Jean-Philippe Rameau was a French composer and music theorist.
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38 Facts About Jean-Philippe Rameau
2.
Jean-Philippe Rameau was almost 50 before he embarked on the operatic career on which his reputation chiefly rests today.
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3.
Jean-Philippe 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.
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4.
Details of Jean-Philippe Rameau's life are generally obscure, especially concerning his first forty years, before he moved to Paris for good.
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5.
Jean-Philippe Rameau was a secretive man, and even his wife knew nothing of his early life, which explains the scarcity of biographical information available.
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6.
Jean-Philippe Rameau 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.
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7.
The contract was for six years, but Jean-Philippe Rameau left before then and took up similar posts in Lyon and Clermont-Ferrand.
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8.
Jean-Philippe 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.
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9.
In spite of his fame as a music theorist, Jean-Philippe Rameau had trouble finding a post as an organist in Paris.
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10.
Jean-Philippe Rameau 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 tragedie en musique after seeing Monteclair's Jephte in 1732.
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11.
Just before this time, Jean-Philippe Rameau had made the acquaintance of the powerful financier Alexandre Le Riche de La Poupeliniere, who became his patron until 1753.
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12.
In 1731, Jean-Philippe Rameau became the conductor of La Poupeliniere's private orchestra, which was of an extremely high quality.
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13.
Jean-Philippe Rameau held the post for 22 years; he was succeeded by Johann Stamitz and then Francois-Joseph Gossec.
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14.
La Poupeliniere's salon enabled Jean-Philippe Rameau to meet some of the leading cultural figures of the day, including Voltaire, who soon began collaborating with the composer.
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15.
Meanwhile, Jean-Philippe Rameau had introduced his new musical style into the lighter genre of the opera-ballet with the highly successful Les Indes galantes.
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16.
Jean-Philippe Rameau 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.
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17.
Jean-Philippe Rameau produced his most important comic opera, Platee, as well as two collaborations with Voltaire: the opera-ballet Le temple de la gloire and the comedie-ballet La princesse de Navarre.
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18.
Jean-Philippe Rameau had written an opera, Les muses galantes, but Rameau was unimpressed by this musical tribute.
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19.
Jean-Philippe Rameau's had La Poupeliniere 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 Poupeliniere's financial support and protection.
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20.
Jean-Philippe Rameau pursued his activities as a theorist and composer until his death.
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21.
Jean-Philippe Rameau 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.
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22.
Jean-Philippe Rameau composed prolifically in the late 1740s and early 1750s.
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23.
Jean-Philippe Rameau helped his nephew Jean-Francois when he came to Paris and helped establish the career of Claude-Benigne Balbastre in the capital.
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24.
Jean-Philippe 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.
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25.
Jean-Philippe Rameau appeared revolutionary to the Lullyistes, disturbed by 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.
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26.
The incomprehension Jean-Philippe Rameau received from his contemporaries stopped him 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 execute it correctly.
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27.
At least 26 years, Jean-Philippe 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.
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28.
Musicologists can only guess at the dates of Jean-Philippe Rameau's six surviving cantatas, and the names of the librettists are unknown.
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29.
Jean-Philippe Rameau published his first book of harpsichord pieces in 1706.
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30.
Jean-Philippe 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 the lack of other instruments would show the least.
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31.
Jean-Philippe Rameau 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 fetes de l'Hymen et de l'Amour, Zais, Nais, Zoroastre, La naissance d'Osiris, and Anacreon .
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33.
Jean-Philippe Rameau made his acquaintance of most of them at La Poupeliniere's salon, at the Societe du Caveau, or at the house of the Comte de Livry, all meeting places for leading cultural figures of the day.
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34.
The versification, too, was mediocre, and Jean-Philippe Rameau often had to have the libretto modified and rewrite the music after the premiere because of the ensuing criticism.
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35.
Jean-Philippe Rameau had used accompanied recitatives, and the overtures in his later operas reflected the action to come, 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 Jean-Philippe Rameau.
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36.
Over half of Jean-Philippe Rameau's operas have now been recorded, in particular by conductors such as John Eliot Gardiner, William Christie, and Marc Minkowski.
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37.
Emett quoted that Jean-Philippe Rameau made music for his school and the shopping centre without him knowing it.
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38.
Jean-Philippe Rameau posited the discovery of the "fundamental law" or what he referred to as the "fundamental bass" of all Western music.
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