Jean-Philippe Rameau
Opéra-Ballet Les Indes galantes, RCT 44
Entrée III Scène 7 : Les Fleurs (Tendre Amour)
Year: 1735
Live at the Philharmonic of Paris by France Musique Concerts 2019
Les Indes galantes
Les Arts Florissants & William Christie
1991 harmonia mundi
Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)
Jean-Philippe Rameau is a French composer and music theorist during the High Baroque period. Rameau's lyrical work forms the largest part of his musical contribution and marks the apogee of French classicism, whose canons were forcefully opposed to those of Italian music until well into the 18th century. In this area, the composer's most famous creation is the opera-ballet « Les Indes galantes » created in 1735. This part of its production remained forgotten for almost two centuries, but has now been largely rediscovered. His works for harpsichord, on the other hand, have always been present in the repertoire and were played in the 19th century (on the piano) alongside those of Bach, Couperin or Scarlatti. At the very beginning of the 18th century, a new genre appeared, which was very successful, the French cantata, a secular form which comes from the Italian cantata. It was created around 1700 by the poet Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, in liaison with French composers. This literary and musical form is unrelated to the Germanic cantata often linked to the Lutheran religion, such as those of Johann Sebastian Bach. The cantatas are for Rameau the first contact with lyrical music, requiring reduced means and therefore accessible to a still unknown musician. Rameau devotes himself almost exclusively to lyrical music, so the above was only a long preparation; strong in theoretical and aesthetic principles from which nothing can deviate, he devotes himself to the complete spectacle that constitutes French lyric theater. On a strictly musical level, it is richer and more varied than contemporary Italian opera, notably by the place given to choirs and dances, but also by the musical continuity which arises from the respective relationships of the recitative and the arias. Another notable difference is that when Italian opera gives the most space to female sopranos and castrati, French opera ignores this fashion.
The lyrical art of Lully to Rameau is closer to the ideal of Monteverdi, the music must in principle serve the text, a paradox when we compare the science of Rameau's music and the indigence of his librettos. A subtle balance occurs between the more or less musical parts, melodic recitative on the one hand, tunes often closer to arioso on the other, virtuoso ariettes finally with a more Italian allure. This musicality continues and therefore also prefigures the Wagnerian drama more than the « reformed » opera of Gluck which will appear at the end of the century. Despite his success as a composer, Rameau attributed even more importance to his theoretical works. The ideas presented in his first « Treatise on Harmony » published in 1722 while he was still organist at the cathedral of Clermont-Ferrand, which established him as the greatest theoretician of his time, were already maturing well years before he left this city. Rameau's music is characterized by the exceptional knowledge of this composer who is above all theorist of his art. She is addresses not only at intelligence and Rameau knew how to ideally put his purpose into practice when he asserts « I seek to hide art through art itself ». The paradox of this music is that it is new, in the implementation of previously non-existent processes, but that it materializes in superannuated forms. Rameau appears revolutionary to the Lullysts, baffled by the complex harmony she displays, and reactionary to the philosophers who cannot or do not want to listen to him. We can only bring together the destinies of Rameau and Bach, the two giants of 18th century musical science, whom it isolated from all their colleagues, when everything else separated them. The French musicians of the Romantic period were not mistaken, in the midst of Germanic musical hegemony, allowing the gradual rediscovery of his work. Citation: « True music is the language of the heart » Jean-Philippe Rameau
Lucien