This year, Mercury Baroque provides a musical accompaniment to Valentine’s Day with a program presenting works by  Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764), who distinguished himself not only as the leading French composer of the baroque era, but also as the codifier of the modern principles of harmony.  In the spirit of the holiday, all of the pieces on the program deal with the theme of love.

Rameau cared for little else than music, and it was said of him by dramatist Alexis Piron that "his heart and soul were in his harpsichord; once he had shut its lid, there was no one home.” 

Rameau’s father was an organist who worked in and around Dijon, and his mother was the daughter of a notary.  Jean Philippe was the seventh of eleven children in the family, and he was instructed in the fundamentals of music even before he was taught to read.  Rameau’s talent for music was apparent throughout his formative years; however, his parents pushed him toward a career in law.  After a prolonged period of academic mediocrity, Rameau’s parents acceded to his desire to become a professional musician and sent him to Milan, where he found work as a violinist in a travelling opera troupe.

Rameau was also a talented organist, and he was hired in that capacity in Paris in 1705.  About this time, Rameau published his first set of solo keyboard compositions, volume one (eventually there would be three) of his Pièces de clavecin.  Several years later, he returned to Dijon to take his father’s position as church organist before moving on to similar posts in Lyon and Claremont.  During this period, Rameau wrote a number of motets designed for church performances as well as some secular cantatas, among them Thétis(1718) and Orphée (1721), both of which deal with the topic of love and will be featured in this program.

By 1722, Rameau was ready to return to Paris, and it was around this time that his groundbreaking Treatise on Harmony was first published.  The work had a profound impact on composers and musicians of the day and is still considered to be a cornerstone of western musical theory.  The Treatise utilizes the now standard twelve-tone musical scale, explaining the concepts of major and minor keys while imbuing its lessons with a philosophical as well as a technical perspective.  Four books comprise the work:     Book I deals with the Harmonic Ratios and Proportions; Book II discusses the Nature and Properties of Chords; Book III tackles the Principles of Composition; and Book IV delves into Principles of Accompaniment.

Rameau married 19-year-old Marie-Louise Mangot in 1726.  His young wife was a fine singer and musician, and their marriage was said to be a happy one, producing four children.  Shortly after his marriage, Rameau met Alexandre Le Riche de La Poupelinière, a bourgeois businessman who became his patron and supported Rameau in his musical endeavors for over twenty years.  In 1731, Rameau was appointed conductor of La Poupelinière’s renowned private orchestra, a designation which gave him entry to the patron’s inner circle, a group which included the writer Voltaire and other influential artists of the period.

As he neared the half-century mark, Rameau set his artistic sights on opera.  His first work in the genre, Hippolyte et Aricie, basedon Jean Racine's dramatic tragedy Phèdre, was staged in 1733 and immediately provoked controversy.  During rehearsals, members of the orchestra found portions of the score too difficult to play, and these passages were cut from the production.  Devotees of Jean-Baptiste Lully, the composer who had established the parameters of French opera to that point, claimed that Rameau had desecrated the esteemed genre of tragédie en musique.  In fact, Hippolyte et Aricie was the first opera to be described as “baroque,” which was, at the time, a highly pejorative term.

The other opera whose arias will be presented as part of this evening’s program is Rameau’s second effort in the genre, Les Indes Galantes, an opéra-ballet which was first performed in 1735 and somewhat better received than its predecessor.  The piece features four thematically connected entrées, all love stories set in exotic lands:  Turkey, Peru, Persia, and America.  These four sections are bound together by a prologue in which Hebe, the goddess of youth, instructs Cupid, the god of love, to send his winged minions around the globe in search of true love.  When the work premiered, only three entrées were performed.  The fourth, set in America and added for a revival in 1736, was inspired by a dance performance given by a group of Native Americans (all members of the Metchigamea tribe and prior residents of the territory claimed by the French and renamed “Illinois”) for Louis XV.

Rameau spent his last three decades writing music primarily for the stage, largely to great success.  Though he achieved a measure of financial security in his later years, Rameau never forgot the periods early in his career when his income was small or even nonexistent.  Consequently, he remained a frugal individual throughout his life - even after he was given a royal pension and made a knight - wearing old clothes and living in a modest apartment containing little more than a battered harpsichord.

For centuries, Valentine’s Day has provided lovers with an opportunity to declare their feelings for the objects of their affections.  In contemporary times, these declarations take many forms:  cards, candy, flowers, jewelry, and items of underclothing that need not be mentioned here.  But when it comes to letting your valentine know just how you feel, don’t forget the power of music.  And particularly the music of Jean-Philippe Rameau.      

Tom Richards