Jean-Philippe

Rameau

Jean-Philippe Rameau, by Jacques Aved, 1728

Jean-Philippe Rameau (French: [ʒɑ̃ filip
ʁamo]; 25 September 1683 – 12
September 1764) was one of the most
important French composers and music
theorists of the 18th century.[1] He
replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the
dominant composer of French opera and
is also considered the leading French
composer for the harpsichord of his time,
alongside François Couperin.[2]

Little is known about Rameau's early

years. It was not until the 1720s that he
won fame as a major theorist of music
with his Treatise on Harmony (1722) and
also in the following years as a composer
of masterpieces for the harpsichord, which
circulated throughout Europe. He was
almost 50 before he embarked on the
operatic career on which his reputation
chiefly rests today. His debut, Hippolyte et
Aricie (1733), caused a great stir and was
fiercely attacked by the supporters of
Lully's style of music for its revolutionary
use of harmony. 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,[3]
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 25 September
1683 in Dijon, and baptised the same
day.[4] 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 whom Jean-Philippe was the
seventh.

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 pupil and disrupted classes with
his singing, later claiming that his passion
for opera had begun at the age of twelve.[5]
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.[6] 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.[7]

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-
Ferrand. 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.[8] In 1724 and 1729 (or 1730),
he also published two more collections of
harpsichord pieces.[9]

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.[10]
On 25 February 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.[11]

In spite of his fame as a music theorist,

Rameau had trouble finding a post as an
organist in Paris.[12]

Later years, 1733–1764

Bust of Rameau by Caffieri, 1760

It was not until he was approaching 50

that Rameau decided to embark on the
operatic career on which his fame as a
composer mainly rests. He had already
approached writer Antoine Houdar de la
Motte for a libretto in 1727, but nothing
came 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 Lullyistes and the
Rameauneurs, fought a pamphlet war over
the issue for the rest of the decade.[13]

Just before this time, Rameau had made

the acquaintance of the powerful financier
Alexandre Le Riche de La Poupelinière,
who became his patron until 1753. La
Poupelinière'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
Poupelinière'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.[14] La
Poupelinière's salon enabled Rameau to
meet some of the leading cultural figures
of the day, including Voltaire, who soon
began collaborating with the composer.[15]
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.[16]
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.[17]
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 had a
falling-out with the authorities at the
Académie royale de la musique.[18]
The year 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 Infanta Maria Teresa Rafaela
of Spain. 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.[19]
They gained Rameau official recognition;
he was granted the title "Compositeur du
Cabinet du Roi" and given a substantial
pension.[20] 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 was 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
musicologists 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.[21]

Rousseau was a major participant in the

second great quarrel that 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.[22] In the mid-
1750s, Rameau criticised Rousseau's
contributions to the musical articles in the
Encyclopédie, which led to a quarrel with
the leading philosophes d'Alembert and
Diderot.[23] As a result, Jean-François
Rameau became a character in Diderot's
then-unpublished dialogue, Le neveu de
Rameau (Rameau's Nephew).

In 1753, La Poupelinière took a scheming

musician, Jeanne-Thérèse Goermans, as
his mistress. The daughter of 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
Poupelinière engage the services of the
Bohemian composer Johann Stamitz, who
succeeded Rameau after a breach
developed between Rameau and his
patron; however, by then, Rameau no
longer needed La Poupelinière'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
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."[24]
Rameau composed prolifically in the late
1740s and early 1750s. After that, his rate
of productivity dropped off, probably due
to old age and ill health, although 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.[25] Rameau died on 12 September
1764 after suffering from a fever, thirteen
days before his 81st birthday. At his
bedside, he objected to a song sung. His
last words were, "What the devil do you
mean to sing to me, priest? You are out of
tune."[26] He was buried in the church of St.
Eustache, Paris on the same day of his
death.[27] Although a bronze bust and red
marble tombstone were erected in his
memory there by the Société de la
Compositeurs de Musique in 1883, the
exact site of his burial remains unknown to
this day.

Rameau's personality
Portrait of Rameau by Louis Carrogis Carmontelle,

1760

While the details of his biography are

vague and fragmentary, the details of
Rameau's personal and family life are
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 his satirical
novel 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."[28] Physically,
Rameau was tall and exceptionally thin,[29]
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[29]), who
frequented La Poupelinière's salon; his
music was his passport, and it made up
for his lack of social graces.
His enemies exaggerated his faults; e.g.
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[30]
in his rooms in Rue des Bons-Enfants, yet
he also had a bag containing 1691 gold
louis.[31]
Music
Nouvelles Suites de pièces de
clavecin - Suite en la mineur
Gavotte et six doubles (6:47)

I. Allemande (3:54)

Performed in 1953 by Marcelle Meyer

Problems playing these files? See

media help.

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 Lullyistes, 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 from 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 had
been either unable or unwilling to render it
correctly.

Rameau's musical works

Rameau's musical works may be divided
into four distinct groups,[32] 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 that 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; e.g., 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.[33]

Motets

For at least 26 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
nonexistent. Judging by the evidence, it
was not his favourite field, but rather,
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.[34]

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[35] 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.[36][37]

Instrumental music

Along with François Couperin, Rameau

was a master of the 18th-century French
school of harpsichord music, and both
made a break with the style of the first
generation of harpsichordists whose
compositions adhered to the relatively
fixed dance-suite mold, which had reached
its apogee in the first decade of the 18th
century and 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.
Rameau and Couperin had different styles,
and it seems they did not know one
another: Couperin was one of the official
court musicians; Rameau, fifteen years his
junior, achieved fame only after Couperin's
death.

Rameau published his first book of

harpsichord pieces in 1706. (Cf. Couperin,
who waited until 1713 before publishing
his first "Ordres.") Rameau's music
includes pieces in the pure tradition of the
French suite: imitative ("Le rappel des
oiseaux," "La poule") and characterful ("Les
tendres plaintes," "L'entretien des Muses").
But there are also works of pure virtuosity
that resemble Scarlatti ("Les tourbillons,"
"Les trois mains") as well as pieces that
reveal the experiments of a theorist and
musical innovator ("L'enharmonique," "Les
Cyclopes"), which had a marked influence
on Daquin, Royer and Jacques Duphly.
Rameau's suites are grouped in the
traditional way, by key.

Rameau's second and third collections

appeared in 1724 and 1727. After these he
composed only one piece for the
harpsichord, the eight-minute "La
Dauphine" of 1747, while the very short
"Les petits marteaux" (c. 1750) has also
been attributed to him.

During his semiretirement (1740 to 1744)

he wrote the Pièces de clavecin en concert
(1741), which some musicologists
consider the pinnacle of French Baroque
chamber music. Adopting a formula
successfully employed by Mondonville a
few years earlier, Rameau fashioned these
pieces differently from trio sonatas in that
the harpsichord is not simply there as
basso continuo to accompany melody
instruments (violin, flute, viol) but as equal
partner in "concert" with them. Rameau
claimed that this music would be equally
satisfying played on the harpsichord alone,
but the claim is not wholly convincing
because he took the trouble to transcribe
five of them himself, those where the lack
of other instruments would show the
least.[38][39]

Opera

After 1733 Rameau dedicated himself

mostly to opera. 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 that arises from the
respective relationships between the arias
and the recitatives. Another essential
difference: whereas Italian opera gave a
starring role to female sopranos and
castrati, French opera had no use for the
latter. The Italian opera of Rameau's day
(opera seria, opera buffa) was essentially
divided into musical sections (da capo
arias, duets, trios, etc.) and sections that
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—
limiting certain techniques such as the
vocalise, which was reserved for special
words such as gloire ("glory") or victoire
("victory"). A subtle equilibrium existed
between the more and the less musical
parts: melodic recitative on the one hand
and arias that 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 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, that of Pigmalion, suggesting
the sculptor's chipping away at the
statue with his mallet, or many more
conventional depictions of storms and
earthquakes, as well perhaps as 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.[40] This "learned" composer,
forever preoccupied by his next
theoretical work, also was one who
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.[41]

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
feelings needed to be expressed.
Arias: less frequent than in Italian opera,
Rameau nevertheless 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; and the final ariette in
Pigmalion. In Platée we encounter a
 showstopping ars poetica aria for the
character of La Folie (the madness),
"Formons les plus brillants concerts /
Aux langeurs d'Apollon".
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 that 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.

His Zoroastre was first performed in 1749.

According to one of Rameau's admirers,
Cuthbert Girdlestone, this opera has a
distinctive place in his works: "The profane
passions of hatred and jealousy are
rendered more intensely [than in his other
works] and with a strong sense of reality."

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 and bad-
tempered, unable to maintain longstanding
partnerships with his librettists, with the
exception of Louis de Cahusac, who
collaborated with him on several operas,
including Les fêtes de l'Hymen et de
l'Amour (1747), Zaïs (1748), Naïs (1749),
Zoroastre (1749; revised 1756), La
naissance d'Osiris (1754), and Anacréon
(the first of Rameau's operas by that name,
1754). He is also credited with writing the
libretto of Rameau's final work, Les
Boréades (c. 1763).

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 his
acquaintance of most of them at La
Poupelinière'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 were
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 1754) 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 that show the French
composer's influence, Ippolito ed Aricia
(1759) and I Tintaridi (based on Castor et
Pollux, 1760).[42] 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 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.[43] Many of
the operatic reforms advocated in the
preface to Gluck's Alceste were already
present in Rameau's works. Rameau had
used accompanied recitatives, and the
overtures in his later operas reflected the
action to come,[44] 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.[45]

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' music, he
himself was more conscious of the gap
which separated them."[46] French
humiliation in the Franco-Prussian War
brought about a change in Rameau's
fortunes. As Rameau biographer J.
Malignon wrote, "...the German victory over
France in 1870–71 was the grand
occasion for digging up great heroes from
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."[47] 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,
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

Title page of the Treatise on Harmony

Gavotte and Variations

Gavotte and Variations (1)

Gavotte and Variations (2)

Gavotte and Variations (3)

Gavotte and Variations (4)

Gavotte and Variations (5)

 Gavotte and Variations (6)

Problems playing these files? See

media help.

Treatise on Harmony, 1722

Rameau's 1722 Treatise on Harmony

initiated a revolution in music theory.[48]
Rameau posited the discovery of the
"fundamental law" or what he referred to
as the "fundamental bass" of all Western
music. Heavily influenced by new
Cartesian modes of thought and analysis,
Rameau's methodology incorporated
mathematics, commentary, analysis and a
didacticism that was specifically intended
to illuminate, scientifically, the structure
and principles of music. With careful
deductive reasoning, he attempted to
derive universal harmonic principles from
natural causes.[49] Previous treatises on
harmony had been purely practical;
Rameau embraced the new philosophical
rationalism,[50] quickly rising to
prominence in France as the "Isaac
Newton of Music."[51] 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 that persists to this day.

List of works
RCT numbering refers to Rameau
Catalogue Thématique established by
Sylvie Bouissou and Denis Herlin.[52]

Instrumental works

Pièces de clavecin. Trois livres. "Pieces

for harpsichord", 3 books, published
1706, 1724, 1726/27(?).
Tambourin (help·info)
RCT 1 – Premier livre de Clavecin
(1706)
RCT 2 – Pièces de clavecin (1724) –
Suite in E minor
RCT 3 – Pièces de clavecin (1724) –
Suite in D major
RCT 4 – Pièces de clavecin (1724) –
Menuet in C major
RCT 5 – Nouvelles suites de pièces
de clavecin (1726/27) – Suite in A
minor
 RCT 6 – Nouvelles suites de pièces
de clavecin (1726/27) – Suite in G
Pieces de Clavecin en Concerts Five
albums of character pieces for
harpsichord, violin and viol. (1741)
RCT 7 – Concert I in C minor
RCT 8 – Concert II in G major
RCT 9 – Concert III in A major
RCT 10 – Concert IV in B flat major
RCT 11 – Concert V in D minor
RCT 12 – La Dauphine for harpsichord.
(1747)
 RCT 12bis – Les petits marteaux for
harpsichord.
Several orchestral dance suites
extracted from his operas.

Motets

RCT 13 – Deus noster refugium (c.

1713–1715)
RCT 14 – In convertendo (probably
before 1720, rev. 1751)
RCT 15 – Quam dilecta (c. 1713–1715)
RCT 16 – Laboravi (published in the
Traité de l'harmonie, 1722)

Canons
RCT 17 – Ah! loin de rire, pleurons
(soprano, alto, tenor, bass) (pub. 1722)
RCT 18 – Avec du vin, endormons-nous
(2 sopranos, Tenor) (1719)
RCT 18bis – L'épouse entre deux draps (3
sopranos) (formerly attributed to
François Couperin)
RCT 18ter – Je suis un fou Madame (3
voix égales) (1720)
RCT 19 – Mes chers amis, quittez vos
rouges bords (3 sopranos, 3 basses)
(pub. 1780)
 RCT 20 – Réveillez-vous, dormeur sans
fin (5 voix égales) (pub. 1722)
RCT 20bis – Si tu ne prends garde à toi
(2 sopranos, bass) (1720)

Songs

RCT 21.1 – L'amante préoccupée or A

l'objet que j'adore (soprano, continuo)
(1763)
RCT 21.2 – Lucas, pour se gausser de
nous (soprano, bass, continuo) (pub.
1707)
RCT 21.3 – Non, non, le dieu qui sait
aimer (soprano, continuo) (1763)
 RCT 21.4 – Un Bourbon ouvre sa carrière
or Un héros ouvre sa carrière (alto,
continuo) (1751, air belonging to Acante
et Céphise but censored before its first
performance and never reintroduced in
the work).

Cantatas

RCT 23 – Aquilon et Orithie (between

1715 and 1720)[53]
RCT 28 – Thétis (same period)
RCT 26 – L’impatience (same period)
RCT 22 – Les amants trahis (around
1720)
 RCT 27 – Orphée (same period)
RCT 24 – Le berger fidèle (1728)
RCT 25 – Cantate pour le jour de la Saint
Louis (1740)

Operas and stage works

Tragédies en musique

RCT 43 – Hippolyte et Aricie (1733;

revised 1742 and 1757)
RCT 32 – Castor et Pollux (1737; revised
1754)
RCT 35 – Dardanus (1739; revised 1744
and 1760), score
 RCT 62 – Zoroastre (1749; revised 1756,
with new music for Acts II, III & V)
RCT 31 – Les Boréades or Abaris
(unperformed; in rehearsal 1763)
Opéra-ballets

RCT 44 – Les Indes galantes (1735;

revised 1736)
RCT 41 – Les fêtes d'Hébé or les Talens
Lyriques (1739)
RCT 39 – Les fêtes de Polymnie (1745)
RCT 59 – Le temple de la gloire (1745;
revised 1746)
 RCT 38 – Les fêtes de l'Hymen et de
l'Amour or Les Dieux d'Egypte (1747)
RCT 58 – Les surprises de l'Amour (1748;
revised 1757)

Pastorales héroïques

RCT 60 – Zaïs (1748)

RCT 49 – Naïs (1749)
RCT 29 – Acante et Céphise or La
sympathie (1751)
RCT 34 – Daphnis et Eglé (1753)

Comédies lyriques

RCT 53 – Platée or Junon jalouse (1745),

score
 RCT 51 – Les Paladins or Le Vénitien
(1760)
Comédie-ballet

RCT 54 – La princesse de Navarre (1744)

Actes de ballet

RCT 33 – Les courses de Tempé (1734)

RCT 40 – Les fêtes de Ramire (1745)
RCT 52 – Pigmalion (1748)
RCT 42 – La guirlande or Les fleurs
enchantées (1751)
RCT 57 – Les sibarites or Sibaris (1753)
 RCT 48 – La naissance d'Osiris or La
Fête Pamilie (1754)
RCT 30 – Anacréon (1754)
RCT 58 – Anacréon (completely different
work from the above, 1757, 3rd Entrée of
Les surprises de l'Amour)
RCT 61 – Zéphire (date unknown)
RCT 50 – Nélée et Myrthis (date
unknown)
RCT 45 – Io (unfinished, date unknown)
Lost works

RCT 56 – Samson (tragédie en musique)

(first version written 1733–1734; second
 version 1736; neither were ever staged )
RCT 46 – Linus (tragédie en musique)
(1751, score stolen after a rehearsal)
RCT 47 – Lisis et Délie (pastorale)
(scheduled on November 6, 1753)

Incidental music for opéras comiques

Music mostly lost.

RCT 36 – L'endriague (in 3 acts, 1723)

RCT 37 – L'enrôlement d'Arlequin (in 1
act, 1726)
RCT 55 – La robe de dissension or Le
faux prodige (in 2 acts, 1726)
 RCT 55bis – La rose or Les jardins de
l'Hymen (in a prologue and 1 act, 1744)

Writings

Traité de l'harmonie réduite à ses

principes naturels (Paris, 1722)
Nouveau système de musique théorique
(Paris, 1726)
Dissertation sur les différents méthodes
d'accompagnement pour le clavecin, ou
pour l'orgue (Paris, 1732)
Génération harmonique, ou Traité de
musique théorique et pratique (Paris,
1737)
Mémoire où l'on expose les fondemens
du Système de musique théorique et
pratique de M. Rameau (1749)
Démonstration du principe de l'harmonie
(Paris, 1750)
Nouvelles réflexions de M. Rameau sur
sa 'Démonstration du principe de
l'harmonie' (Paris, 1752)
Observations sur notre instinct pour la
musique (Paris, 1754)
Erreurs sur la musique dans
l'Encyclopédie (Paris, 1755)
Suite des erreurs sur la musique dans
l'Encyclopédie (Paris, 1756)
Reponse de M. Rameau à MM. les
editeurs de l'Encyclopédie sur leur dernier
Avertissement (Paris, 1757)
Nouvelles réflexions sur le principe
sonore (1758–9)
Code de musique pratique, ou Méthodes
pour apprendre la musique...avec des
nouvelles réflexions sur le principe
sonore (Paris, 1760)
Lettre à M. Alembert sur ses opinions en
musique (Paris, 1760)
Origine des sciences, suivie d'un
controverse sur le même sujet (Paris,
1762)
See also
Querelle des Bouffons

References
Notes

1. New Grove p. 243: "A theorist of

European stature, he was also France's
leading 18th-century composer."
2. Girdlestone p. 14: "It is customary to
couple him with Couperin as one
couples Haydn with Mozart or Ravel
with Debussy."
3. Beaussant p. 21
 4. Date of birth given by Chabanon in his
Éloge de M. Rameau(1764)
5. New Grove pp. 207–08
6. Girdlestone p. 3
7. Norbert Dufourcq, Le clavecin, p. 87
8. Girdlestone p. 7
9. New Grove
10. New Grove p. 215
11. Girdlestone p. 8
12. New Grove p. 217
13. New Grove p. 219
14. Girdlestone, p. 475
15. New Grove pp. 221–23
16. New Grove p. 220
17. New Grove p. 256
18. Beaussant p. 18
19. New Grove pp. 228–30
20. Girdlestone p. 483
21. New Grove p. 232
22. Viking p. 830
23. New Grove pp. 236–38
24. Quoted in Beaussant p. 19
25. Viking p. 846
26. Lockyer, Herbert (2000). Last Words of
Saints and Sinners. p. 118.
27. New Grove p. 240
28. Malignon p. 16
29. Girdlestone p. 513
30. 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.
31. Girdlestone p. 508
32. Apart from the pieces written for the
Paris fairs, which haven't survived
33. Beaussant pp. 340–43
34. New Grove pp. 246–47
35. Girdlestone p. 55
36. New Grove pp. 243–44
37. Girdlestone pp. 63–71
38. Girdlestone pp. 14–52
39. New Grove pp. 247–55
40. 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.
41. Girdlestone p. 563
42. Viking pp. 1110–11
43. Girdlestone pp. 201–02
44. Girdlestone p. 554
45. New Grove p. 277
46. Hugh Macdonald The Master
Musicians: Berlioz (1982) p. 184
47. Quoted by Graham Sadler in "Vincent
d'Indy and the Rameau Oeuvres
complètes: a case of forgery?", Early
Music, August 1993, p. 418
48. Christensen, Thomas (2002). The
Cambridge History of Western Music
Theory. Cambridge University Press.
p. 54. ISBN 0-521-62371-5.
49. New Grove p. 278
50. Girdlestone p. 520
 51. Christensen, Thomas (2002). The
Cambridge History of Western Music
Theory. Cambridge University Press.
p. 759. ISBN 0-521-62371-5.
52. Bouissou,S. and Herlin, D., Jean-
Philippe Rameau : Catalogue
thématique des œuvres musicales (T.
1, Musique instrumentale. Musique
vocale religieuse et profane), CNRS
Édition et Éditions de la BnF, Paris
2007
53. All dates from Beaussant p. 83

Sources
Beaussant, Philippe, Rameau de A à Z
(Fayard, 1983)
Gibbons, William. Building the Operatic
Museum: Eighteenth-Century Opera in
Fin-de-siècle Paris (University of
Rochester Press, 2013)
Girdlestone, Cuthbert, Jean-Philippe
Rameau: His Life and Work (Dover
paperback edition, 1969)
Holden, Amanda, (Ed) The Viking Opera
Guide (Viking, 1993)
Sadler, Graham, (Ed.), The New Grove
French Baroque Masters
(Grove/Macmillan, 1988)
 Trowbridge, Simon, Rameau (EdAC,
2016)
F. Annunziata, Una Tragédie Lyrique nel
Secolo dei Lumi. Abaris ou Les
Boréades di Jean Philippe Rameau,
https://www.academia.edu/6100318

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media

related to Jean-Philippe Rameau.

Wikiquote has quotations related to:

Jean-Philippe Rameau
 Works written by or about Jean-
Philippe Rameau at Wikisource
Jean-Philippe Rameau at the
Encyclopædia Britannica
(en) Gavotte with Doubles Hypermedia
by Jeff Hall & Tim Smith at the BinAural
Collaborative Hypertext – Shockwave
Player required – ("Gavotte with
Doubles" link NG)
(en) jp.rameau.free.fr Rameau – Le Site
(fr) musicologie.org Biography, List of
Works, bibliography, discography,
theoretical writings, in French
 (en) Jean-Philippe Rameau /
Discography
Magnatune Les Cyclopes by Rameau in
on-line mp3 format (played by Trevor
Pinnock)
Jean-Philippe Rameau at Find a Grave
Jean-Philippe Rameau, "L'Orchestre de
Louis XV" – Suites d'Orchestre, Le
Concert des Nations , dir. Jordi Savall,
Alia Vox, AVSA 9882

Sheet music

Free scores by Jean-Philippe Rameau at

the International Music Score Library
 Project (IMSLP)
Free scores by Jean-Philippe Rameau in
the Choral Public Domain Library
(ChoralWiki)
Rameau free sheet music from the
Mutopia Project

Retrieved from
"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jean-
Philippe_Rameau&oldid=921220540"

Last edited 1 month ago by an anonymous user

Content is available under CC BY-SA 3.0 unless

otherwise noted.