The Classical Music Book

107

See also: Le bourgeois gentilhomme 70–71 ■ Orfeo ed Euridice 118 –119 ■

The Magic Flute 134 –137 ■ The Barber of Seville 14 8 ■ La traviata 174 –175

G

alant music was born

out of opposition to the

perceived complexity of

Baroque music. While the latter

was often characterized by

seriousness and grandeur, the

style galante was elegant, light,

and immediate.

One of the most lauded

advocates of this style was the

French composer Jean-Philippe

Rameau, whose first opera,

Hippolyte et Aricie, premiered in

Paris in 1733. Rameau cast his

opera in the conventional five-act

form of a tragédie en musique that

was established by Jean-Baptiste

Lully. In every other way, however,

he broke Lully’s mold, using daring

dissonances, longer phrase

structures, and an ornate approach

to melodic writing that came to

typify the style galante.

War of words

Hippolyte et Aricie drew harsh

criticism from so-called “Lullistes,”

who feared that Rameau’s Italianate

music threatened the iconic status

of Lully’s operas in French culture.

The debate between Lullistes and

Ramistes raged for several years,

during which Rameau released a

further four operas. In time,

however, his music became more

accepted, and by the time of the

Querelle des Bouffons in 1752, a

two-year dispute about the relative

merits of French and Italian opera,

Rameau’s music was considered

typically French. ■

BAROQUE 1600 –1750

HIS WHOLE HEART

AND SOUL WERE IN

HIS HARPSICHORD

HIPPOLYTE ET ARICIE ( 1733 ),

JEAN-PHILIPPE RAMEAU

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The style galante

BEFORE

1607 Monteverdi’s L’ O r f e o,

the earliest opera still in the

current repertoire, is premiered

in Mantua.

1673 The French operatic

tradition was born with the

premiere of Jean-Baptiste

Lul ly’s Cadmus et Hermione,

the first of Lully’s tragédies

en music (tragedy in music).

AFTER

1752 A performance of

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s

opera buffa (comic opera)

La serva padrona (“The

servant turned mistress”)

ignites the Querelle des

Bouffons, a dispute between

supporters of serious and

comic opera.

1774 Having reformed Italian

opera, Christoph Willibald

Gluck composes Iphigénie

en Aulide for the Paris stage.

US mezzo-soprano Jennifer Holloway

plays Diane during a rehearsal of

Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie in the

Théâtre du Capitole, Toulouse, in 2009.

US_106-107_Telemann_Rameau.indd 107 26/03/18 1:00 PM