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Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau (; ; – ) was a French composer and music theorist. Regarded as one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the 18th century, he replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer of his time for the harpsichord, alongside François Couperin. Little is known about Rameau's early years. It was not until the 1720s that he won fame as a major theorist of music with his '' Treatise on Harmony'' (1722) and also in the following years as a composer of masterpieces for the harpsichord, which circulated throughout Europe. He was almost 50 before he embarked on the operatic career on which his reputation chiefly rests today. His debut, '' Hippolyte et Aricie'' (1733), caused a great stir and was fiercely attacked by the supporters of Lully's style of music for its revolutionary use of harmony. Nevertheless, Rameau's pre-eminence in the field of French opera was soon acknowle ...
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Hippolyte Et Aricie
('' Hippolytus and Aricia'') was the first opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau. It was premiered to great controversy by the Académie Royale de Musique at its theatre in the Palais-Royal in Paris on October 1, 1733. The French libretto, by Abbé Simon-Joseph Pellegrin, is based on Racine's tragedy '' Phèdre''. The opera takes the traditional form of a with an allegorical prologue followed by five acts. Early audiences found little else conventional about the work. Background Rameau was almost 50 when he wrote ''Hippolyte et Aricie'' and there was little in his life to suggest he was about to embark on a major new career as an opera composer. He was famous for his works on music theory as well as books of harpsichord pieces. The closest he had come to writing dramatic music was composing a few secular cantatas and some popular pieces for the Paris fairs for his friend Alexis Piron. Yet Rameau's eagerness to write an opera is shown by a letter he wrote in October 1727 to Antoin ...
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French Opera
French opera is both the art of opera in France and opera in the French language. It is one of Europe's most important operatic traditions, containing works by composers of the stature of Rameau, Berlioz, Gounod, Bizet, Massenet, Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc and Messiaen. Many foreign-born composers have played a part in the French tradition, including Lully, Gluck, Salieri, Cherubini, Spontini, Meyerbeer, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi and Offenbach. French opera began at the court of Louis XIV with Jean-Baptiste Lully's (1673), although there had been various experiments with the form before that, most notably by Robert Cambert. Lully and his librettist Quinault created , a form in which dance music and choral writing were particularly prominent. Lully's most important successor was Rameau. After Rameau's death, Christoph Willibald Gluck was persuaded to produce six operas for the Paris Opera in the 1770s. They show the influence of Rameau, but simplified and with gre ...
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Pièces De Clavecin
The French Baroque composer Jean-Philippe Rameau wrote three books of ' for the harpsichord. The first, ', was published in 1706; the second, ', in 1724; and the third, ', in 1726 or 1727. They were followed in 1741 by ', in which the harpsichord can either be accompanied by violin (or flute) and viola da gamba or played alone. An isolated piece, "", survives from 1747. Premier Livre de Pièces de Clavecin (1706) Suite in A minor, RCT 1 # Prélude # Allemande I # Allemande II # Courante # Gigue # Sarabandes I – Sarabande II # Vénitienne # Gavotte # Menuet c. 22 mins Pièces de (1724) Suite in E minor, RCT 2 #Allemande #Courante #Gigue en Rondeau I #Gigue en Rondeau II #Le Rappel des Oiseaux #Rigaudon I – Rigaudon II et Double # Musette en rondeau. Tendrement # Tambourin #La Villageoise. Rondeau c. 22 mins Suite in D major, RCT 3 #Les Tendres Plaintes. Rondeau #Les Niais de Sologne – Premier Double des Niais – Deuxième Double des Niais #Les Soupirs. Tendrement ...
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Querelle Des Bouffons
The ("Quarrel of the Comic Actors"), also known as the ("War of the Comic Actors"), was the name given to a battle of musical philosophies that took place in Paris between 1752 and 1754. The controversy concerned the relative merits of French and Italian opera. It was also known as the ("War of the Corners"), with those favoring French opera in the King's corner, and those favoring Italian opera in the Queen's corner. It was sparked by the reaction of literary Paris to a performance of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's short intermezzo ''La serva padrona'' at the Académie royale de musique in Paris on 1 August 1752. ''La serva padrona'' was performed by an itinerant Italian troupe of comic actors, known as ''buffoni'' (''bouffons'' in French, hence the name of the quarrel). In the controversy that followed, critics such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Friedrich Melchior Grimm, along with other writers associated with the ''Encyclopédie'', praised Italian opera buffa. They att ...
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Dijon
Dijon (, ; ; in Burgundian language (Oïl), Burgundian: ''Digion'') is a city in and the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Côte-d'Or Departments of France, department and of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté Regions of France, region in eastern France. the Communes of France, commune had a population of 156,920. The earliest archaeological finds within the city limits of Dijon date to the Neolithic Period (geology), period. Dijon later became a Roman Empire, Roman settlement named ''Divio'', located on the road between Lyon and Paris. The province was home to the Duke of Burgundy, Dukes of Burgundy from the early 11th until the late 15th centuries, and Dijon became a place of tremendous wealth and power, one of the great European centres of art, learning, and science. The city has retained varied architectural styles from many of the main periods of the past millennium, including Capetian, Gothic architecture, Gothic, and Renaissance architecture, Renaissance. Many still-i ...
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Michel Paul Guy De Chabanon
Michel-Paul Guy de Chabanon (1730, Saint-Domingue – 10 June 1792, Paris) was a violinist, composer, music theorist, and connoisseur of French literature. He was elected to the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (1760) and the Académie française (1779). Biography As fiction writer Michel Paul Guy de Chabanon wrote poetry, elegies (notably that of Rameau), plays (including the tragedy of ''Éponine'') and translations (adjudged by the 19th century ''Dictionnaire Bouillet'' as having "little fidelity o the original text but not lacking in elegance and facility"). As musician and music theorist Michel Paul Guy de Chabanon was also a successful musician, playing the violin in the Concert des Amateurs under the direction of Joseph Bologne, chevalier de Saint-Georges. He was the author of an opera, ''Sémélé, tragédie lyrique'', and of several works on music theory, of which the most valued are his commentaries on music in the work of Aristotle . His double i ...
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Alexandre Le Riche De La Poupelinière
Alexandre Jean Joseph Le Riche de La Pouplinière (), sometimes also written Popelinière ou Poupelinière (Paris, 1693 – 5 December 1762) was an immensely wealthy '' fermier général'', the only son of his father, Alexandre Le Riche (1663–1735), seigneur of Courgains, (Anjou) and Brétignolles (Touraine), likewise a ''fermier général''. Besides his post as tax farmer, he was mainly one of the greatest patrons of music and musicians of the eighteenth century. A true patron of the Enlightenment, he gathered round him a circle of artists, men of letters and musicians. He kept a private orchestra, "the best that was known in those days", according to Jean-François Marmontel (''"… le meilleur concert de musique qui fût connu dans ce temps-là."''), which was led for twenty-two years by Jean-Philippe Rameau, who was succeeded by Johann Stamitz and then by François-Joseph Gossec. The best Italian musicians, violinists, singers, were lodged with him and fed at his table, ...
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André Campra
André Campra (; baptized 4 December 1660 – 29 June 1744) was a French composer and conductor of the Baroque era. The leading French opera composer in the period between Jean-Baptiste Lully and Jean-Philippe Rameau, Campra wrote several '' tragédies en musique'' and ''opéra-ballets'' that were extremely well received. He also wrote three books of cantatas as well as religious music, including a requiem. Biography Campra was the son of Giovanni Francesco Campra, a surgeon and violinist from Graglia, Italy, and Louise Fabry, from Aix-en-Provence. His father was his first music teacher. He was baptised on 4 December 1660 in the Église de la Madeleine in Aix. He became a choirboy in the Cathédrale Saint-Sauveur there in 1674 and commenced ecclesiastical studies four years later. He was reprimanded by his superiors in 1681 for having taken part in theatrical performances without permission, but was nevertheless made a chaplain on 27 May of that year. He served as ''maître d ...
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Tragédie En Musique
''Tragédie en musique'' (, musical tragedy), also known as ''tragédie lyrique'' (, lyric tragedy), is a genre of French opera introduced by Jean-Baptiste Lully and used by his followers until the second half of the eighteenth century. Operas in this genre are usually based on stories from classical mythology or the Italian romantic epics of Tasso and Ariosto. The stories may not necessarily have a tragic ending – in fact, most do not – but the works' atmospheres are suffused throughout with an affect of nobility and stateliness. The standard ''tragédie en musique'' has five acts. Early works in the genre were preceded by an allegorical prologue and, during the lifetime of Louis XIV, these generally celebrated the king's noble qualities and his prowess in war. Each of the five acts usually follows a basic pattern, opening with an aria in which one of the main characters expresses their feelings, followed by dialogue in recitative interspersed with short arias (''petits a ...
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Motet
In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the preeminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to the English musicologist Margaret Bent, "a piece of music in several parts with words" is as precise a definition of the motet as will serve from the 13th to the late 16th century and beyond.Margaret Bent,The Late-Medieval Motet in ''Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music'', edited by Tess Knighton and David Fallows, 114–19 (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1992): 114. . The late 13th-century theorist Johannes de Grocheo believed that the motet was "not to be celebrated in the presence of common people, because they do not notice its subtlety, nor are they delighted in hearing it, but in the presence of the educated and of those who are seeking out subtleties in the arts". Etymology In the early 20th century, it was ge ...
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Michel Pignolet De Montéclair
Michel Pignolet de Montéclair (4 December 1667 – 22 September 1737) was a French composer of the baroque period. He was born Michel Pignolet in Andelot, Haute-Marne, France, and only later added "Montéclair" (the name of a fortress in his home town) to his name. Little is known of his life, and there are no known official portraits. He was the son of a weaver; his entrance into the choir school at the age of nine may have been the only chance of escaping the poverty of a weaver's life. In 1687, he went to Paris and joined the orchestra of the Opera, where he played the basse de violon. In Paris he studied with Jean-Baptiste Moreau. At some point between 1687 and the early years of the new century, he seems to have been ''maître de musique'' to the Prince de Vaudémont and to have followed him to Italy. It was probably from there that he brought the idea to add the double bass to the opera orchestra. All the time Montéclair must have worked as a music teacher of hig ...
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Harpsichord
A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a musical keyboard, keyboard. Depressing a key raises its back end within the instrument, which in turn raises a mechanism with a small plectrum made from quill or plastic that plucks one or more strings. The strings are under tension on a Sound board (music), soundboard, which is mounted in a wooden case; the soundboard amplifies the vibrations from the strings so that the listeners can hear it. Like a pipe organ, a harpsichord may have more than one keyboard Manual (music), manual and even a #Pedal harpsichord, pedal board. Harpsichords may also have Organ stop, stop levers which add or remove additional octaves. Some harpsichords may have a buff stop, which brings a strip of buff leather or other material in contact with the strings, muting their sound to simulate the sound of a plucked lute. The term denotes the whole family of similar plucked-keyboard instruments, including the smaller virginals, virginals#Muselars, m ...
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