Rameau, Jean-Philippe, << ra MOH, zhahn fee LEEP >> (1683-1764), was a French composer and musical theorist of the baroque period. Rameau worked as an organist for about 20 years in several cities before settling in Paris in about 1722. He became famous that year with the publication of a book of music theory called Treatise on Harmony. The book became a landmark in the history of harmony and was the first of several works he wrote on harmony.
At the age of 50, Rameau began a new career as an opera composer. He wrote more than 25 operas and opera-ballets, beginning with the opera Hippolyte and Aricie (1733). His major opera-ballets included Les Indes galantes (1735) and Les Fetes d’Hebe (1739). His operas include Castor and Pollux (1737) and Dardanus (1739, 1744). Rameau’s operas were controversial because of their unconventional use of orchestral color, vivid harmonies, and speechlike singing called recitative. Rameau engaged in a quarrel with the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, largely over the preferred style of opera. Rameau favored the French style, and Rousseau supported opera in the Italian fashion.
Rameau was born in September 1683, in Dijon. In addition to his theoretical writings and compositions for the stage, he wrote many suites for an early keyboard instrument called the harpsichord. In 1745, Rameau was appointed chamber music composer to King Louis XV. The composer died on Sept. 12, 1764.
See also Opera (French opera).
