Jean-Philippe Rameau
Compositeur
“The immortal Rameau is the greatest musical genius France has ever produced,” said Camille Saint-Saëns, who at the end of the 19th century worked to bring his colleague, who died in 1764, back into the spotlight. Jean-Philippe Rameau was indeed as important to France as Bach was to Germany and Handel to England. However, in terms of his career as a composer of ballet operas, tragedies and lyrical comedies, he can be considered a late bloomer: “I have been involved in theatre since I was twelve, but I never worked for the opera before I was 50.”
Jean-Philippe Rameau was born in Dijon in 1683, during the reign of the “Sun King”, Louis XIV. Two years older than Bach and Handel, he was the eighth of eleven children born to an organist, who he started to assist at an early age. After a trip to Italy, Rameau began earning his own living as an organist at the age of 19, working in places including Avignon, Paris and Dijon. In 1706, he published his Premier livre de pièces de clavecin, in 1723 the Pièces de clavecin avec une méthode pour la mécanique des doigts and three years later, as a further treatise on music theory, his Nouveau Système de musique théorique. In addition to the Nouvelles Suites de pièces de clavecin, Rameau also wrote motets and cantatas. Around 1731, he met his future patron Alexandre Le Riche de la Pouplinière, whose private orchestra he conducted for over twenty years and who also introduced him to Voltaire. The latter agreed to write the libretto for Rameau’s tragédie en musique Samson, but it fell foul of the censors in 1736. Parallel to his work on this doomed opera project, another one took shape: Hippolyte et Aricie, based on a libretto by Abbé Simon-Joseph Pellegrin. The premiere in October 1733 sparked a controversy between the followers of Rameau and those of the late Jean-Baptiste Lully. Despite this, Rameau composed numerous other stage works, which became increasingly successful – until Louis XV awarded him the title of court composer in 1745. Jean-Philippe Rameau died in Paris on 12 September 1764.
