JEAN-BAPTISTE LULLY (1632-1687)

Monteverdi was a humble man who did not seek fame and in 1632 entered into holy
orders. That same year Giovanni Battista Lulli was born in Florence, the son of a
miller and from what we know of him he was, in contrast to Monteverdi, something of
a showman, man and boy, and knew what he wanted and how to go about getting it.
Little is known of his early years or of his education except that he stated he was
taught music by a friar who gave him lessons in the guitar. At age 14 he was seen
clowning about at a Mardi Gras where he was observed by one Roger de Lorraine,
chevalier de Guise, son of the duke of that title on his way back to France. He was
said to be on the lookout for someone with whom his niece, Mademoiselle de
Pensier, could converse in Italian and so he took the young Giovanni with him. From
1647 to 1652 Giovanni served as garon de chambre to Mademoiselle. Such
positions had varied over the centuries from being a position of closeness to a king
or lord, from serving in the bedroom to that of secretary. By the time of the early
baroque the title was given to painters and in the case of, Lully, musicians who were
full time or part time appointees. Lully was clearly able to learn his craft from
household musicians and to impart his knowledge to Mademoiselle. He also picked
up a reputation as a street artist violinist and dancer.
In 1652 Mademoiselle got exiled to the provinces following the failure of the uprisings
known as Les Frondes. It is interesting to compare France with England where here
the King had lost his power and head in 1649 and Parliament was firmly in power.
With the restoration of Charles II in 1660 there was an understanding of a balance of
power and not a divine right of kings. In France it moved the other way. The
aristocracy and the Parlements had combined in revolutions against the absolute
power of the monarch and the Frondes rebellions took place between 1648 and
1653 when Louis X1V was just a boy king. The aristocracy was soundly beaten by
the forces of the king but they retained their rank and nobility. However, it was safer
for them to be distant from the court of the king, hence the exile of Mademoiselle and
others. Others however was not going to include Giovanni who wanted to stay on in
Paris. He begged leave from the Mademoiselle who granted it and he was then on
his own.
By the following year he had attracted the attention of Louis XIV, who was only then
15, when the two danced together at the Ballet Royal de la Nuit. Lully was appointed
royal composer for instrumental music and over the next seven years had produced
numerous ballets which included vocal and instrumental music which he composed.
From 1653 to 1661 when Louis XIV assumed full power Lully was to write some 14
court ballets. With these, his style blossomed and developed in character. At first, as
composer of instrumental music for the King's chamber, Lully wrote overtures,
dances, dance-like songs, descriptive instrumental pieces such as battles. But it was
the French overture which so captivated him that he wrote four of them for the Ballet
dAlcidiane! (Beethovens Fidelio thus had a precedent)
He developed his instrumental style with his chaconnes including a long example in
Ballet de la Raillerie of 1659 He also introduced the minuet into that same ballet. In
Lully's ballets one can detect the emergence of music for concert performance with
excerpts taken from his ballets and his later operas. His first venture into opera was
in 1660 in assisting Cavalli in his opera Xerxes.

Louis XIV was able to take on full power in 1661. Immediately he named Lully
surintendent of the royal music and music master of the royal family. In December
1661 Giovanni Batista Lulli was granted letters of naturalization as Jean-Baptiste
Lully. Naturalization was not as automatic as to-day. The case of Lully was a
precedent for Georg Friedrich Haendel who became a naturalized British citizen by
letters patent from George I. Later Luigi Cherubini, like Lully, a Florentine, spent the
greater part of his life in France as Louis Cherubini becoming head of the Paris
Conservatoire; a member of the Acadmie Franaise, and the butt of Berlioz. In 1662
Lully married Madeleine Lambert, the daughter of Michel Lambert, a renowned
singer of the time and composer; and declared himself to be "Jean-Baptiste Lully,
escuyer (esquire), son of "Laurent de Lully, gentilhomme Florentin. At least two
commentators have stated that this was untrue. But was it? True Lully may not have
been too keen to mention his more humble origins. Escuyer has been treated in
translation as squire which has accorded to it a certain rank in English but it is the
same word as Esquire which is an alternative label for Mister. His father was a miller
but the expression gentilhomme is as much courtesy as denoting rank. I merely
comment as the son of a journeyman taxi driver! But you can call me squire at any
time.
From here on in Lullys career was taking off. Still in 1661 there was the first
collaboration between, Lully and Molire, more Molire than Lully, but this was the
start of what was called Intermdes or incidental music, the idea that the drama or
comedy can be enhanced by suitable accompanying music, better known in the
nineteenth century with Beethovens music to Goethes Egmont; Mendelssohns
incidental music to the Midsummer Nights Dream or Griegs incidental music to
Ibsens Peer Gynt. In the same way Lully became the music man to Molire. First on
the boards in 1661 was Les Facheurs with Lully providing a single sung courante,
which was added after the work's premiere. Their collaboration really got going in
1664 with Le Mariage forc. More collaborations followed, the Rogers and
Hammerstein of the day, which I have listed below:Les Plaisirs de l'Ile enchante, play by Molire, at Versailles, 1664
L'Amour mdecin, comedy, play by Molire, at Versailles, 1667
La Pastorale comique, play by Molire, at St-Germain-en-Laye, 1667
Le Sicilien, play by Molire, at St-Germain-en-Laye, 1667
Le Grand Divertissement royal de Versailles (Georges Dandin), play by Molire, at
Versailles, 1668
Le Divertissement de Chambord (Monsieru de Pourceaugnac), play by Molire, at
Chambord, 1669
Le Divertissement royal (Les Amants magifiques), play by Molire, at St-Germain-enLaye, 1670
Le Borgeois Gentilhomme, comedy ballet, play by Molire, at Chambord, 1670
Theres no business like show business and true to form the team broke up in 1672
when Molire switched to Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Now theres a composer
Matthew could follow. One good Te Deum, Matthew, and you could be earning a
fortune from Eurovision.

Back to 1661 which was obviously a good year for Lully. The trios and dances he
had written for court performance got published. Then in 1653, Louis XIV made him
director of his personal small group violin orchestra, known as Les Petits Violons
which was able to chance its arm with Lully's innovations. By contrast there were
also Les Grands Violons consisting of 24 players whose repertoire was from the old
polyphonic school.. Once appointed Surintendant De La Musique De La Chambre
Du Roi in 1661, Les Grands Violons also came under Lully's control. Onwards and
Upwards.
After the split with Molire, Lully continued writing incidental music for plays with
various other playwrights including, Corneille, Quinault and Racine.
More
importantly, he moved into the world of tragedy-opera mainly with a new partner,
Philippe Quinault, a verse drama writer. Lully himself acquired the opera privilege, a
virtual monopoly on production and he became the director of the Acadmie Royale
de Musique which performed in the Palais Royale. From 1673 to 1686 Lully and
Quinault produced 13 operas, an average of one a year. The aim was to produce
the best of theatre expression as enounced by the great theatre actors of the day, in
short, letting the music follow the drama. Despite his Italian origins Lully was not
prepared to follow the course of the developing Italian opera seria based on
recitative and aria. Lully did not see French verse lending itself to this method. With
Lully there is greater variation, not only monologues and duets, but various choruses
of different sizes, sung dances and popular songs, everybody, it seems, doing a bit
of everything. They also depended on stage machinery and stage effects.
Intermingled would be overtures and symphonies so called, to help evoke the
mood. I have to make a confession though. I have never seen such a production
and I dont suppose it is likely I will as modern productions are more often than not
put through a time warp process so as to avoid any reproduction of what was
originally intended.
The orchestra itself developed in Lullys time but it is not yet the symphony orchestra
as we would get to know it in classical times. We are still in the age of recorders as
opposed to the flute and the oboes are a cross between the shawm and the baroque
oboe. There are strange bedfellows from time to time, lute, guitar, harpsichord or
organ. There is a variety of percussion, whatever is available really, such as
castanets. In one work I have on disc there is a ball scene with the chorus blowing
kazoos, an amateur instrument which produces the sound of comb and paper. In
short we are in a remote past world that is difficult to recreate but a world which
could produce fun sounds as well as static tragedy.
In 1683 Marie Therese, wife of Louis XIV, died. It had been a relatively happy
marriage bearing in mind the numerous affairs Louis had had and thereby producing
even more children than the number of affairs he had had. Louis proved relatively
more faithful to his second wife, the Marquise de Maintenon. It is believed that they
were married secretly late in 1683 at Versailles. This marriage was never formally
announced or publicly discussed, but everybody knew. The new queen was not into
opera but preferred devotional music, a right party pooper. Still Louis went along
and his enthusiasm for opera waned. It seems he began to feel hostility towards
Lully with one authoritative biography stating that Louis was revolted by Lullys
homosexuality, the only mention I have come across. In short Louis XIV might have
been the Sun King but as far as Jean Baptiste Lully was concerned the sun would no

longer shine for him. Still the all powerful monarch would not get rid of Lully who had
acquired such considerable artistic power and control. Lullys end came soon
afterwards in the strangest of circumstances. He was conducting a new Te Deum he
had written to rejoice in Louiss recovery from recent surgery. Conducting was not
the art of today. Lully kept a staff with which he used to beat time on the floor.
Unfortunately he managed to get his own foot in the way and suffered a painful
injury. The wound became septic and gangrene set in. Thus, ended the life of Lully,
an adventurer, a powerful manager, a composer from Italy who created a style of
French music for the French, the influence of which, would last a century.