The French musical drama continued without much change in the hands of
the Lulli school (for the musician had several skilful imitators and
successors) till the appearance of Jean Philippe Rameau, who
inaugurated a new era. This celebrated man was born in Auvergne in
1683, and was during his earlier life the organist of the Clermont
cathedral church. Here he pursued the scientific researches in music
which entitled him in the eyes of his admirers to be called the Newton
of his art. He had reached the age of fifty without recognition as a
dramatic composer, when the production of "Hippolyte et Aricie"
excited a violent feud by creating a strong current of opposition to
the music of Lulli. He produced works in rapid succession, and finally
overcame all obstacles, and won for himself the name of being the
greatest lyric composer which France up to that time had produced. His
last opera, "Les Paladins," was given in 1760, the composer being then
seventy-seven.
The bitterness of the art-feuds of that day, afterwards shown in the
Gluck-Piccini contest, was foreshadowed in that waged by Rameau
against Lulli, and finally against the Italian new-comers, who sought
to take possession of the French stage. The matter became a national
quarrel, and it was considered an insult to France to prefer the music
of an Italian to that of a Frenchman--an insult which was often
settled by the rapier point, when tongue and pen had failed as
arbitrators. The subject was keenly debated by journalists and
pamphleteers, and the press groaned with essays to prove that Rameau
was the first musician in Europe, though his works were utterly
unknown outside of France. Perhaps no more valuable testimony to the
character of these operas can be adduced than that of Baron Grimm:--
"In his operas Rameau has overpowered all his predecessors by dint of
harmony and quantity of notes. Some of his choruses are very fine.
Lulli could only sustain his vocal psalmody by a simple bass; Rameau
accompanied almost all his recitatives with the orchestra. These
accompaniments are generally in bad taste; they drown the voice rather
than support it, and force the singers to scream and howl in a manner
which no ear of any delicacy can tolerate. We come away from an opera
of Rameau's intoxicated with harmony and stupified with the noise of
voice and instruments. His taste is always Gothic, and, whether his
subject is light or forcible, his style is equally heavy. He was not
destitute of ideas, but did not know what use to make of them. In his
recitatives the sound is continually in opposition to the sense,
though they occasionally contain happy declamatory passages.... If he
had formed himself in some of the schools of Italy, and thus acquired
a notion of musical style and habits of musical thought, he never
would have said (as he did) that all poems were alike to him, and that
he could set the _Gazette de France_ to music."
From this it may be gathered that Rameau, though a scientific and
learned musician, lacked imagination, good taste, and dramatic
insight--qualities which in the modern lyric school of France have
been so pre-eminent. It may be admitted, however, that he inspired a
taste for sound musical science, and thus prepared the way for the
great Gluck, who to all and more of Rameau's musical knowledge united
the grand genius which makes him one of the giants of his art.
Though Rameau enjoyed supremacy over the serious opera, a great
excitement was created in Paris by the arrival of an Italian company,
who in 1752 obtained permission to perform Italian burlettas and
intermezzi at the opera-house. The partisans of the French school took
alarm, and the admirers of Lulli and Rameau forgot their bickerings to
join forces against the foreign intruders. The battle-field was
strewed with floods of ink, and the literati pelted each other with
ferocious lampoons.
Among the literature of this controversy, one pamphlet has an
imperishable place, Rousseau's famous "Lettre sur la Musique
Française," in which the great sentimentalist espoused the cause of
Italian music with an eloquence and acrimony rarely surpassed. The
inconsistency of the author was as marked in this as in his private
life. Not only did he at a later period become a great advocate of
Gluck against Piccini, but, in spite of his argument that it was
impossible to compose music to French words, that the language was
quite unfit for it, that the French never had music and never would,
he himself had composed a good deal of music to French words and
produced a French opera, "Le Devin du Village." Diderot was also a
warm partisan of the Italians. Pergolesi's beautiful music having been
murdered by the French orchestra-players at the Grand Opera-House,
Diderot proposed for it the following witty and laconic
inscription:--"Hic Marsyas Apollinem."[M]
Rousseau's opera, "Le Devin du Village," was performed with
considerable success, in spite of the repugnance of the orchestral
performers, of whom Rousseau always spoke in terms of unmeasured
contempt, to do justice to the music. They burned Rousseau in effigy
for his scoffs. "Well," said the author of the _Confessions_, "I don't
wonder that they should hang me now, after having so long put me to
the torture."
The eloquence and abuse of the wits, however, did not long impair the
supremacy of Rameau; for the Italian company returned to their own
land, disheartened by their reception in the French capital. Though
this composer commenced so late in life, he left thirty-six dramatic
works. His greatest work was "Castor et Pollux." Thirty years later
Grimm recognised its merits by admitting, in spite of the great faults
of the composer, "It is the pivot on which the glory of French music
turns." When Louis XIV. offered Rameau a title, he answered, touching
his breast and forehead, "My nobility is here and here." This composer
marked a step forward in French music, for he gave it more boldness
and freedom, and was the first really scientific and well-equipped
exponent of a national school. His choruses were full of energy and
fire, his orchestral effects rich and massive. He died in 1764, and
the mortuary music, composed by himself, was performed by a double
orchestra and chorus from the Grand Opera.