Born in 1683, Jean-Philippe Rameau was taught music before reading and writing.
He was the seventh of eleven children born to an organist in Dijon, France and young Jean-Philippe absorbed his father’s music. He became fascinated with Opera as a preteen and would reportedly disrupt his school classes by singing.
Though he was sent to the Jesuit Collège des Godrans in Dijon with the aim for him to study law, he was expelled after only two years.
He wasn’t interested in schoolwork, only music. He neglected his studies so much that he couldn’t write well and only learned to do so at the age of 17 when he was embarrassed by the poor quality of the love letters he wrote to a young widow. His father sent him to Milan to break up the relationship.
As far as we know, his father was his only teacher, for music or any other subject. Whatever he knew was what he figured out on his own. It may be that this lack of structured learning gave him a certain intellectual freedom which led him to new ideas.
Maybe it helped him become one of our greatest music theorists.
We don’t know much about Rameau’s early adulthood, but he worked as a violinist in Italy, moved between positions as an organist at various churches in eastern France, and tried to establish himself as a composer.
His early attempts at composition were largely unsuccessful and his first book of harpsichord pieces, published in 1706, gained little attention.
He eventually settled in Paris. During this period, he wrote liturgical motets and secular cantatas. More importantly, he thought about how music works.
Rameau’s talent as a keyboardist and teacher began to gain recognition in the 1720s.
His compositions for harpsichord, such as the “Pièces de Clavecin,” showed his genius in creating intricate, expressive music for the instrument.
His compositions blended Italian virtuosity with French elegance and decorum, and he built a strong reputation in Paris but was relatively unknown outside a small circle of musicians.
Rameau’s breakthrough, however, came not as a composer but as a music theorist.
In 1722, he published the Traité de l’harmonie réduite à ses principes naturels (Treatise on Harmony Reduced to Its Natural Principles). This treatise laid out his ideas about harmony. He built on the work of earlier theorists, like the famous French Opera composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, but took their concepts to a new level of structure and clarity.
The treatise is the foundation of all Western music theory.
In the Traité de l’harmonie, Rameau formalized several key concepts of harmony that remain integral to Western music theory today. It influences everything from Opera to Romanticism to Jazz to Blues to Rock, R&B, Hip Hop, and whatever else the kids are listening to today.
Rameau introduced the idea that harmony was based on a fundamental bass, or a root note, from which chords were built. He called it “fundamental bass” and he argued that each chord had a natural relationship to this root, and that this provided the foundation for harmonic progression. When you play a C chord, the C is the essential note. It’s fundamental.
With that in mind, he was one of the first theorists to articulate the concept of chord Inversions. He explained that notes of a chord could be played in different orders and retain their identity but have different harmonic functions.
Rameau also introduced the hierarchical system of the tonic, dominant, and subdominant, which became the basic building blocks of tonal harmony. This framework allowed composers to understand the relationship between different chords and how they could be used to structure a piece of music.
In the key of C, where the notes are C, D, E, F, G., A, and B, the chord built on the first note, C, is the tonic chord. The chord with the fourth note, F, is the subdominant, and the chord built on the fifth note, G, is the dominant.
If you’ve ever heard blues musicians talking about playing a 1-4-5, they mean a chord pattern that uses the tonic, subdominant, and dominant chords. These three chords are the most frequently used regardless of genre.
The treatise also described the role of cadences: Specific chord progressions that create a sense of resolution — and codified the idea that dominant chords naturally resolve to tonic chords.
Think about the end of a hymn when everyone sings, “Amen.” That’s the progression from the subdominant to the tonic and, according to Rameau, that’s why it feels final.
Or look at “Louie Louie” by The Kingsmen.
It’s only three chords for the entire song, and those three chords are the tonic, subdominant, and dominant.
Whether The Kingsmen knew that or not is a separate question, but the cadence through the chords back to the tonic is ever so satisfying.
There’s some evidence that Rameau wrote at least the music for “Frère Jacques,” the French children’s song. It also uses only the tonic, subdominant, and dominant.
This concept of the subdominant and dominant chords resolving to the tonic underlies much of tonal music to this day. Atonal music, of course, throws all those rules out the window, but few people like it.
The Traité de l’harmonie is one of the most important theory books in music history, and Rameau is rightly credited with establishing harmony as the central organizing principle of Western Classical music. It was revolutionary in its systematic explanation of harmony, and his ideas not only shaped the music of his time but also had a profound impact on later composers, including Mozart, Beethoven, Sousa, Joplin, Gershwin, and Lennon/McCartney
Rameau didn’t just make up these ideas. He believed they were dictated by the natural world.
You don’t have to understand the physics behind gravity to know that things fall. Likewise, you don’t have to understand why the tonic feels resolved to recognize that it does.
This is why Rameau was called “the Issac Newton of music.”
Our knowledge about his early life is limited but we’re pretty sure he thought about music and not much else. In 1726, 42-year-old Rameau married 19-year-old Marie-Louise Mangot. She came from a musical family and was a good singer and instrumentalist. Despite the age difference, they were very happy together. Her musical knowledge may have helped.
He was, however, secretive and solitary, and even she knew almost nothing about his life before her. He was frugal. Some called him miserly.
He wore the same clothes until they wore out and rarely had more than one pair of shoes at a time. Yet he had enough money to sponsor promising musicians, give his daughter a substantial dowry, and support his sister through years of illness. Even when the Paris Opera gave him a pension towards the end of his life, he didn’t change his personal habits.
His thriftiness might be explained by money coming to him only later in life. It wasn’t until his mid-50s that Rameau finally achieved widespread recognition as a composer. At the time, French Opera was dominated by Jean-Baptiste Lully, whose style had become the standard for over half a century.
In Opera, the dialog between arias are called recitatives. They’re the parts that move the story along. Part of the reason for them in Italian Opera is that the goal of aria was not to tell the story, but to show the singers’ abilities.
Lully believed that the audience should be able to understand everything. He wrote his arias and recitatives to be intelligible. He wrote for the audience, not the performer’s ego.
That may be why Lully was the leading composer in French Opera, and why most French composers mimicked him.
Rameau’s first major opera came in 1733 with “Hippolyte et Aricie.” It marked a turning point not only for Rameau but for French Opera as a whole.
The work was strikingly different from Lully’s, with daring harmonies, intricate orchestration, and dramatic intensity while still telling a comprehensible story.
The opera provoked intense debate among critics and audiences. Some praised Rameau for his innovative use of harmony and orchestration, while others accused him of betraying the French Operatic tradition established by Lully.
This controversy became known as the “Lullistes vs. Ramistes” debate, with supporters of Lully and Rameau fiercely defending their respective composers. Imagine Kendrick Lamar and Drake fans arguing, except about music and while wearing fancy clothing.
Despite this initial mixed reception, “Hippolyte et Aricie” was a success, and it marked the beginning of Rameau’s dominance in French Opera.
Over the next three decades, Rameau composed a series of highly successful operas, including “Les Indes Galantes,” “Castor et Pollux,” and “Les Boréades” though the latter was not performed during his lifetime.
Rameau’s Operatic style used several key innovations.
He expanded the role of the orchestra in Opera, using it not just to accompany the singers but to heighten the dramatic tension and convey emotion. He told the story through music, not just lyrics, and his orchestration used color, depth, and a wide range of instruments and sounds.
His adventurous use of harmony often broke with the traditional rules of the time. He used bold chord progressions and modulations to heighten the emotional impact of his music.
As with most French Opera of the time, Rameau’s works included elaborate dance sequences. However, he took this a step further, integrating dance more fully into the fabric of his operas and using it as a means of advancing the plot and enhancing the emotional tone of the scenes.
Like many of his contemporaries, Rameau drew heavily from classical mythology. His works often revolved around gods, heroes, and epic tales of love and war, using these grand themes as a canvas for his complex music.
However, in works like “Les Indes Galantes,” he also featured other cultures including Incas, native Americans, and Persians.
By the 1740s, Rameau had taken over from Lully as the top Opera composer in France. His works were regularly performed at the Paris Opera, and his influence on French music was profound and long-lasting. He continued to compose prolifically in his later years and his reputation continued to grow, though his music was often seen as challenging and controversial.
He was a polarizing figure, criticized by some for his departure from the established traditions of French Opera and loved by others for those very innovations.
Rameau passed away on September 12, 1764, in Paris, leaving behind a legacy that would shape the future of Western music. His contributions to harmony and composition influenced centuries of composers and theorists. While his operas were initially overshadowed by the rise of new styles, including the Classical style of composers like Gluck and Mozart, Rameau’s work was rediscovered in the 20th century.
He is now widely recognized as one of the great composers of the Baroque era.
But he’s mostly remembered for his work in music theory and how he significantly shaped the trajectory of Western music.
His compositions are celebrated for their elegance, complexity, and dramatic expression, his theoretical work, especially Traité de l’harmonie, transformed our understanding of harmony and became the foundation for Western music as we know it today.
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Views: 51
Rameau. The name sounds familiar, but I don’t think I know his music. Other than “Frere Jacques,” that is.
Listening to Castor and Pollux, I can definitely hear that he and Handel were contemporaries, sometimes using similar chord progressions, though I’d say Rameau’s music is a bit spunkier and knottier than Handel’s. Maybe that just means more French?
As a cavalier American, I am moved to say “Go Rameau, and Go Jacques, go!”
Thanks Bill. Your article has really struck a chord.
This series continues to amaze and inform.
I knew absolutely nothing about today’s featured subject, I feel remiss about that.
To learn about someone who was such a vanguard of musical theory at the Ground Zero level, it’s a very interesting thing to know about.
Ding, Dang, Dong! I’ve never heard of Rameau, either, but it sounds like he is integral to the way we understand music today. Thanks for educating me, Bill.
Same as Phylum, the only element of Rameau that is familiar is Frere Jacques. Which brings back memories of being 9 and singing it repeatedly in our first year of French lessons.
It’s far enough in the past that I won’t hold that against him.
Given that song is the legacy most will be familiar with (even if no one has any idea who was behind it) we definitely need this to redress the balance and put forward his case as a hugely important and influential figure.