[Footnote 4: John Baptist Lulli, a Florentine, died in 1687, aged 53. In
his youth he was an under-scullion in the kitchen of Madame de
Montpensier, niece to Louis XIV. The discovery of his musical genius led
to his becoming the King's Superintendent of Music, and one of the most
influential composers that has ever lived. He composed the occasional
music for Molière's comedies, besides about twenty lyric tragedies;
which succeeded beyond all others in France, not only because of his
dramatic genius, which enabled him to give to the persons of these
operas a musical language fitted to their characters and expressive of
the situations in which they were placed; but also, says Mr. Hullah,
because
'Lulli being the first modern composer who caught the French ear, was
the means, to a great extent, of forming the modern French taste.'