Jean-Philippe Rameau, by Jacques André Joseph Aved, 1728
Jean-Philippe Rameau (French IPA: [ʒɑ̃fi'lip ʀa'mo]) (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 he is also considered the leading French author of music for the harpsichord of his time alongside François Couperin.
Little is known about Rameau's early years, and it was not until the 1720s that he won fame as a major theorist of music with
his Treatise on Harmony (1722). He was almost fifty before he embarked on the operatic career on which his reputation
chiefly rests. His debut Hippolyte et Aricie (1733) caused a great stir and
was fiercely attacked for its revolutionary use of harmony by the supporters of Lully's style of music. Nevertheless, Rameau's
pre-eminence in the field of French opera was soon acknowledged and he was later attacked as an "establishment" composer by those
who favoured Italian opera during the controversy known as the Querelle des
Bouffons in the 1750s. Rameau's music had gone out of fashion by the end of the 18th century and it was not until the 20th
that serious efforts were made to revive it. Today he enjoys renewed appreciation with performances and recordings of his music
ever more frequent.
Life
The details of Rameau’s life are generally obscure, especially concerning his first forty years before he moved to Paris for
good. He was a secretive man and even his wife knew nothing of his early life,[1] which explains the scarcity of biographical information available.
Early years 1683-1732
The Cathedral of Saint-Bénigne, Dijon
Rameau's early years are particularly obscure. He was born on September 25, 1683 and baptised the same day.[2] His father Jean worked as an organist in several churches around
Dijon and his mother, Claudine Demartinécourt, was the daughter of a notary. The couple had eleven
children (five girls and six boys) of which Jean-Philippe was the seventh to be born. Rameau was taught music before he could
read or write. He was educated at the Jesuit college at Godrans but he was not a good
school pupil and disrupted classes with his singing, later claiming that his passion for opera had begun at the age of
twelve.[3] Initially intended for the law, 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 for the first time.[4] Here in 1706 he published his earliest known compositions: the
harpsichord works that make up his first book of Pièces de clavecin, which show the influence of his friend Louis Marchand.[5] In 1709, he
moved back to Dijon to take over his father's job as organist in the main church. The contract was for six years, but Rameau left
before then and took up 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 for good and here 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.[6] He also published two more
collections of harpsichord pieces in 1724 and 1729 or 1730.[7] 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.[8] On February 25 1726, Rameau married the 19-year old Marie-Louise Mangot, who came
from a musical family from Lyon, and was a good singer and instrumentalist. The couple would have four children, two boys and two
girls, and the marriage is said to have been a happy one.[9] In spite of his fame as a music theorist, Rameau had trouble finding a post as an organist in
Paris.[10]
Later years 1733-1764
Bust of Rameau by Caffieri, 1760
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 already approached the writer Houdar de la Motte for a libretto in 1727, but nothing had come of it. He was
finally 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.[11]
Just before this time, Rameau had made the acquaintance of the powerful financier Alexandre Le Riche de 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. In 1731 Rameau became the conductor of La Pouplinière's private orchestra, which was of an extremely high quality.
He held the post for 22 years (he was succeeded by Johann Stamitz and then
Gossec).[12] La Pouplinière's salon enabled Rameau to meet some of the leading cultural figures of the day,
including Voltaire who soon began collaborating with the composer. [13] 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.[14] 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.[15] However, the composer followed
them with six years of silence, in which the only work he produced was a new version of Dardanus (1744). The reason for
this interval in the composer's creative life is unknown, although it is possible he fell out with the authorities at the
Académie royale de la musique.[16]
1745 was a watershed in Rameau's career. He received several 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.[17] They gained Rameau
official recognition: he was granted the title "Compositeur du Cabinet du Roi" and given a substantial pension.[18] 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.[19]
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.[20] 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.[21] As a result, Rameau became a character in Diderot's - then
unpublished - dialogue Le neveu de Rameau (Rameau's Nephew).
In 1753, La Pouplinière took a scheming musician, Jeanne-Thérèse Goermans, as his mistress. The daughter of the
harpsichord-maker Jacques Goermans, she went by the name of Madame de Saint-Aubin and her
opportunistic husband pushed her into the arms of the rich financier. She had La Pouplinière engage the services of the
Bohemian composer Stamitz, which led to a breach between Rameau and his patron. However, Rameau
no longer needed La Pouplinière's financial support and protection.
Rameau pursued his activities as a theorist and composer until his death. He lived with his wife and two of his children in
his large suite of rooms in Rue des Bons-Enfants which he would leave every day, lost in thought, to take a solitary walk in the
nearby gardens of the Palais-Royal or the Tuileries. Sometimes he would meet the young writer Chabanon, who noted down some of
Rameau's disillusioned confidential remarks: "Day by day I'm acquiring more good taste, but I no longer have any genius"
and "The imagination is worn out in my old head, it's not wise at this age wanting to practise arts that are nothing but
imagination".[22]
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.[23] Rameau died on 12
September, 1764 after suffering from a fever. He was buried in the church of St. Eustache, Paris the following day.[24]
Rameau's personality
While the details of his biography are vague and fragmentary, Rameau’s personal and family life is almost completely obscure.
Rameau’s music, so graceful and attractive, completely contradicts the man’s public image and what we know of his character, as
described -or perhaps unfairly caricatured- by Diderot in Le neveu de Rameau. Throughout his life music was his consuming
passion; it occupied his entire thinking; Philippe Beaussant calls him a monomaniac. Piron explained that: “His heart and soul
were in his harpsichord; once he had shut its lid there was no one home.”[25] Physically, Rameau was tall and exceptionally thin,[26] as can be seen by the sketches we have of him, including a famous portrait by Carmontelle. He had a
“loud voice”. His speech was difficult to understand, just like his handwriting, which was never fluent. As a man he was
secretive, solitary, irritable, proud of his own achievements (more as a theorist than as a composer), brusque with those who
contradicted him and quick to anger. It is difficult to imagine him among the leading wits, including Voltaire - to whom he bears
more than a passing physical resemblance - who frequented La Pouplinière’s salon: his music was his best passport and it made up
for his lack of the social graces.
His enemies - meaning those who did not share his ideas about music or acoustical theory - exaggerated his faults, for example
his supposed miserliness. In fact, it seems that his thriftiness was the result of long years spent in obscurity, when his income
was uncertain and scanty, rather than part of his character because he could also be generous. We know that he helped his nephew
Jean-François when he came to Paris and also helped establish the career of Claude-Bénigne Balbastre in the capital. Furthermore, he gave his daughter Marie-Louise a
considerable dowry when she became a Visitandine nun in 1750 and he paid a pension to one of his sisters when she became ill.
Financial security came late to him, following the success of his stage works and the grant of a royal pension (a few months
before his death he was also ennobled and made a knight of the Ordre de Saint-Michel). But he did not change his way of life,
keeping his worn-out clothes, his single pair of shoes and his old furniture: after his death it was discovered that he only
possessed one dilapidated single-keyboard harpsichord[27]
in his rooms in Rue des Bons-Enfants, yet he also had a bag containing 1691 gold louis.[28]
Music
General character of Rameau's music
Rameau’s music is characterised by the exceptional technical knowledge of a composer who wanted above all to be renowned as a
theorist of the art. Nevertheless it is not solely addressed to the intelligence and Rameau himself claimed “I try to conceal art
with art”. The paradox of this music was that it was new, using techniques never known before, but it took place within the
framework of old-fashioned forms; Rameau appeared revolutionary to the Lullystes, disturbed by the complex harmony of his music,
and reactionary to the “philosophes” who only paid attention to its content and who either would not or could not listen to the
sound it made. The incomprehension he received from his contemporaries stopped Rameau repeating such daring experiments as the
second Trio des Parques in Hippolyte et Aricie, which he was forced to remove after a handful of performances because the
singers were unable to interpret it correctly. So the greatest harmonist of his era went unrecognised at the very time that
harmony - the “vertical” aspect of music - was taking precedence over counterpoint, which
represented its “horizontal” aspect.
Rameau's musical works
Rameau’s musical works may be divided into four distinct groups,[29] which differ greatly in importance: a few cantatas, a few
motets for large chorus, some pieces for solo harpsichord or harpsichord accompanied by other
instruments, and, finally, his works for the stage to which he dedicated the last thirty years of his career almost exclusively.
Like most of his contemporaries, Rameau often reused melodies which had been particularly successful, but never without
meticulously adapting them: they are not simple transcriptions. Besides, no borrowings have been found from other composers,
although his earliest works show the influence of other music. Rameau’s reworkings of his own material are numerous: for instance
in Les Fêtes d'Hébé, we find L'Entretien des Muses, the Musette and the Tambourin taken from the 1724 book of
harpsichord pieces, as well as an aria from the cantata Le Berger Fidèle.[30]
Motets
For forty years Rameau was a professional organist in the service of religious institutions, and yet the body of sacred music
he composed is exceptionally small, and his organ works are non-existent. Judging by the evidence, it was not his favourite
field, simply a way of making reasonable money. Rameau’s few religious compositions are nevertheless remarkable and compare
favourably to the works of specialists in the area. Only four motets have been attributed to
Rameau with any certainty: Deus noster refugium, In convertendo, Quam dilecta and Laboravi.
Cantatas
The cantata was a highly successful genre in the early 18th century: the French cantata -
which should not be confused with the Italian or the German cantata - was “invented” in 1706 by the poet Jean-Baptiste Rousseau and soon taken up by many famous composers of the day such as
Montéclair, Campra and Clérambault. Cantatas were Rameau’s first contact with dramatic music. The modest forces the cantata
required meant it was a genre within the reach of a composer who was still unknown. Musicologists can only guess at the dates of
Rameau’s six surviving cantatas and the names of the librettists are unknown.
Instrumental music
Along with François Couperin, Rameau is one of the two masters of the French school of harpsichord music in the 18th century.
Both composers made a decisive break with the style of the first generation of harpsichordists, who confined their compositions
to the relatively fixed mould of the classical suite. This reached its apogee in the first decade of the 18th century with
successive collections of pieces by Louis Marchand, Gaspard Le Roux, Louis-Nicolas Clérambault, Jean-François
Dandrieu, Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Charles Dieupart and Nicolas Siret.
But Rameau and Couperin have a very different style anyway and Rameau cannot be considered the follower of the older composer.
They seem not to have known one another (Couperin was one of the official court musicians while Rameau was still an unknown; fame
would only come to him after Couperin’s death). Besides, Rameau published his first book of harpsichord pieces in 1706 while
Couperin - who was fifteen years his senior - waited until 1713 before publishing his first “ordres”. Rameau’s pieces seem less
intended to exploit the particular qualities of the harpsichord than Couperin’s; they place less importance on ornamentation and
are more satisfying when played on the piano. When the respective size of their contributions to the harpsichord repertoire is
taken into consideration, Rameau’s music perhaps shows more variety. It includes pieces in the pure tradition of the French
suite, imitative (“Le rappel des oiseaux“, “La poule“) and character (“Les tendres plaintes“, “L'entretien des Muses“) pieces,
and works of pure virtuosity which resemble Scarlatti ((“Les tourbillons,” “Les trois
mains“), as well as pieces which reveal the experiments of a theorist and musical innovator (“L'Enharmonique“, “Les Cyclopes“)
which had a marked influence on Daquin, Royer and Jacques Duphly. The suites are grouped
in the traditional way, by key.
Rameau’s three collections appeared in 1706, 1724 and 1726 or 1727 respectively. After this he only composed a single piece
for the harpsichord: “La Dauphine” (1747). Other works, such as “Les petits marteaux” have been doubtfully attributed to him.
During his semi-retirement in the years 1740 to 1744, he wrote the Pièces
de clavecin en concert (1741). Adopting a formula successfully employed by Mondonville a few years earlier, these pieces differ from trio sonatas in that the
harpsichord is not simply there as basso continuo to accompany other instruments (the
violin, flute or viol) playing the melody, but takes an equal part in the “concert” with them. Rameau also claimed that the
pieces would be equally satisfying as solo harpsichord works, although this statement is far from convincing since the composer
took the trouble to transcribe five of them himself, those where the lack of other instruments would show the least.
Opera
From 1733, Rameau dedicated himself almost exclusively to opera. What came before was nothing but a long preparation for his
stage music. Armed with theoretical and aesthetic principles from which nothing could deflect him, he composed little else but a
form of opera which in many ways prefigures the drama of Richard Wagner. On a strictly
musical level, 18th century French Baroque opera is richer and more varied than contemporary Italian opera, especially in the
place given to choruses and dances, but also in the musical continuity which arises from the respective relationships between the
arias and the recitative. Another essential difference: whereas
Italian opera gave a starring role to female sopranos and castratos, French opera had no use for the latter. The Italian opera of
Rameau’s day (opera seria) was essentially divided into musical sections (da capo arias, duets, trios etc.) and sections which were spoken, or almost spoken (recitativo secco). It
was during the latter that the action progressed, while the audience waited for the next aria; on the other hand, the text of the
arias was almost entirely buried beneath music whose chief aim was to show off the virtuosity of the singer. Nothing of the kind
is to be found in French opera of the day: since Lully, the text had to remain comprehensible, which limited certain techniques
such as the vocalise, which was reserved for special words such as “gloire” (“glory”) or
“victoire” (“victory”). In this sense French opera from Lully to Rameau is closer to the ideal of Monteverdi, that the music should serve the text - a paradox when we compare Rameau’s musical
expertise and the poor literary quality of the libretti he set. A subtle equilibrium operated between the more and the less
musical parts, melodic recitative on the one hand and arias which were often closer to arioso on
the other, alongside virtuoso “ariettes” in the Italian style. This form of continuous music prefigures Wagnerian drama even more
than it does the “reform“ opera of Gluck.
Five essential components may be discerned in Rameau’s operatic scores:
- pieces of “pure” music (overtures, ritornelli, music which closes scenes). Unlike the
highly stereotyped Lullian overture, Rameau’s overtures show an extraordinary variety. Even in his earliest works where he uses
the standard French model, Rameau, the born symphonist and master of orchestration,
composes novel and unique pieces. A few pieces are particularly striking, such as the overture to Zaïs depicting the chaos
before the creation of the universe, or that to Pigmalion, suggesting the sculptor chipping away at the statue with his
mallet, or the imposing final chaconnes of Les Indes galantes or Dardanus.
- dance music: the danced interludes, which were obligatory even in tragédie en musique, allowed Rameau to give free rein to
his inimitable sense of rhythm, melody and choreography, acknowledged by all his contemporaries including the dancers themselves.
[31] This “learned” composer, forever preoccupied by his
next theoretical work, paradoxically strung together gavottes, minuets, loures, rigaudons, passepieds, tambourins and musettes by the
dozen... According to his biographer Cuthbert Girdlestone: “The immense superiority of all that pertains to Rameau in
choreography still needs emphasizing” and the German scholar H.W. von Walthershausen affirmed:
| “ |
Rameau was the greatest ballet composer of all times. The genius of his creation rests
on one hand on his perfect artistic permeation by folk-dance types, on the other hand on the constant preservation of living
contact with the practical requirements of the ballet stage, which prevented an estrangement between the expression of the body
from the spirit of absolute music.[32] |
” |
- choruses: Padre Martini, the erudite musicologist who corresponded with
Rameau, affirmed that “the French are excellent at choruses”, obviously thinking of Rameau himself. A great master of harmony,
Rameau knew how to compose sumptuous choruses, whether monodic, polyphonic or interspersed with passages for solo singers or the orchestra, and whatever the feelings needed
to be expressed.
- arias: less frequent than in Italian opera, nevertheless Rameau offers many striking examples. Particularly admired arias
include: Télaïre’s “Tristes apprêts” from Castor et Pollux; "Ô jour affreux" and "Lieux funestes" from Dardanus;
Huascar's invocations in Les Indes galantes; the final ariette in Pigmalion etc.
- recitative: much closer to arioso than to recitativo secco. The composer took scrupulous care to observe French
prosody and used his harmonic knowledge to give expression to his protagonists'
feelings.
During the first part of his operatic career (1733-1739) Rameau wrote his great masterpieces destined for the Académie royale
de musique: three tragédies en musique and two opéra-ballets which still form the core of his repertoire. After the interval of
1740 to 1744, he became the official court musician and for the most part composed pieces intended to entertain, with plenty of
dance music, emphasising sensuality and an idealised pastoral atmosphere. In his last years,
Rameau returned to a renewed version of his early style in Les Paladins and Les Boréades.
Rameau and his librettists
Unlike Lully, who collaborated with Philippe Quinault on almost all his operas,
Rameau rarely worked with the same librettist twice. He was highly demanding, bad-tempered and was unable to maintain
longstanding partnerships with his librettists, with the exception of Louis de
Cahusac.
Many Rameau specialists have regretted that the collaboration with Houdar de la Motte never took place and that the
Samson project with Voltaire came to nothing, because the librettists Rameau did work with were second-rate. He made the
acquaintance of most of them at La Pouplinière's salon, at the Société du Caveau or at the house of the Comte de Livry, all
meeting-places for leading cultural figures of the day.
Not one of his librettists managed to produce a libretto on the same artistic level as Rameau's music; the plots are often
overly complex or unconvincing - but this was standard for the genre and is probably part of its charm. The versification too was
mediocre and Rameau often had to have the libretto modified and rewrite the music after the premiere because of the ensuing
criticism. This is why we have two versions of Castor et Pollux (1737 and 1752) and three of Dardanus (1739, 1744
and 1760).
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).[33] 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's 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.[34] 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.[35] 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.[36]
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".[37] 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".[38] 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." Camille Saint-Saëns (by editing and publishing the Pièces in 1895) 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, in particular by conductors such as
John Eliot Gardiner, William
Christie and Marc Minkowski.
Theoretical works
1722 Treatise on Harmony
Title page of the
Treatise on Harmony
Rameau's 1722 Treatise on Harmony initiated a revolution in music theory.[39] 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.[40]
Previous treatises on harmony had been purely practical; Rameau added a philosophical dimension.[41] The composer quickly rose to prominence in France as the "Isaac Newton of
Music."[42] 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, 1726/27(?).
- Pieces de Clavecin en Concerts Five albums of character pieces
for harpsichord, violin and viol. (1741)
- La Dauphine for harpsichord. (1747)
- Several orchestral dance suites extracted from his operas.
Cantatas
- Aquilon et Orithie (between 1715 and 1720)[43]
- Thétis (same period)
- L’Impatience (same period)
- Les amants trahis (around 1720)
- Orphée (same period)
- Le berger fidèle (1728)
Motets
- Deus noster refugium (c.1713-1715)
- Quam dilecta (c. 1713-1715)
- In convertendo (probably before 1720)
- Laboravi (published in the Traité de l'harmonie, 1722)
Operas
Comédies lyriques
Comédie-ballet
Actes de ballet
Lost works
See Lost operas by Jean-Philippe Rameau
Writings
- Traité de l’harmonie réduite à ses principes naturels (Paris 1722)
- Démonstration du principe de l'harmonie (Paris 1750)
Media
See also
Notes
- ^ Beaussant p.21
- ^ Date of birth given by Chabanon in his Éloge de M. Rameau(1764)
- ^ New Grove p.207-208
- ^ Girdlestone p.3
- ^ Norbert Dufourcq, Le clavecin, p. 87
- ^ Girdlestone p.7
- ^ New Grove
- ^ New Grove p. 215
- ^ Girdlestone p.8
- ^ New Grove p.217
- ^ New Grove p. 219
- ^ Girdlestone, p.475
- ^ New Grove pp.221-223
- ^ New Grove pp.220
- ^ New Grove p.256
- ^ Beaussant p.18
- ^ New Grove pp.228-230
- ^ Girdlestone p.483
- ^ New Grove p.232
- ^ Viking p.830
- ^ New Grove pp.236-8
- ^ Quoted in Beaussant p.19
- ^ Viking p.846
- ^ New Grove p.240
- ^ Malignon p.16
- ^ Girdlestone p.513
- ^ Compare the inventories of François Couperin (one large harpsichord,
three spinets and a portable organ) and Louis Marchand (three harpsichords and three spinets) after their deaths.
- ^ Girdlestone p.508
- ^ Apart from the pieces written for the Paris fairs, which haven‘t
survived
- ^ Beaussant pp.340-43
- ^ According to the ballet master Gardel: “He divined what the dancers
themselves did not know. We look upon him rightly as our first master.” Quoted by Girdlestone, p.563.
- ^ Girdlestone p.563
- ^ Viking pp.1110-11
- ^ Girdlestone pp.201-2
- ^ Girdlestone p.554
- ^ New Grove p.277
- ^ Hugh Macdonald The Master Musicians: Berlioz (1982) p.184
- ^ Quoted by Graham Sadler in "Vincent d'Indy and the Rameau Oeuvres
complètes: a case of forgery?", Early Music, August 1993, p.418
- ^ Christensen, Thomas (2002). The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory. Cambridge
University Press. ISBN 0521623715.
p. 54
- ^ New Grove p.278
- ^ Girdlestone p.520
- ^ Christensen, Thomas (2002). The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory. Cambridge
University Press. ISBN 0521623715.
p. 759
- ^ All dates from Beaussant p.83
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
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)
- Rameau de A à Z Philippe Beaussant (Fayard, 1983)
External links
Sheet music
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