Jean-⁠PhilippeRameau

When Hippolyte et Aricie opened at the Paris Opéra on 1 October 1733, Rameau had just turned fifty. One passage had already been cut. A trio for the Fates, with harmonies that proved too difficult for the singers and players in rehearsal, was removed before the première. The opera divided its audience. Admirers heard a new theatrical voice, while devotees of Lully heard an attack on their inheritance. It was the first opera by Rameau, an organist from Dijon.

1683–⁠1722Organ posts and the Traité de l’harmonie

His father played the organ in Dijon. Jean-⁠Philippe followed the same trade in a succession of French churches, with appointments in Clermont-⁠Ferrand, Dijon and Lyon and an early attempt to establish himself in Paris. There he published his first harpsichord book in 1706. It begins with an unmeasured prelude, in which the player must work out the timing of the notes, followed by a faster section in regular metre. Allemandes, courante and sarabandes follow. He was twenty-three, and he was writing within the French keyboard tradition before Couperin had published his first book.

Back at Clermont-⁠Ferrand, Rameau worked on the book that would make his name. The Traité de l’harmonie appeared in 1722, its preface declaring: “Music is a science which must have definite rules.” He wanted to explain the chords an organist knew from practice, and why one led naturally to another. When C, E and G are placed in a different order the bass changes, but the chord is still recognisably the same chord. From observations like this he built his account of the fundamental bass, a sequence of roots beneath the notes actually being played.

The keyboardRameau’s harpsichord pieces

The harpsichord books of 1724 and about 1728 contain many descriptive pieces. In Le Rappel des oiseaux the keyboard imitates bird calls. In Les Cyclopes the hands alternate like drumsticks, and then the left hand crosses over the right to strike high and low notes; Rameau explained both techniques in his preface. La Poule opens with repeated notes imitating a hen clucking and builds to a passage of great activity. The tune of the A minor Gavotte is followed by six doubles, or variations, each more demanding for the fingers than the last.

In L’Enharmonique a note is reinterpreted enharmonically, and the next chord takes the music into an unexpected key. Rameau wrote a preface explaining the passage. In the Pièces de clavecin en concerts of 1741 he gave the harpsichord a fully written-out part, with a violin or flute and a viol or second violin alongside, so the keyboard player did not have to fill in chords from a figured bass as usual.

1733Hippolyte et Aricie

The financier Alexandre Le Riche de La Pouplinière supplied the orchestra and society Rameau needed. His household brought the composer into contact with Voltaire and the abbé Simon-⁠Joseph Pellegrin, who finally provided a libretto. Hippolyte et Aricie takes its lovers and its dangerous stepmother from Racine’s Phèdre, and adds gods, sea monsters and a whole act in the underworld. In Pellegrin’s libretto the young lovers survive, while Phèdre’s catastrophe takes place around them.

In the underworld, the Fates tell Thésée that the hell he has escaped awaits him in his own house. The trio Rameau wrote for that prophecy was cut in 1733 and restored in 1757; its harmony leaves the destination of a chord uncertain at the moment his future is announced. Above ground, horns lead the hunt, and flutes play blasts of wind when the sea monster appears. Rameau also set a cheerful dance against the drama. Thésée, convinced that his son has betrayed him, must sit through a celebration of his safe return, and the sailors dance their rigaudons while he waits to call down punishment.

1735–⁠44Les Indes galantes and later operas

Les Indes galantes brought separate love stories to the stage in 1735, with Turkish, Peruvian and Persian settings. The North American act was added in 1736. Its famous dance had begun as a harpsichord piece. Rameau wrote Les Sauvages after seeing two Indigenous visitors from Louisiana dance at the Comédie-⁠Italienne in 1725. In the opera, Zima rejects both her French and Spanish suitors and chooses Adario. The rejected Europeans end by joining the celebration.

1745–⁠64Platée, the Querelle, Les Boréades

By the time of the Querelle des Bouffons of 1752, Rameau, who had once disturbed French opera, had become its chief defender. Performances of Pergolesi’s La serva padrona by a visiting Italian company started a new dispute in Paris. Rousseau championed Italian melody and attacked French musical speech. Rameau replied from his conviction that the force of melody rested on harmony. He continued to compose during the dispute, and the comic Les Paladins reached the stage in 1760.

Rehearsals for Les Boréades began in 1763 and were stopped before a public performance took place. In the opera the queen, Alphise, wants to marry the man she loves; the descendants of the north wind oppose the match, and a storm breaks up the festivities. Rameau died in Paris on 12 September 1764, shortly before his eighty-first birthday. The opera received its first full staging in 1982, at Aix-en-Provence under John Eliot Gardiner.