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Stephenson:Neal:The Confusion:360:Rameau

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The Confusion page about Jean-Philippe Rameau

Stephensonia

Ponchartrain seems to be a high tone Jazz cafe in New Orleans. Not able to link it back to Belle France yet. But it's all Baroque.

Community: Jean-Philippe Rameau

Violin as guitar
**Jean-Philippe Rameau
for a time a violinist in the Lyons Opera

his Traité de l'harmonie he gained the immediate attention and respect of Parisian

musicians. But while his music - harpsichord pieces, cantatas and music for the theaters

  • was also much admired, he was unable to win an organ post in Paris.** Ponchartrain's performance of an air by Rameau might have been made somewhat difficult by the fact that Jean-Philippe Rameau was around 9 years old in 1691 (only his baptism date is known, not his birthday, as was common at the time) !

Rameau first known professional position was as provisional church organist in 1702 and his name started to be known around 1706 when he moved to Paris for the first time and published his first volume of harpsichord pieces.

Unless, of course, Pontchartrain was playing something by Jean-Philippe's father, Jean Rameau, who was also a musician. He certainly never reached anything approaching the level of fame of his son, though, he was mainly a church organist all his life (and most of the time holding the titular position for several churches, mostly in Dijon) so I think we can just write this off as a little mistake.

Of interest about Rameau and the context of the Baroque Cycle, his Treaty on Harmony was published in 1722 and his "Nouveau Système de Musique Théorique" (A new System of Theoretical Music) in 1729. A copy was sent to the Royal Society and reviewed by the mathematician Brook Taylor, to be found in the proceedings of on 18 January 1727/8 (information found in the Grove Dictionary of Composers).

Wikipedia: Jean-Philippe Rameau (Enhanced)

Jean-Philippe Rameau (September 25, 1683 - September 12, 1764) was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera, and was attacked by those who preferred Lully's style.

Rameau's father was the organist at the cathedral of Dijon, and had his son practicing harpsichord at the earliest age possible. However, Rameau began his studies in the field of law before deciding that the study and composition of music was his true passion. He spent much of his youth in Italy and Paris, and for a time followed his father's footsteps as organist at Clermont Cathedral. It wasn't until he reached his 40s that Rameau achieved prominence in the field of composition, but by the death of Couperin in 1733 he was arguably the leading French composer of the time. From then on he devoted himself primarily to opera.

He took on pupils, among them the talented Marie-Louise Mangeot, who became his wife in 1726. Following the appearance of his third book of harpsichord pieces, which like his second (1724) was largely devoted to pièces de caractère, he published his Observations sur la methode d'accompagnement pour le clavecin in the Mercure de France (February 1730), drawing upon his own brilliant technique of improvising on a figured bass. In 1727 he competed unsuccessfully with Daquin for the organ post at St Paul, bringing to a close his career as a church organist. By then he had published his second and more controversial harmony treatise, Nouveau système de musique théorique (1726), which led to disputatious exchanges with Monteclair in the pages of the Mercure de France (1729-30).

He collaborated with Voltaire on a number of operas, in particular La Princesse de Navarre which earned him the King's title of Compositeur de la Musique de la Chambre. Rameau is mentioned in Diderot's novel Rameau's Nephew.

He is perhaps most well known for his theories regarding tonality through basse fondamentales or root notes, the idea that chords remain equivalent under inversion, described in Traité de l'harmonie (1722) and Nouveau système de musique théorique (1726).

At his death in 1764, over 1500 people attended Rameau's memorial service in Paris, held at the Pères de l'Oratoire, with one hundred and eighty musicians from the Opéra and the Musiques de Cour performing pieces from his operas. A number of other memorial services were also held in Paris and in the provinces.

Works

Instrumental works

  • Les pièces de clavecin en concert (1741)
  • several suites for harpsichord (3 books published 1706, 1724, 1728).
  • several orchestral suites extracted from his operas

Lyric tragedy

  • Hippolyte et Aricie (1734)
  • Castor et Pollux (1737)
  • Dardanus (1739)
  • Zoroastre (1756)
  • Les Boréades (1763)

Other operas

  • Les Indes galantes (1735-36)
  • La Princesse de Navarre (1744, textbook by Voltaire)
  • Platée (1745)
  • Les Paladins (1760)