JEAN PHILIPPE RAMEAU (1683- 1764)

The third composer in the opening lecture on Orchestral Splendours is Rameau. His
name is known, usually coupled with Couperin although the two never met. His
music became less known having disappeared below the horizon after the French
revolution had expunged him from existence. Why? Well, he had been the very
model of a modern French compositeur selected for the chambre du roy no less, and
a Louis Bourbon to boot. He began to reappear after the Franco Prussian war of
1870 promoted by Vincent Dindy as a symbol for France to give air to its own
historic icons rather than German composers. The twentieth century has seen
Rameau back up on the podium thanks largely to the CD, now itself alas on the
wane.
For me Rameau stands out from the two other composers in the lecture, simply
because I am more familiar with his music than I am with Monteverdi or Lully. There
is no doubt in my mind however that there is a completely distinguishable Rameau
sound one cannot mistake. There have always been good composers, like there are
good lawyers, but whose work cannot be distinguished from another. And there are
those who have their finger prints all over their scores. You know Brahms or
Debussy as soon as you hear them. You recognize their aftershave as soon as they
come into the room. The eighteenth century at its best produced the greatest of
composers but there were an awful lot of them where you cannot tell one from the
other. Can you be sure that that sinfonia by Dussek is not perhaps by Dittersdorf?
Well you cant say that of Rameau. Play Les Indes Galantes, Les Borades or Nas
and you know it is Rameau as soon as you hear it. Who else has an orchestra with
four flutes leading the trumpets into the attack?
Rameau was born in Dijon. To place him in time is easy. He was born in 1683, four
years before the death of Lully and just two years before the births of Bach, Handel
and Domenico Scarlatti, all three in the same year, and he outlived them all. His
early years in Dijon are particularly obscure. His father served as an organist in
several churches around Dijon. His mother was the daughter of a notary. The couple
had eleven children of whom Jean-Philippe was the seventh. Rameau claimed he
was taught music before he could read or write. He was educated by the Jesuits with
a view him to becoming a notaire. He was said to have been disruptive and although
he made an initial start in the law his heart was never really in it and eventually he
was asked to leave. He prevailed upon his father to let him study music and he was
sent to Italy, where he stayed for a short while in Milan. On his return, he worked as
a violinist in travelling companies and then moved to Paris for the first time.
His career was slow to kick off rather like that of Csar Franck. The fact is that he
did not become known until he was forty and only hit the big time when he got to fifty.
In 1706, aged 33, he published his earliest known compositions, Pices de Clavecin,
harpsichord works.
In 1709, he moved back to Dijon to take over from his father as organist in the main
church but after four years moved on to take up similar posts, first in Avignon, then
Lyon for two years and then Clermont for a further four.. During this period, he was
developing musical theories and honing his skills on motets for church performance
as well as secular cantatas. Oddly enough he does not seem to have written for his

own workhorse, the organ, but he built the reputation of being at his happiest locked
up in his room with a harpsichord
In 1722, he returned to Paris for good, and here he published his Treatise on
Harmony which was to make his reputation and is still, believe it or not, in use to this
day. Insofar as he had won the admiration of his peers his career was beginning to
take off with further publications by 1730 in the field of musical theory and two more
collections of harpsichord pieces. It was during this period he got married in 1726
aged 44 to 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.
Here another comparison can be made with Csar Franck. Both Rameau and
Franck, from a nosey researchers point of view, had marriages which appear to
have been squeaky clean.
Unlike Franck however who was one of the great Parisian organists of all time,
Rameau tried desperately to obtain an appointment in Paris but threw in the towel in
1826. It was at this time that Rameau turned to opera and started for the first time to
think about writing one of his own. He first approached the writer, de la Motte, for a
libretto in 1727, but nothing came of it. It would be six years later that he would
finally be inspired to chance his arm with tragdie en musique.
Meantime, another significant development in his career took place in 1732 when he
made the acquaintance of the powerful financier La Pouplinire, who became his
patron until 1753. La Pouplinires mistress was Rameau's pupil and a great admirer
of his music. This led to a dream appointment with Rameau becoming the conductor
of La Pouplinire's private orchestra, which had the repute of being a top quality
outfit, a post he would hold for 22 years. This gave him the opportunity to mix with
the cream of Pariss, artists, musicians and writers including the leading luminary of
the lot, Voltaire, and also the infamous libertine Casanova. It would also lead him
eventually into direct contact with the French court. One early project was a
proposed collaboration with Voltaire, a tragdie en musique, Samson, but which they
abandoned because an opera on a religious theme by Voltaire, a notorious critic of
the Church, would likely get banned anyway.
1733 was the year when Rameau really took off. He was approaching 50 when he
embarked on the operatic career on which his fame as a composer mainly rests.
Following the previous abortive attempts, Hippolyte et Ancie was performed at the
Acadmie Royale de Musique on 1 October 1733. It was immediately recognised as
the most significant opera to appear in France since Lully, but it shocked and
audiences were divided. The composer, Campra, was stunned by its invention and
originality. Others found its harmonic innovations discordant and saw the work as an
attack on the French musical tradition. The two camps, the so-called Lullyistes and
the Rameauneurs, fought a pamphlet war over the issue for the rest of the decade.
Contemporary arguments loom large at the time as subsequently would that
between the Brahmsians and the Wagnerians.
In 1734 Rameau achieved his best known success with his first opera-ballet, Les
Indes Galantes. This was top grade opera-ballet hroique and its title may need a
little explanation. Back in 1697, Campra had written his Europe Galantes (probably

not played in the household of Nigel Farage) which represented the contest between
love and enmity as might be approached by a Turk, an Italian, a Frenchman and a
Spaniard, an idea which perhaps had an influence on Peter Ustinov in his Loves of
Four Colonels. The idea of Gallant Europe seemed to catch on but here was
Rameau writing of the Gallant Indians. Actually, they were American Indians as
opposed to Asian ones but they included Turks, African slaves, Peruvians and
Incas. In1836 Rameau added the rondeau, Les Sauvages, inspired by Indians
sent from Illinois to Paris by French settlers under their chief, Agapit Chicagou.
There they met with Louis XV, and Chicagou had a letter read pledging allegiance to
the crown. Les Sauvages finished with smoking the pipe of peace (pace Obama
perhaps). Added to the frisson of the music was an enormous earthquake. If you
want to know a little more about mans love for a slave girl, or an early exercise in
diversity, the libretto is by Louis Fuzelier.

Here it is interesting to look at the musical titles.

The international language for music, then as now,
was Italian. Largo, allegro, adagio or presto were
understood throughout the civilised world. But
France stood apart. And not only does one find vif
or lente but strange titles which appear throughout
the ballets of Rameau:Rondeau;
Tambourin,
Rigaudon,
Menuet,
Sarabande, Contredanse, Passacaille, Fortane,
Gavotte, Chaconne, Passepied, Boure Gigue.
This is a world based on country dances and
courtly dances, not on allegros and scherzos and
certainly not ready to adapt to the birth of the
sinfonia about to take place the other side of the
Rhine.
.
Les Indes Galantes was followed by Castor et Pollux and Dardanus two tragdies en
musique, in 1737 and 1739 respectively as well as another opra-ballet, also 1739,
Les Ftes dHb . These works from the 1730s were from Rameau's top drawer.
Apart from a new version of Dardanus in 1744 Rameau goes silent and no-one
knows the reason. One suggestion is the possibility he had a falling-out with the
Acadmie royale but I dont necessarily buy that. It is more likely that he was put off
by the back biting between the various factions which led to threatened litigation from
Jean Jacques Rousseau who, apart from being best known as a thinker, turned his
hand to composing as well. He had campaigned vociferously against Rameau over
the Lully fall out. On top of this he had been commissioned to write a scenario by
Rameau and Voltaire and finished up accusing Rameau of plagiarising. Tin Pan
Alley is not new. Then again there is no reason why Rameau may not have had a
touch of composers block. His family life may also have had something to do with it.
His daughter for instance decided to join an order of nuns and Rameau who was a
bit tight on spending had to lay out a fairly large sum as a dowry for her.

The big comeback was in 1745 when Rameau received several commissions from
the court. First music was needed for the marriage of the Dauphin in February to the
Infanta Maria Teresa Rafaela of Spain. It was Plate, Rameau's first attempt at
comic opera, all about an ugly water nymph who believes that Jupiter is in love with
her. Rameau was given official recognition with the title "Compositeur du Cabinet du
Roi" and a substantial pension into the bargain. Alas the Spanish nymph would die in
childbirth the following year. Yet a further call was made upon Voltaire and Rameau
late in 1745 when their combined efforts were commanded following Frances
military victory at the battle of Fontenoy against the Pragmatic Allies in the War of
the Austrian Succession. France was all cock a hoop whilst the defeated English
were having also to deal back home with Bonnie Prince Charlie whose troops had
reached Derby. At the time Handel was writing patriotic stuff with Judas Maccabeus
and Rameau and Voltaire were at their most triumphant with the opera-ballet, Le
Temple de la Gloire. The War of the Austrian Succession ended in 1748, a score
draw, with most of the spoils being handed back. The relief all round was intense
and Rameau celebrated it with his opera Nas and back in England Handel
celebrated it with the Royal Fireworks Music which will be another subject in this
series by Matthew.
The 1750s saw a slowing down in the output of Rameau and his complaint of loss of
inspiration. You will recall the mistress of La Poupliniere who had encouraged
Rameau back in the early 1730s. She became the wife of La Poupliniere, good for
her, but that left him lacking in a mistress. His needs were answered by his taking
on Jeanne-Thrse Goermans, as his mistress. This was schemed out by her
opportunistic husband who encouraged the liaison and which led in 1853 to Johnann
Stamitz being given the post hitherto held by Rameau. Still Rameau no longer
depended on the position or the money and was happy to return to his domestic
state of bliss. He was an odd bod, very tall, very thin, a man who could not get a
position as a back street church organist and yet rose to the top by chance and not
by ambition. He died of a fever in 1764.
Rameau went right out of the window with the collapse of the Bourbon Monarchy of
which he was integrally connected. Berlioz for instance did not know his music. For
me evidence of his rehabilitation came about in the 1960s with the emergence of the
Club Mditerrane. This organization was all the rage with the young English middle
class taking holidays as only the French know how, in straw huts without running
water, where a not too discreet towel over the door was an ensign indicating No
Entry my luck may be in, communal wash blocks with cold water, toilets la
Turque (a hole in the ground), cheap wine and every one wearing a pareo rather like
something out of Les Indes Galantes. What they did give was a touch of culture with
a fanfare by Jean-Joseph Mouret to announce communal meals and a classical LP
concert in the mid afternoon heat when you might listen to Stravinsky conducted by
Boulez or Jean Philippe Rameau amongst others from the Ancien Rgime.