petered out again and it was not until the late 20th century that a serious effort was made to revive his works. Over half of Rameau's operas have now been recorded thanks to the efforts of conductors like John Eliot Gardiner, William Christie and Marc Minkowski.

1722 Treatise on Harmony

Rameau's 1722 Treatise on Harmony initiated a revolution in music theory.[24] Rameau posited the discovery of the "fundamental law" of all musical harmony and composition. Rameau's methodology incorporated mathematics, commentary, analysis and a didacticism that was specifically intended to illuminate the structure and principles of music composition scientifically. He attempted to derive universal harmonic principles from natural causes.[25] Previous treatises on harmony had been purely practical; Rameau added a philosophical dimension.[26] The composer quickly rose to prominence in France as the "Isaac Newton of Music."[27] His fame subsequently spread throughout all Europe, and his Treatise became the definitive authority on music theory; forming the foundation for instruction in western music which persists to this day.

List of works

Instrumental works

  • Pièces de clavecin. Trois livres. "Pieces for harpsichord", 3 books, published 1706, 1724, 1728.
  • Pièces de clavecin en concerts Five albums of character pieces for harpsichord and harmony. (1741)
  • La Dauphine for harpsichord. (1747)
  • Several orchestral dance suites extracted from his operas.

Cantatas

  • Les amants trahis
  • L’impatience
  • Aquilon et Orithie
  • Orphée
  • Thétis (1727)
  • Le berger fidèle(1728)
  • Cantata la menor(1728)

Motets

  • Deus noster refugium (before 1716)
  • In convertendo (c.1718)
  • Quam dilecta (1720)
  • Laboravi

Operas

Tragédies en musique

Opéra-ballets

Pastorales héroïques

Comédies lyriques

Comédie-ballet

Actes de ballet

Lost works

Writings

  • Traité de l’harmonie réduite à ses principes naturels (Paris 1722)
  • Démonstration du principe de l'harmonie (Paris 1750)

See also

Notes

  1. ^ New Grove p.207-208
  2. ^ Girdlestone p.3
  3. ^ Girdlestone p.7
  4. ^ New Grove
  5. ^ New Grove p. 215
  6. ^ New Grove p.217
  7. ^ New Grove p. 219
  8. ^ New Grove pp.221-223
  9. ^ New Grove pp.220
  10. ^ New Grove p.256
  11. ^ New Grove pp.228-230
  12. ^ Girdlestone p.483
  13. ^ New Grove p.232
  14. ^ Viking p.830
  15. ^ New Grove pp.236-8
  16. ^ Viking p.846
  17. ^ New Grove p.240
  18. ^ Viking pp.1110-11
  19. ^ Girdlestone pp.201-2
  20. ^ Girdlestone p.554
  21. ^ New Grove p.277
  22. ^ Hugh Macdonald The Master Musicians: Berlioz (1982) p.184
  23. ^ Quoted by Graham Sadler in "Vincent d'Indy and the Rameau Oeuvres complètes: a case of forgery?", Early Music, August 1993, p.418
  24. ^ Christensen, Thomas (2002). The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521623715. p. 54
  25. ^ New Grove p.278
  26. ^ Girdlestone p.520
  27. ^ Christensen, Thomas (2002). The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521623715. p. 759
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Sources

  • Cuthbert Girdlestone Jean-Philippe Rameau: His Life and Work (Dover paperback edition, 1969)
  • The New Grove French Baroque Masters ed. Graham Sadler (Grove/Macmillan, 1988)
  • The Viking Opera Guide ed. Amanda Holden (Viking, 1993)

External links

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