Rameau

NAME:  Rameau, Jean-Philippe

ACHIEVEMENT(S):  Famous in 1740’s France as musical theorist and composer of operas

NICKNAME/ALIAS:  None

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:  September 25, 1683, Dijon, France

DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH:  September 12, 1764, Paris, France; Aged 80

DISCIPLINE:  Composer

FIELD:  Music

LANGUAGE:  French

PARENTS: Jean Rameau; Claudine Demartinecourt

SIBLINGS: 10 brothers and sisters

SPOUSE:  Marie-Louise Mangot

CHILDREN:  Four

EDUCATION:  Jesuit College

MAJOR WORK:  "Traite de l'harmonie"

LIFE AND TIMES:

In 1701 Rameau’s father agreed that he should pursue  a musical career, and sent him to Italy, where he spent a few months in Milan.  In 1702, he returned to France and took a job as temporary organist at the Cathedral in Avignon.  Four months later he was appointed organist at the Cathedral in Clermont.  Four years later, he was organist to the Jesuits and Mercederians in Paris. 

In 1706 he published his first collection of harpsichord pieces in A minor, "Premier livre de pieces de clavecin",  a work that showed the influence of Louis Marchand, a famous contemporary organist-harpsichordist whom Rameau greatly admired.

In 1709, Rameau returned to Dijon as his father's successor as organist at Notre Dame, and in July 1713,  moved to Lyons to become organist for the Jacobins.  In 1715, he returned to Clermont, where he rashly signed a 29-year contract to be Cathedral organist  (he was to break it eight years later).   In Clermont, he composed motets and secular cantatas, and began to investigate the foundations of musical harmony, arriving at a system that is still the basis of most modern textbooks on harmony.  His "Treatise on Harmony" in 1722 was widely acclaimed. 

In 1723, after breaking his contract at Clermont,  Rameau moved to Paris and began to teach, compose and write.  In 1724, he published a second volume of works for the harpsichord, "Harpsichord Pieces, with a Method for Fingering".)   The visit to Paris of two Native Americans in 1725 inspired the composition of one of his most celebrated pieces, "Les Sauvages", later used in his opera ballet "Les Indes galantes" (1735).

In 1726 Rameau married 19-year-old singer Marie-Louise Mangot, a member of a Lyons family of musicians.  She was later to appear in several of his operas and her brother was to make Rameau's music known at the Ducal Court of Parma, Italy.  Also in 1726, Rameau published his third volume of harpsichord pieces, "Nouveau systeme de musique theorique".

Around this time,  Rameau was introduced to the tax-collector Le Riche de la Poupliniere, one of the wealthiest men in France and one of the greatest musical patrons of all time.  In 1730, La Poupliniere put Rameau in charge of his private orchestra,  a post he held for 22 years.  It was also Rameau's duty to teach La Poupliniere's talented wife, Marie-Therese Deshayes, who became an influential admirer. 

La Poupliniere was not only a generous patron but a celebrated host, and through him Rameau met various literary figures, including prolific playwright Simon-Joseph Pellegrin, whose works included 15 tragedies, "tragedies lyriques", and ballets.  Pellegrin agreed to write a libretto for Rameau's first opera. 

"Hippolyte et Aricie" was first performed in summer, 1733, at La Poupliniere's house, later that year at the Opera, and the following year at Court.  Andre Campra, perhaps the most celebrated French composer of the time, remarked to the Prince de Conti: "My Lord, there is enough music in this opera to make 10 of them; this man will eclipse us all."

Those who had grown up with the earlier operas of Jean-Baptiste Lully were shocked by the complexity of Rameau's orchestration, the intensity of his accompanied recitatives (speech-like sections), and the rich and dissonant diversity of his harmonies.  But from a technical point of view, Rameau accomplished nothing that had not already been done by Lully.  

French philosopher and critic <admired by> Voltaire*, who was at the first performance of "Hippolyte", quipped: "this is a man who has the misfortune to know more music than Lully."  Voltaire eventually became a fan of Rameau's, and wrote the libretto for Rameau's "Samson" (banned for religious reasons and now lost).    Still extant, however, are Voltaire and Rameau's 1745 court entertainments: "Le Temple de la Gloire" and  "La Princesse de Navarre," later condensed and revised as "Les Fetes de Ramire" by <work revised by> Rousseau*.

Rameau's career reached its height during the 1740s.  In 1744, he and his family moved into an apartment in La Poupliniere's Paris mansion where they remained until 1753, spending summers at the Rameau house in nearby Passy.  In 1745, he was appointed chamber-music composer to the king.  The height of Rameau's fortunes was between 1748 -- when he composed the masterpiece "Pygmalion" in eight days and had six other operas in production -- and 1754 -- when he wrote "The Birth of Osiris" for the birth of the future Louis <wrote for> XVI*.

For a time, Rousseau, d'Alembert*, and other French writers associated with <admired by> Diderot*'s "Encyclopedie" were all  Rameau enthusiasts.  D'Alembert had such a high opinion of Rameau's theoretical works that he set himself to presenting them in a more readable form, publishing "Elements de musique theorique et pratique selon les principes de M. Rameau" in 1752.

But as time went on Rameau's supporters began to prefer the music of the Italians, and by the mid-1750s had turned away from him.  Rameau appreciated the new Italian music, but when he tried to imitate the style, (such as in the overtures to "Les Fetes de Polymnie" in 1745 and to his final work, "Abaris ou les Boreades", in 1764), the result was plainly derivative.

Meanwhile, having already made an enemy of Rousseau by slighting his "Muses galantes", an offense Rousseau never forgave, Rameau also made an enemy of  <made enemy of> d'Alembert*  by attacking several musical articles in the "Encyclopedie" by d'Alembert and Rousseau.

Similarly, the idyllic relationship between La Poupliniere and Rameau gradually came to an end after La Poupliniere separated from his wife.  Rameau was replaced by the younger, avant-garde composer Karl Stamitz.  Rameau returned to his house in the rue des Bons Enfants, where he had lived from 1739 to 1744, and remained there until his death in 1764.  Four months before he died, he was ennobled by Louis XV.

ASSESSMENT:  Leading 18th-century composer who made important contributions to the cantata, the motet, and to keyboard music, although much of his best work was in dramatic music.

EXTRA CONNECTIONS:  Rameau sent his theoretical works to <sent work to> Sloane* in London,   and mathematician <sent work to> Euler* in Berlin. 

He was studied by <studied by> Gluck*.

ONELINER:  J-P Rameau, French composer

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

EB

Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians