Jean-Philippe Rameau

Known for the opera-ballet Les Indes galantes and others that established his posterity, Rameau was also a great composer for the harpsichord and a highly influential theorist of French Baroque music. Born into a family of eleven children in Dijon on September 25, 1683, Jean-Philippe Rameau learned the rudiments of music from his father Jean Rameau, organist at Saint-Étienne church and later at Notre-Dame de Dijon. As a student at the Jesuit Collège des Godrans, Rameau's singing disrupted lessons more than his attendance. Although his father wanted him to become a magistrate, he chose music, a path his younger brother Claude Rameau would follow. His growing interest in opera convinced his father to let him go to Italy when he was eighteen, to take part in the Grand Tour and further his musical education, but his trip was limited to Milan, as he would later regret. Although few biographical details are known of the first part of his life before his arrival in Paris, Rameau enjoyed a long career as an itinerant musician, with a variety of engagements. On his return to France, he joined a troupe of travelling musicians as a violinist, and toured the Languedoc and Provence regions. In Montpellier, he is said to have learned figured bass and accompaniment from a certain Lacroix. In 1702, he took over as interim organist at Avignon Cathedral, where Jean Gilles was expected, before signing a six-year contract as organist at Clermont-Ferrand Cathedral, which was interrupted when he moved to Paris in 1706 to work at the Jesuit church on rue Saint-Jacques and at the convent of the Pères de la Merci. He frequented Louis Marchand, whose influence is still felt in the Premier Livre de pièces de clavecin he published that same year, as well as that of François Couperin. After applying to the church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine-en-la-Cité, he was chosen to succeed François d'Agincourt, but declined the post, which was then given to Louis-Antoine Dornel. In 1709, Rameau returned to Dijon to succeed his father at the parish church of Notre-Dame, but failed to complete his initial contract, moving to Lyon four years later to work at the Jacobins, before returning to Clermont-Ferrand for eight years, composing motets and cantatas. Although professional instability marked this part of his life, Rameau nevertheless brought together the ideas he developed in his Traité de l'harmonie réduite à ses principes naturels, a fundamental work published in 1722, which established the scientific value of music and no longer just its artistic value. He returned to Paris for good, publishing his Deuxième Livre de pièces de clavecin (1724), including the famous Tambourin, followed four years later by a third and final volume, Nouvelles Suites de pièces de clavecin, including La Poule and Les Sauvages, inspired by a visit to Paris by American Indians who had come to put on a show. During this period, he collaborated with the poet Alexis Piron on fairground comedies such as L'Endriague (1723) and L'Enlèvement d'Arlequin (1726). On February 25, 1726, Rameau married Marie-Louise Mangot, a musician and singer who gave him four children. He published the Nouveau système de musique théorique, which he later reworked under the title Génération harmonique (1737), and composed the cantata Le Berger fidèle (1728). Abandoning the idea of obtaining a new position as organist in Paris, he began looking for a librettist, writing in vain to the renowned Antoine Houdar de La Motte, who considered him more of a theorist than a musician. It was finally thanks to Alexandre Le Riche de La Popelinière, who became his patron, that at the age of fifty Rameau established his reputation as a composer and teacher. Equipped with an orchestra to host the festivities of Louis XV's fermier général, he collaborated with Abbé Simon-Joseph Pellegrin on the lyric tragedy Hippolyte et Aricie, which premiered successfully at the Académie royale de musique on October 1, 1733. Hailed for its musical richness, the work was nevertheless criticized by those nostalgic for Lully's style, creating a quarrel that has passed into posterity ("les Lullystes contre les Ramistes"), even though Rameau made no secret of his admiration for his predecessor. With two other librettists, Castor et Pollux (October 24, 1737) and Dardanus (November 19, 1739) followed in the same style, alternating with the comédies-ballets Les Indes galantes (August 23, 1735) and Les Fêtes d'Hébé (May 21, 1739), while a collaboration with Voltaire for Samson came to nothing. The pinnacle of the genre, with a libretto by Louis Fuzelier, Les Indes galantes, with its fashionable exoticism and "Danse du calumet de la paix"(Les Sauvages), remains his most performed work. For some unknown reason, six years of silence followed these five masterpieces, with Rameau, no doubt occupied by his duties in the service of La Popelinière, producing only Pièces de clavecin en concerts (1741), his only collection of chamber music. Around 1745, he made the acquaintance of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but their friendship did not take root, Rameau accusing him of plagiarism for the opera Les Muses galantes. The same year, he renewed his friendship with Voltaire for the comedy-ballet La Princesse de Navarre, performed at Versailles on February 23, as well as the ballet bouffon Platée on March 31, for the marriage of the dauphin Louis to the infanta Marie-Thérèse. His output expanded with Les Fêtes de Polymnie (1745), Les Fêtes de l'Hymen et de l'Amour (1747), Zaïs, Pygmalion et Les Surprises de l'Amour (1748), Naïs et Zoroastre (1749), then Acanthe et Céphise (1751). He also composed a famous isolated piece for harpsichord, La Dauphine (1747). In 1750, Rameau presented his treatise Démonstration du principe de l'harmonie to the Académie des Sciences, with the support of the encyclopedist d'Alembert. At the age of seventy, the musician was still reigning over French music when the "Querelle des Bouffons" arose during the performance of Pergolesi's La serva padrona, pitting proponents of French lyric tragedy against supporters of Italian opera buffa, backed by Rousseau, Grimm and Diderot. Letters flew back and forth between the two camps until 1754. Nevertheless, Rameau continued in the same lyrical vein with Daphnis et Églé and Les Sybarites (1753), followed by the ballet acts La Naissance d'Osiris and Anacréon (1754). In 1753, the composer was disowned by La Popelinière, who, under the influence of his mistress, replaced him with Johann Stamitz. In the last years of his life, he revised some of his works and composed his last lyric works, Les Paladins (1760) and Les Boréades (1764), which was not performed due to his death. Stricken with "putrid fever", Rameau died on September 12, 1764 at the age of 80. Forgotten for a century, his works were gradually rediscovered with the complete editions begun by Bordes, d'Indy and Saint-Saëns, then by the Baroque music revival of the 1950s, and have remained in the repertoire ever since.

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