JEAN-PHILIPPE RAMEAU
A brief account of
his life and works … and personal comments
Dr David C F Wright
I was asked recently who was the greatest
opera composer of all time.
"Rameau", I replied.
My students were stunned and gasped
with indications of incredulity.
"But, sir, you like music of the present
time, not the ancient stuff!" some eventually
responded.
Rameau was the seventh of eleven children
and was born in Dijon in September 1683.
His father was the organist at Notre
Dame in Dijon, and, despite what is
asserted in some music dictionaries,
Rameau was initially taught by his father.
Jean-Philippe had a splendid education
and developed into an academic. He visited
Italy in 1701 when he was eighteen to
study Italian techniques in music. He
also associated himself with a group
of actors at this time and this led
him to be fascinated by the theatre.
Between 1702 and 1705 he was organist
at Clermont-Ferrand and from there he
moved to Paris for three years until
1708 and thereafter succeeding his father
at Dijon from 1709 onwards. In 1714
he took up a provincial organist post
at Lyons and in 1715 returned to Clermont-Ferrand.
In 1722, he had published a textbook,
‘Treatise on Harmony’, which was informative
and highly valued in its time. But,
as yet, Rameau the composer had not
established himself, although he had
composed a volume of harpsichord pieces
in 1706. It was his reappearance in
Paris in 1723 which resulted in the
production of some inconsequential theatre
pieces and his second volume of harpsichord
pieces.
His comic opera, ‘L'Endriage’, appeared
in 1723. ‘L'Enrolement d'Arlequin’,
another comic opera appeared in 1726
and ‘La Robe de dissention’ in 1726
as well, all with libretti by Alexis
Piron.
For the production of his first opera
he had to sign an agreement that he
would be responsible for any financial
loss it incurred. Strange, as for most
of his life, it was said that Rameau
was a miser.
In February 1726 he married Marie-Louise
Margot who was a singer.
He taught the harpsichord and wrote
other textbooks on theory between 1726
to 1752 as well as books on the art
of organ playing, the art of accompaniment,
harmony and so on.
In 1730 Rameau was taken up by the
wealthy financier, La Riche de la Pouplinière,
who became his patron. It is probably
this that encouraged him to compose
and, in 1733, at the age of fifty, his
first opera, ‘Hippolyte et Aricie’ created
a storm of protests.
In this opera and, indeed, in subsequent
operas, Rameau introduced unusual harmonies,
that is to say harmonies with bite,
and powerful orchestration as opposed
to what the French were used to with
their prissy, elegant, over-ornamented,
predictable styles and sounds. It was
expected that all composers followed
on in the style of Lully, but in Rameau's
music there was dynamism, adventure
and originality, essential ingredients
for any great composer.
His second opera, ‘Les Indes Galantes’,
dates from 1735. It is an opera-ballet
depicting various love stories.
‘Castor et Pollux’ followed in 1737
and was not well received. Rameau revised
it in 1754 following years of debate
and argument over his music. The French
now took sides to indicate their preference
for Lully or for Rameau. In this opera
there are lavish divertissements and
Rameau uses spectacular music and effects
as, for example, in the tremendous storm
sequence. But, as with matters of the
present day, modern harmonies and new
ideas were savaged by those ignorant
of music itself.
In many respects, but not all, a controversialist
is someone who argues, disputes and/or
denies what is true. Controversy is
often the attempt to discredit what
is true, what is fact. Therefore if
I say that the composer Gesualdo was
a murderer and people question or dispute
that, that they are creating the controversy.
They are the controversialists since
Gesualdo was a murderer. If I say that
Elgar's movements which he has marked
allegro do not equate with what an allegro
is, then I am not being controversial
because what I say is correct. It is
those who argue with what I say who
create the controversy and are the controversialists.
Rameau's music created
controversy. People were saying that
it was poor music, even rubbish, because
it was not in the French tradition.
These people were causing the controversy,
not Rameau and his admirers. Stravinsky's
‘The Rite of Spring’ caused controversy,
indeed a riot, at its premiere in 1913
and this controversy raged and it was
based on prejudice, a prejudice which
always accompanies new adventurous music.
The objectors were the controversialists
and trouble makers. Stravinsky's score
is truly magnificent and the point of
my labouring this is to indicate how
Rameau's music was received some 180
years earlier.
When the French could find no valid
or sustainable objection to Rameau's
music they invented accusations and
claimed that he was not patriotic but
treasonable in that his music was more
Italian than French, an absurd remark
conjured up from the knowledge that
Rameau had once studied in Italy.
His subsequent operas (some of which
are opera-ballets) were
Dardanus (1739), Les Fetes d'Hébé
(1739), Les Fêtes de Polymnie
(1745), La temple de la gloire (1745),
La Princesse de Navarre (1747), Les
Fêtes de l'Hymen at de l'Amour
(1747), Zais (1748), Pygmalion (1748),
Nais (1748), Zoroastre (1749), Platée
(1749), Acante et Céphise (1751),
La guirande (1751), Daphné et
Egle (1753), Lysis et Délia (1754),
La Naissance d'Osiris (1754), Zéphire
(1757), Nelée et Mithis (1757),
Le Retour d'Astrée (1757), Anacréon
(1757), Les Surprises de l'amour (1760),
Les Sybarites (1760), Les Paladins (1760)
and Albaris ou Les Boréades (1764).
Of special interest is the comedy-ballet,
‘La Princesse de Navarre’, produced
at Versailles on 23 February 1745 to
celebrate the Dauphin's marriage. It
was later reduced to a one-act piece
and entitled ‘Les Fêtes de Ramire’.
Apart from the three early comic operas,
this list is an impressive one with
27 major operas written in thirty four
years. There is also a tragic opera,
‘Samson’, of 1733, to a text by Voltaire,
which is often left out of lists of
Rameau's operas.
Of course there are other opera composers
of the past whose theatrical works are
ignored and I would cite as the next
two great opera composers of the time,
Antonio Salieri, with about forty operas
and Johann Adolphe Hasse who wrote about
a hundred operas.
Rameau also wrote some interesting
chamber music. There are the ‘Cinq Pièces
de clavecin en concert" for harpsichord,
viola da gamba and violin of 1741. The
same year saw the publication of the
‘Cinq Concerts’ for harpsichord, violin
and flute which are, in effect, chamber
concertos.
Michael Kennedy in his Oxford Dictionary
of Music states that there are three
volumes of suites for the harpsichord
and then he utterly confuses the issue
by not numbering the suites but instead
listing 56 movements. Rameau probably
did not organise these 56 movements
into specific suites, but, in these
‘four’ collections of harpsichord pieces
of 1706, 1724, 1728 and 1741, merely
referred to them as separate pieces.
The use of the word ‘suite’ is therefore
misleading and annoying, although in
Kennedy's defence one set is actually
called ‘Suite Nouvelle’.
On 23 August 1764 Rameau was struck
with typhoid and died on 12 September.
He was eighty-one years old.
His greatness lies in his originality,
his sparkling and unusual and vibrant
orchestration and his courage to be
himself and his not being a toady or
kow-towing to convention.
There will be also be those self-appointed
experts who will tell us the right and
wrong ways to play his music and debate
and argue over trivialities without
mercy but this will only serve to deter
people from this very fine and rather
special composer.
"Copyright Dr David C F Wright
2003. This article must not be copied,
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