Jean-Philippe was sent to school at the Jesuit Collège des Godrans, where, although he was quick in his musical studies, was an otherwise poor student and was asked to leave, thereby crushing his parents’ hopes that he would enter the profession of law.

As a young man Rameau spent a short time in Milan, joining a group of touring Milanese musicians, as a violinist, and by 1702, at the age of 19, he was engaged temporarily as an organist in Avignon, before signing a six-year contract to be the organist at the cathedral in Clermont. Already beginning to show signs of his itinerant nature, he left after four years to live in Paris, where his first book of harpsichord pieces was published and he again found work as an organist. By 1709 he was back in Dijon, succeeding his father as organist at Notre-Dame, only to venture briefly to Lyons, and then again to Clermont, where he signed a 29-year contract as cathedral organist and teacher. It was likely here that he worked on his Traité de l’Harmonie, and Nouveau Système de musique théorique, and for the greater part of his life he was known primarily as a theorist because of these seminal works. Feeling constrained in Clermont, and eager to have his treatise published, he asked to leave his position to travel to Paris, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Rameau, at the age of 50, was relatively late in coming into his own as an opera composer. His first opera, Hippolyte et Aricie, premiered in Paris in 1733, its striking harmonies inciting a flurry of chatter amongst the musical intelligentsia and inflaming the divide between the conservative Lullists and the more progressive Ramistes.

He went on to compose operas of stunning originality, demonstrating an exceptionally imaginative ability to create, both vocally and in his orchestration, the depth and breadth of musical evocation, from cacophony, triumph, and stormy fury, to tenderness and sorrow.

Of all of Rameau’s cantatas, the two we will perform are his earliest, likely composed around 1715 in either Lyons or Clermont.

Aquilon et Orithie (or L’Enlèvement d’Orithie) recounts the Greek myth in which Boreas (Aquilo in Roman mythology), the god of the North Wind, falls in love with Oreithyia, princess of Athens. She initially rebuffs his advances and is met with a more forceful expression of his passion, including a storm and a kidnapping; in the end, capitulating to his desires. In this cantata, Rameau lets loose an Italianate rage in the violin, in the air “Servez mes feux”, but returns to a tender and very French final air in e minor.

Of the two cantatas, Thétis is unapologetically French throughout, and again we encounter the motifs of thunder (preceding Jupiter’s air) and a storm passage (following Neptune’s air), both dramatic elements favoured in French opera. Thétis is an exceptionally beautiful sea goddess, courted by both Zeus (Jupiter) and Poseidon (Neptune); loud and terrifying male figures, vying for power and for her affections. Alas, their grandiloquent displays hold no sway with Thétis, for she follows her heart and chooses a mere mortal, Peleus, for her lover. The cantata concludes with the adjuration:

“Lovely ladies, your great fortune destines you to choose your victor for yourselves. That love alone may guide you Only consult your own heart…”

The instrumental music on this programme is part of the tradition of French accompanied keyboard music which began to emerge around the third decade of the 18th century, most famously in Mondonville’s Op. 3, c. 1738. This genre is distinguished from the Italian trio sonata where the harpsichord functions as a continuo instrument, playing the bass line and realizing the harmonies as indicated by figures.

Rameau’s “Pieces de clavecin en concerts”, published in 1741, consists of a fully conceived and written out keyboard part, with two accompanying parts; either a violin or German flute, and a viola (da gamba), or 2nd violin. In his introduction Rameau explains that he has presented the music in score “because the Harmony of the three instruments must, not only, be blended together, but also the Performers understand each other, and above all the Violin and Viola be subservient to the Harpsichord, in distinguishing what is accompaniment, from what makes a part of the Subject, to soften still more in the first case.”

While the addition of the accompanying instruments is not superfluous, and indeed creates a beguiling and shimmery effect, Rameau emphasizes the importance of the harpsichord, declaring that “these pieces perform’d upon the Harpsichord alone, leave the mind perfectly satisfied.”

This experimentation with obligato and optional accompanying instruments with keyboard emerged during the fertile period of simmering debates amongst the public, musicians, and music critics regarding the merits of national styles, particularly highlighting the differences between French and Italian styles, but also, as previously mentioned, between those who were loyal to Lully and those in thrall to Rameau. It was also a time when the inevitable sharing of tastes and styles, “les goûts réunis”, was transpiring both in discourse and in composition. While Mondonville’s Op. 3 shows a deliberate inclusion of Italian style, Rameau’s “Pièces de clavecin en concert” are perhaps less hybrid and more quintessentially French, with their idiomatic writing for harpsichord and the partiality to dance movements and programmatic or referential titles. The titles of the various movements, such as “La Laborde, La Boucon, La Forqueray”, etc. make reference to musical acquaintances, while “L’Agaçante” is likely a character piece, perhaps referring to something or someone who is contrary or vexatious.

Natalie Mackie