French composer. The French music recognizes today as Jean-Philippe Rameau, composer and theorist, one of his larger Masters.

Our design of the agreements had been different and undoubtedly incomplete without the Treaty of the harmony which it published in 1722.

The last and illustrates floret of the musical art of Versailles, Rameau exceeds nevertheless this framework by the universality of its genius. The perfection of its dramatic music speaks to any man the language old and however familiar of timeless works.

The slow maturation of the genius
Jean-Philippe Rameau undoubtedly receives her father, organist with Notre-Dame of Dijon, her first lessons of music. Raise Jesuits, it precociously stops its humanities to more devote but under investigation violin, organ and composition.  

In 1701, probably following a sorrow in love, Rameau a voyage in Italy undertakes, without succumbing to attraction that this country exerted then on most French musicians. Of return in France as of the following year - it is then nineteen years old -, the young man becomes the violonist of a band of strolling players before fixing itself at Avignon, then in Clermont-Ferrand, where it holds the organ of the cathedral of 1702 to 1705.  

After the publication of its First Book of parts of harpsichord published in Paris in 1706, Rameau vainly tries to obtain a stable situation in the capital. Successor of its father to the platform of Notre-Dame of Dijon of 1709 to 1714 - it makes a short stay in Lyon in 1713 -, it will definitively leave his birthplace following a personal drama: the woman whom he loves prefers him her younger brother, musician like him. Again organist in Clermont-Ferrand, Rameau works out his Treaty of the harmony reduced to his natural principles, whose publication, in 1722, was going soon to draw the attention of the musicians, the scientists and the philosophers.  

The Parisian career
In 1726, Rameau, which settled in Paris in 1723, marries the girl of a musician of the court. “Extremely honest, soft and pleasant” (Maret), Marie-Louise Mangot was in addition equipped with a pretty voice. Branch starts to think of the scene. It composes of the dance tunes for the theater of the Fair and does not fear to solicit the most famous librettist of the time, the Houdar academician of the Mound, which does not condescend to answer him.  

Branch is made invaluable relations however. Its meeting with the farmer general the Rich person of Pouplinière, which names it directing its particular music, probably had a decisive influence on the continuation of its career. Directed by Branch, the concerts of the financier attracted in Passy the most brilliant spirits: Voltaire, who wrote for the composer a Samson that the censure refused; the abbot Pilgrim, author of the booklet of Hippolyte and Aricie, the first work of Branch represented with the theater.  

Silent, crossing the garden of the Palais Royal on its long legs, lowered head and hat under the arm, as it appears in a portrait of Carmontelle, Rameau was it only one severe spirit, only concerned about its art? “His wife and her daughter have to only die when they want, written Diderot: provided that the bells of the parish which will sound for them continue to resound the twelfth or the seventeenth, all will be well.”

Jean-Philippe Rameau was indeed a man as not very sensitive to softnesses of the existence as indifferent to the surface demonstrations of glory. It recorded never letters which made it knight about Saint-Michel a few years before its death, which occurred on on September 12th, 1764, “to avoid an expenditure which was due to him more in heart than the nobility”. But this hard bark dissimulated only hardly the generosity of the man and the heat of the polemist. Seldom moved, he however asked the Balbastre organist: “My friend, make cry to me.”

Lullists and ramists
Carried out into private in Pouplinière, guard of Branch, the Hippolyte opera and Aricie caused immediately a war of make out between zealoies and detractors of the composer. For the lullists, Rameau is only one “distiller of baroques agreements” who neglects the melody, reduced line the voice to be only “the accompaniment of the accompaniment” (Rousseau) and puts in danger the national art represented by Lully. The famous saying of the old Campra composer gives the ton of the opposing party: “There is, in this opera, enough music to make ten of them.” The ramists, of which the number was not going to cease growing, recognized from the start the richness of the harmony and the power of the orchestrations of Hippolyte and Aricie.  

As for the public, it did not hold large account of this quarrel and triumphantly accommodated the four larger masterpieces of the composer fiftysomething: the gallant Indies (1735), Beaver and Pollux (1737), Festivals of Hébé and Dardanus (1739). In 1745, Rameau obtains the prestigious title of composer of the Room of the king. The Princess of Navarre, written in collaboration with Voltaire, is given to Versailles for the marriage of the Dolphin. A dozen works are born, among which Platée, or Junon is jealous of (1745), Pygmalion (1748), Zoroastre (1749), Acanthe and Céphise (1751). Jean-Philippe Rameau is thus with the apogee of her career when the “quarrel of the buffoons bursts”, which precipitates it in the center of the debates.  

Branch and the “quarrel of the Buffoons”
In 1752, an Italian troop of passage to Paris takes again the serva padrona, comic opera of Pergolèse which had obtained only one mean success at the time of its first representation, in 1746. The “quarrel of the buffoons”, or “war of the corners”, divides soon into two clans savagely opposite the partisans of the Italian music and the defenders of the French music: represented by Grimm, Rousseau and the Encyclopedists, the first form with the Opera the “corner of the queen”; musicians and friends of Branch belong to the rival clan, or “corner of the king”.  

After being qualified, twenty years before, of “revolutionist”, Rameau becomes thus, paradoxically, the target of the Italianists. Quarrel more literary than musical, maintained by Grimm (Letter of Mr. Grimm on “Omphale” of Destouches) and Rousseau (Letter on the French music), it constrained Rameau to give the counterpart in its analysis of the monolog of Armide de Lully (Observations on our instinct for the music, 1754) and to confuse the non-specialists in a writing in the polemical tone, Erreurs on the music in the “Encyclopedia” (1755).

Branch, theorist of the harmony

“The music is natural for us, we owe only with the pure instinct the pleasant feeling that it makes us test”, affirms Rameau. The quotation could be allotted to Rousseau if the word “feeling” described as “pleasant” did not recover makes the concept of “feeling of it”. According to Branch, the music does not affect to us owing to a particular sensitivity, but because of our nature even. Absolute reference to the XVII E century, two concepts of nature face: a “natural” music is, according to Rousseau, an art which affects the human heart; for Branch, the man is touched by the music because it is a sound body belonging to nature and vibrating with it. Rousseau thinks of the nature of the man, when Rameau calls upon the nature of the things.  

The Treaty of the harmony reduced to its natural principles (1722) rests indeed on a expensive concept with the classicism: the nature of the things not being accessible directly, one cannot reach it that by the analysis. Branch will not cease affirming that “the music is a science which must have unquestionable rules”.  

Extremely Cartesian postulate, the composer claimed to discover by the experiment and the reason the true principle of the music. Branch notes first of all that the harmonics produced by low fundamental are plain between them according to the principle of resonance. The theory of the inversions - according to which C-semi-ground is the equivalent of mid--ground-C or ground-C-semi - is posed, simplifying the comprehension of the harmony: the multiplicity of the agreements is summarized in a small number of generating agreements.  

The second book of Parts of harpsichord very early reflects the concerns of Branch in the field of the agreements. The harmonic invention of the New Continuations of parts of harpsichord is certainly not the only illustration of the most famous theory of Branch: primacy of the harmony on the melody.  

When the listener believes to succumb to the only power of a melody, he hears also the underlain harmony. Branch was one of the first to also clearly analyze this component of the Western music, in which each note, included in the tonal diagram, contains a whole harmonic world.  
 
Branch, musician playwright

Man of its time, faithful to the theory of the imitation of nature, Rameau conceived the music like an art of the representation. “I always had some object under the eyes while composing”, he confessed.  

Parts of harpsichord
Musical form born from the succession of several dances gathered under the same tonality by affinity or contrast, the continuation is with its apogee when appears, in 1706, the First Book of parts of harpsichord of Jean-Philippe Rameau. After having been faithful to the plan of the continuation, the composer will free himself from the traditional sequence of the dances, in 1724.  

Most Pièces of harpsichord of the second collection carry indeed descriptive titles. Slipped between a gigue and a rigadoon, “the Recall of the birds” allures by its reducing tonality. Follow a “Haversack” and “Tambourine celebrates it”, of which we will find a version orchestrated in the Festivals of Hébé. Thrown into a panic eighth notes of the “Swirls”, powerful breadth of “Denied of the Sologne”, crossings of hands on the great intervals of the “Cyclops”: the writing of the harpsichord requires power and virtuosity - let us note that a Method for mechanics of the fingers is united with this second book -, it also betrays the dramatic exuberance of a composer who did not write yet for the theater.  

The New Continuations of parts of harpsichord of 1728 are more daring still. Branch seems to be there delivered to a research conscious of the innovation. “The harmony which causes this effect is not thrown randomly”, specifies it in the foreword in connection with “Enharmonique”, penultimate part of the collection. The technique of the keyboard is still widened, and the nimble arpeggios, in broken agreements, of “the Egyptian woman” are quasi orchestral. In the Parts of harpsichord in concert (for a violin or a flute, a viol or a second violin) of 1741, the harpsichord gives up its basic role continuous to become a concerting instrument.  

The opera house
Jean-Philippe Rameau occupied primarily of the functions of organist until the forty years age. It composed however little of sacred music and was unaware of its first instrument, the organ. Some motets for great chorus, such Quam dilecta, are only testimonies of its activity of choir master.  

Considered before just like a composer of operas, Rameau approached this kind more tardily than any dramatic musician. The first representation of Hippolyte and Aricie constitutes according to his contemporaries “a revolution in their music”. This revolution affected the bottom more that the form, in spite of a fundamental innovation: sometimes definitely inspired by the subject of the part, as in Zoroastre or Zaïs, some of its openings make of the composer the true inventor of the music with program.  

The term “opera” recovers in fact the various kinds in which Rameau was illustrated: Hippolyte and Aricie, Beaver and Pollux, Dardanus, Zoroastre and Boréades are grand operas in five acts, or lyric tragedies. Parts in three acts, of a lighter kind, the pastoral heroic ones put in scene hero and shepherds within a pastoral framework: Zaïs, Naïs, Acanthus and Céphise belong to this kind.  

All these works have a logically followed intrigue. Such is also the case of the comic opera Platée - qualified “ballet buffoon” in spite of the presence of words. There exist however parts, like the gallant Indies, only formed by the meeting of different subjects, according to the taste of the time. The ceremony of the worship of the Sun of the second act is perhaps one of the parts more seizing of all the theater of Branch.  

Jean-Philippe Rameau designed the orchestra like one of the elements of the drama. It there introduced the clarinet, whose employment was still unusual (Zoroastre), and excelled in the representation of the natural elements: floods in fury, earthquakes, thunder, scenes imposing whose French public was fond of delicacies.  

The contribution of Branch to the evolution of the harmonic language was underlined many times: the use of formed dissonants of superimposed thirds, the use of the decreased seventh - proscribed by Lully - and of the increased sixth, the richness of a writing revivified and subjected to an imagination of colourist contributed to create effects of an unequalled dramatic intensity, more impressive of the overall scenes (scene of the dream to the fourth act of Dardanus) to the trio of Parques of Hippolyte and Aricie.