Jean-Baptiste Lully

gigatos | May 18, 2022

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Summary

Jean-Baptiste Lully, born Giovanni Battista Lulli († March 22, 1687 in Paris) was an Italian-French composer, violinist, guitarist, and dancer who from the age of 14, first worked as a “garçon de chambre” for Anne Marie Louise d”Orléans at the French court and rose to the highest musical offices of Louis XIV. He became a French citizen in December 1661. As a creator of characteristically French Baroque music, he is considered one of the most influential composers in the history of French music.

Childhood in Italy

Jean-Baptiste Lully”s paternal ancestors were farmers in Tuscany. His parents, Lorenzo Lulli and his Florentine wife Caterina, née del Sera (or Seta) – a miller”s daughter – occupied a city apartment in Florence at the time of Lully”s birth. In June 1638 Jean-Baptiste”s older brother Vergini died, and in October 1639 his sister Margherita. This left the seven-year-old Jean-Baptiste the only child of his parents. Lorenzo Lulli took over the business of the mill after the death of his father-in-law and earned some wealth. This enabled him to provide a good education for Giovanni Battista, who presumably attended the school of the Franciscan Church of Santa Croce (Florence). A print from 1705 reports that Lully later spoke gratefully of a “cordelier” (Franciscan) who had given him his first music lessons and taught him to play the guitar.

In February 1646 at Carnival time, Roger de la Lorraine, Chevalier de Guise, of Paris, visited Florence, where he had spent his childhood at the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. On behalf of Anne Marie Louise d”Orléans, duchesse de Montpensier (called La Grande Mademoiselle), he sought an Italian for her Italian language lessons for her conversation. The Chevalier became aware of the comedically gifted and violin-playing 13-year-old Lully during carnival performances and, with his parents” consent, took him to France. Cardinal Giovanni Carlo, brother of the Grand Duke of Tuscany accompanied both to the ship to France.

Lully with Anne Marie Louise d”Orléans

From the age of 13, Lully lived with the “Grande Mademoiselle” Anne Marie Louise d”Orléans, duchesse de Montpensier, niece of King Louis XIII and cousin of Louis XIV, respectively, in the Palais des Tuileries in Paris. The 23-year-old duchess lived “emancipated” (she had rejected marriage partners) and as a woman held the second highest rank in France after queen. With her, Lully served as “garçon de chambre” (valet), sorting the wardrobe, heating the fireplaces and lighting the candles, for example. He benefited mainly musically, as the duchess employed famous music and dance teachers for herself: the composer and singer at her father”s court Étienne Moulinié, and the dance teacher and violinist Jacques Cordier (called “Bocan”), who also belonged to the “Musique du Roi”. Lully accompanied the singing and dancing duchess with the guitar and entertained her as a comedian. In this situation it is obvious that the boy could have learned from Bocan and that Bocan”s critical attitude towards the Vingt-quatre Violons du Roy (later) was transferred to him. According to a 1695 source, Lully took harpsichord and composition lessons from Nicolas Métru, François Roberday, and Nicolas Gigault. Also on the payroll of Anne Marie Louise d”Orleans was the royal dance master, who presumably provided Lully”s excellent dance training. Jean Regnault de Segrais, secretary to the mademoiselle, who was admitted to the Académie française in 1661, influenced Lully. In 1652, Lully”s name first appears Frenchized in the Etats de la maison princière as “Jean-Baptiste Lully, garçon de la chambre.”

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First meeting with Louis XIV.

During the guardianship of Queen Anne of Austria over her minor son Louis XIV, the Grande Mademoiselle, Lully”s employer, actively participated in the Fronde (civil war) against the regency of the Queen Mother and Cardinal Mazarin. Because of her activities, she was banished to Saint-Fargeau, where she was followed by the now twenty-year-old Lully, who was still performing as composer and performer in a “récit grotesque” at the Tuileries on March 7, 1652. Back in Paris, he appeared in the Ballet royal de la nuit several times between February 23 and March 16, 1653, as a shepherd, soldier, beggar, cripple, and grace. Fourteen-year-old Louis XIV himself danced the role of the rising sun here for the first time. Jean Regnault de Segrais – co-organizer of the Ballet royal de la nuit – comes into question as Lully”s mediator to the royal court. Lully was obviously a talented dancer, a “balladin” (ballet dancer), felt comfortable on the stage, was a theater man. There was something unusual about his dancing, so that newspapermen, who otherwise hardly dealt with dancers, chose him as “Baptiste” as the subject of their reports.

On March 16, 1653, Lully was appointed Compositeur de la musique instrumentale. He composed the dances for the “Ballets de cour,” which played a special role at the French court, while the texts and composition of the sung “Airs de Ballet” were in the hands of other court artists, such as Michel Lambert. Not infrequently, Lully himself danced alongside the king, for example in the Ballet des plaisirs. His Italian origins could be heard in his compositions for a long time, e.g. in the Ballet de Psyché, for which he composed a Concert italien.His first major composition was the masquerade La Galanterie du temps, which was staged in the Palais of Cardinal Jules Mazarin with the participation of the Petits violons. With the Petits violons (string group), which had been in existence since 1648, Lully found an ensemble of his own that could be used more flexibly than the established Grande bande, the so-called 24 violins of the king already founded by Louis XIII and considered the first fixed orchestra in the history of music. A serious rivalry developed between their leader Guillaume Dumanoir and Jean de Cambefort, who until then had been responsible for dance music at the French court, and him, the younger Lully. Other court musicians, on the other hand, promoted Lully, such as Regnault or the master of the Air de Cour Michel Lambert, who helped him set French to music. The latter became Louis XIV”s chamber music master and Lully”s father-in-law in 1661.

Lully belonged to the group of Italian musicians in Paris who were promoted by the influential Cardinal Mazarin – who, like Lully, was Italian by birth. Among these, for example, was the Italian singer Anna Bergerotti, who encouraged the young Lully. Lully wrote Italian-sounding pieces such as “chaconnes,” “ritournelles,” and Italian vocal music, but regardless of his musical background, he rose to become the main exponent of French court dance, or ballet de cour, during this period. With Amour malade, premiered on January 17, 1657, Lully achieved his breakthrough as a composer. The influence of Italian opera was significant here as well, in that in Amor malade he replaced the traditional French (introductory) récit with the innovation of a prologue. Lully excelled in this ballet as a performer in the role of Scaramouche, to whom a donkey dedicates a dissertation. The very Italian influence of this composition was the reason for Henri duc de Guise to have the mascarade Plaisirs troublés performed in February 1657 at great expense with music composed in the French tradition by Louis de Mollier.

Career at the court of Louis XIV.

Lully now belonged to the inner circle around the king. When he traveled with Mazarin to the Pyrenees in 1659 to prepare the Pyrenean Peace Treaty, Lully accompanied him and composed, among other works, the Ballet de Toulouse. On August 29, 1660, three days after Louis” entry into Paris, Lully”s peace motet Jubilate Deo, a motet de la Paix, was performed to great acclaim in the Église de la Merci in the presence of Anne, Queen Mother of Austria, the King, Marie-Thérèse, Queen of France (the celebrations of her marriage to the King had not yet ended), and Philippe I de Bourbon, the King”s brother. Other ecclesiastical works followed in the years after, all together bringing special honor to Lully.

There was a special challenge for Lully when the cardinal also had the famous Italian opera composer Francesco Cavalli come to Paris. Paris had also seen performances of Italian operas before: Luigi Rossi”s works were often performed, and his opera Orfeo was particularly successful. Cavalli was now to write a festive opera under the title Ercole amante (Hercules in Love) for the wedding of Louis XIV to Marie-Thérèse, and Lully composed the ballets. Due to organizational problems, Cavalli had to resort to an older work: Serse. Lully composed the ballet interludes for this as well. This opera was finally performed on November 21, 1660 in the picture gallery of the Palais du Louvre.

After Mazarin”s death on March 9, 1661, many Italians left France. Cavalli also returned to Venice.

On May 5, 1661, Louis XIV appointed Lully Surintendant de la musique du roi, forgoing the 10,000 livres the post would have cost. Michel Lambert became maître de musique de la chambre. From now on, Lully composed the ballets alone, both the dances and the sung passages, the so-called récits.

In February 1662, two months after he had successfully petitioned the king for his naturalization, he took Magdelaine Lambert as his wife – not without pressure from the authorities, for it was necessary to conceal Lully”s homosexuality. He retained a Florentine accent throughout his life and provided for an extended family Italian-style: his six children, relatives and their friends lived with him. After three moves, the Hôtel Lully in Paris”s Rue Sainte-Anne became his final residence. In music, however, his previous style of an Italian “bouffon,” a jokester, disappeared. He composed the Ballet des Arts in 1663, his first entirely French “grand ballet de cour.” The lyrics were written by Isaac de Benserade. Equally significant for the success were his verses in the “livret”, which commented on what was danced on stage.

Collaboration with Molière (1664-1671)

The finance minister Nicolas Fouquet had a palace built in Vaux-le-Vicomte and hired the best artists in France for it: Louis Le Vau as architect, André Le Nôtre for the gardens and Charles Lebrun, the first court painter and outstanding decorator for the design of the state rooms. On August 17, 1661, a great feast was held to which the king, his family and numerous guests were invited. They were entertained at eighty tables and on thirty buffets there were 6000 solid silver plates. Music was provided by the most skilled instrumentalists, including the lutenist Michel Lambert and Lully. Lully, a friend of Molière, whose play Les Fâcheux (The Troublesome Ones) was to be performed, had found the latter in a panicked mood a few days earlier, as he did not have enough actors for this performance. The remedy was a simple and ingenious idea: ballet numbers were inserted between the scenes to give the actors time to change clothes. Pierre Beauchamp and Lully arranged the ballet numbers, for which Lully had to recompose only one dance, a courante.

The performance was a great success and thus the first comédie-ballet (“ballet-comedy”) of a total of twelve was created. However, the expensive castle and the lavish feast had angered the king. Soon after, he had Fouquet arrested, his possessions confiscated – and himself began to expand his father”s old hunting lodge into his most magnificent residence: Versailles Palace.

In 1664, when the first works in the park were completed, a massive festival was again organized Les Plaisirs de l”îsle enchantée, it lasted from May 7 to 13. Its climax was thematically based on the story from Ariost”s Orlando furioso with the enchantress Alcina. It opened with a “carrousel”, a horse ballet in which the court presented itself in sumptuous costumes. The king himself, costumed as “Knight Roger,” led the procession. Molière”s La Princesse d”Elide with Lully”s music was given, and the seven-day festival concluded with the Ballet des Saisons (Ballet of the Seasons), in which, among other things, spring arrived on a horse, summer on an elephant, autumn on a camel, and winter on a bear. Lully”s music for it is lost.There were lotteries, banquets, balls, and performances of other danced plays by Molière-Lully: Les Fâcheux (May 11), Le Mariage forcé (The Forced Marriage, May 13), and on the 12th, the premiere of Tartuffe, which was followed by a ban on the play. The festival culminated in the storming of the “Palace of Alcina” on an artificial island in the great canal of Versailles, which went down in an elaborate fireworks display.The description of the entire festival is by André Félibien, documented by engravings by the “Graveur ordinaire du Roi” Israël Silvestre.

In the following years, further ballet comedies were written: George Dandin was given in 1668 as part of the (second) great feast of Versailles, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac the following year (also Le Divertissement de Chambord, Chambord 1669). Lully sang this – he had the vocal range of a baritone – under the pseudonym “Chiacchiarone,” which was due to his position as “Surintendant.” But the greatest success came in 1670 with the two ballet comedies Les amants magnifiques (The Princes as Suitors) and Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Bourgeois as Nobleman). The latter was directed at the Turkish ambassador who had made a fool of himself at court.

In addition to his collaboration with Molière, Lully continued to compose the Ballets de Cour. The last to be created was the Ballet Royal de Flore in 1669, in which Louis XIV appeared as the Sun for the third time, in the ballet comedy Les amants magnifiques, then for the fourth and last time – according to the livret printed and distributed in advance. In fact, he had renounced in favor of the Comte d”Armagnac and the Marquis des Villeroy, feeling dazed and unwell after bouts of fever. He gave up stage dancing at the age of 30. Lully had done the same in 1668 at the age of 35.

In 1671, Lully and Molière created the tragédie-ballet (ballet-tragedy) Psiché (Psyche) to present heroic to the “greatest king in the world”. Due to time constraints, Molière had to employ two other librettists, Pierre Corneille and, for the divertissements, Philippe Quinault, who from then on became Lully”s librettist of choice. Nine different sets were needed, all the gods of Olympus and a variety of monsters and mythical creatures were on display. Despite its length, the work was very successful. Performed at the Tuileries Theater, Psiché was by then by far the most expensive production of the court, costing 334,645 livres; Lully”s operas in the following years only reached about half this amount.

When the Duke of Orleans, the King”s brother, married Liselotte of the Palatinate after the death of his first wife in 1671, the Ballet des Ballets was ordered. Lully and Molière created a pastiche, a “pate” of successful scenes from their last joint works, but fell into dispute during the work and parted in anger. Although the ballet was performed, Molière”s comedy La Comtesse d”Escarbagnas (The Countess of Escarbagnas, December 1671) had already been set to music by another: Marc-Antoine Charpentier, who also wrote the extensive incidental music for Molière”s last work Le malade imaginaire (The Imaginary Sick).

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The Tragédie lyrique (1672-1685)

After several different stage forms, in 1671 Robert Cambert, the then “chef de la musique” of Queen Mother Anne of Austria, together with librettist Pierre Perrin, brought the first “truly French opera” to the stage: Pomone. Contrary to expectations, the success was bombastic: “it ran for eight months to sold-out houses.” Lully observed their success with curiosity and envy. Perrin had officially obtained the patent for opera performances under the name “Académies d”Opéra” in 1669, of which “Pomone” was the inaugural opera.Lully succeeded in obtaining the transfer of the rights of the Academy for himself. Cambert left Paris in bitterness and went to London.

Lully now had a monopoly on the performance of operas, but he obtained other rights from the king. Thus, any performance with music without his – the Surintendant”s – permission was forbidden and was punished with confiscation of all instruments, costumes, revenues, etc. This hit Molière particularly hard in the last year of his life. This hit Molière particularly hard in the last year of his life, since all the texts to which Lully had composed music were now his property. Under the name Académie royale de musique, the institution was firmly in Lully”s hands. His power was now felt by everyone, which is why many respected composers and musicians allegedly left the court. One example of this is the founder of the French harpsichord school, Jacques Champion de Chambonnières, who, however, had already sold the office of court harpsichordist to Jean-Henry d”Anglebert, a friend of Lully, in 1662.

In 1672, the year the privilege was granted, Lully finally brought his first opera to the stage, the pastoral Les Fêtes de l”Amour et de Bacchus. Here, due to time constraints, he followed the model of the Ballet des Ballets, so it became a pastiche.All of Lully”s subsequent tragédies consist of a prologue and five acts. Each act also has a divertissement (a spacious scene with ballet) and choral interludes. (Italian opera at the time had three acts).

In 1673, Cadmus et Hermione, Lully”s first tragédie lyrique, began the series of specifically French operas that would become annual. In 1674 followed Alceste, premiered in the marble courtyard of Versailles as a festive highlight, and in 1675 Thésée. In this year the affaire Guichard began, in which Lully did not look good, although Henry Guichard had to leave the field in the end. The latter had obtained a privilege similar to Lully”s, namely for performances of plays, that of the Académie royale des spectacles. Only music was lacking for his perfection, but Lully did not let himself be deprived of anything. A singer told him of Guichard”s alleged plans to poison him with arsenic mixed into his snuff, and Lully instigated a lawsuit over the matter, which he ultimately never won. Conversely, Guichard dragged him through the mud extensively from 1676 on with revelations about his private life. This also embarrassed Carlo Vigarani, the stage designer and theater architect, a partner in Lully”s opera, who worked for Guichard on the side for three years.

In 1676 Atys was given. Since the king was supposedly involved in the composition here and sat with Lully for a very long time to complete the work, the tragedy was given the subtitle The King”s Opera. Here Lully eschews timpani and trumpets for a dark rough sound. In a slumber scene, the still young Marin Marais appeared as one of the dreams.

Isis followed in 1677. The idiosyncratic opera met with little success. People criticized the strange plot that Philippe Quinault had presented and found Lully”s music too intellectual. The opera was given the subtitle The Musicians” Opera, because musicians and musically educated audiences were enthusiastic about the work.

In 1678, Lully reworked the Tragédie-ballet Psiché into an opera Psyché with the help of librettists Thomas Corneille and Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle; the spoken dialogues were replaced by singing.

In 1679, Bellérophon came to the stage, again in cooperation with Thomas Corneille. A notable innovation here was the accompaniment of the recitative by the string ensemble. Proserpine followed in 1680, and in 1681, by order of the king, a court ballet, Le Triomphe de l”Amour. Louis XIV desired a revival of the old court ballets. The piece was danced by the king”s descendants, and it became one of Lully”s most famous works ever. Before Proserpine, Lully had already parted ways with Carlo Vigarani, whose successor Jean Bérain became a stage designer at the opera academy instead of just a servant artist. He designed admirable stage costumes, but failed at operating the theater machinery, which is why he was replaced after Proserpine by the Italian Ercole Rivani. But Rivani demanded 5,000 livres a year from Lully for this, which meant that the job fell to Bérain again in 1682.

In 1682, the court finally moved to Versailles. Persée was given for the occasion. Ninety years later, on May 17, 1770, the opera house at Versailles was inaugurated with this work, for the wedding of the future Louis XVI with Marie-Antoinette. This speaks for the importance that was still attributed to Lully”s works in the 18th century.

In 1683, Marie-Thérèse, Queen of France, died, so performances of Phaëton were postponed until 1684, as were those of Lully”s most successful work, Amadis. Amadis was then performed every year as long as the king lived. Furthermore, Lully and Quinault turned away from mythology and sang of French chivalric epics, which were about the defense of faith as the highest ideal. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes was also to leave its mark on music.

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The crash (1685-1687)

In 1685 the opera Roland was given. Around this time, a scandal arose when it became public that Lully was having an affair with a page named Brunet; added to this was his involvement in the orgies of the Dukes of Orleans and Vendôme. The king submitted to Lully, who by then had been appointed Secrétaire du Roi, advisor to the king, and ennobled, that he was no longer willing to tolerate his behavior.

Lully wrote to the king asking for forgiveness. He almost succeeded: The Marquis de Seignelay, son of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, had commissioned a work from him, Idylle sur la Paix. The text was written by Jean Racine. The king, who attended the performance in Sceaux, was extremely taken with his chamberlain”s latest work and had Lully repeat large sections.

In 1686 Armide was premiered, but not at court, but in Paris, the king no longer received it. Lully hoped, however, to regain the king”s protection. His next opera, composed for Louis-Joseph Duc de Vendôme to a libretto by Jean Galbert de Campistron, was a subtle homage to the heir to the throne and thus to the king. Acis et Galatée was heard on September 6, 1686, at the Château de Anet on the occasion of a hunting party given by the Dauphin. In the preface to the score dedicated to the king, Lully wrote that he felt a “certainty” within himself that “lifted him above himself” and “filled him with a divine spark.” At the end of 1686, probably after the revival of Acis et Galatée in Paris, the Regent informed him that he intended to create living quarters for the Duke of Chartres in the Palais Royal and that Lully had to leave the theater. The latter then wanted to build an opera house in the rue Saint-André-des-arts and bought a plot of land there.

In 1687, Lully was working on his opera Achille et Polixene. During this time, the king developed significant health problems. The physician Charles-François Félix de Tassy had to remove a dangerous fistula from the monarch”s buttocks on November 18. Richelieu had died during such a procedure. De Tassy practiced in the hospital of Versailles on fellow sufferers of the king brought here and removed the ulcer with success. The king was expected to die, but he recovered. For the celebration of his recovery, Lully reworked his Te Deum, composed in 1678, and had it performed at his own expense with 150 musicians. In 1705, Jean-Laurent Le Cerf de La Viéville described that during the performance of the motet on January 8, 1687, in the Église des Pères Feuillants, Lully hit the tip of his foot with the stick used to strike the beat. The small injury quickly became infected with gangrene. Lully refused to have the toe amputated and died a few months later. He was buried in Notre-Dame-des-Victoires with great sympathy. However, there is no evidence in contemporary literature or illustrations of conducting with long sticks – a rolled-up sheet of paper in one or both hands was usually used. It is possible that Lully wanted to use a walking stick to call the musicians present to attention.

His last opera was completed by his secretary Pascal Collasse. The succession in the office of Surintendant was first taken over by his sons Jean and Louis de Lully, together with his pupil Marin Marais, until the king gave the office to Michel-Richard Delalande.

Since 1961 the Lully Foothills on Alexander I. Island in Antarctica and since 1992 also the asteroid (8676) Lully bear his name.

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Precursor of the modern orchestra

With his new orchestral discipline, Lully not only had a decisive influence on the French style, but also exerted a great influence on the musical practice of the late 17th century.

Typical of the sound of his orchestra are the five-part string section, the mixture of strings and winds, and the orchestra”s large instrumentation for its time. The 24 violins of the king formed the core of the ensemble; in addition, there are the 12 oboes (Lully is said to have been instrumental in the further development of the shawm into an oboe), as well as recorders and transverse flutes, an extensive continuo group with lutes, guitars, harpsichord, etc., and in certain scenes timpani and trumpets. Also popular was the “display” of new instruments incorporated into the work, such as the transverse flute, or the “French trio” of two oboes and bassoon. These instruments had solo appearances in many dances and instrumental pieces, usually even on stage. In the subsequent German tradition, the French trio was often used, for example by Telemann and Fasch. In the early years, Lully himself played the first violin in his ensemble; scores in the Philidor collection often contain notations such as “M. de Lully joue” (“Mr. von Lully plays”); the violin part was then to be performed with improvised ornamentation.

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The overture

The French overture with a first part in gravitational dotted rhythm followed by a fast, imitative part and at the end (sometimes) a resumption of the first tempo is only partly a new creation of Lully. His predecessors, teachers and contemporaries such as Jean de Cambefort, François Caroubel, Nicolas Dugap, Jacques de Montmorency de Bellville, Jacques Cordier, Pierre Beauchamps, Guillaume Dumanoir, Michel Mazuel, Mignot de la Voye or Robert Cambert already wrote overtures, or rather opening music for the court ballets. These overtures have nothing to do with the Italian opera sinfonias as composed by Monteverdi, Luigi Rossi or Francesco Cavalli and Antonio Cesti. The French orchestral style was already developed in the time of Louis XIII and his ballet masters and can be traced back to the foundation of the group of 24 violins – Lully”s work consists mainly in continuing the tradition of his predecessors. But while the old overtures were rather merely gravitational, Lully added a fugal part to them. In 1660, such a “new” overture was performed for the first time in the ballet Xerxes. Since then, this form has been retained. Almost every one of his works begins with such an overture, an exception being Les Fêtes de l”Amour et de Bacchus, which still opens with an old-style ritournell.

The French opera

Lully”s greatest merit lies in the founding of the French national opera. Louis XIV demanded, as in all areas of art, his own French form of expression in music as well. In Lully and his librettist Philippe Quinault, he found masters who implemented his ideas. With the opera form they created, the tragédie lyrique, Lully and Quinault succeeded in creating their own form of opera, which was formally based on the great classical tragedies of important writers such as Corneille or Racine. On this basis, Lully developed his operas as a total work of art, incorporating large choral scenes and dance, traditionally important for France, in the form of ballet interludes. In this way, he was able to satisfy the expectations of the king and the French public.

Each of his operas is divided into five acts and a prologue. Only classical material was treated, such as epics of knights or stories of Greco-Roman mythology. The prologue, only loosely connected to the following tragedy in terms of content, served to glorify the king and his “glorious deeds.” It begins and ends with the overture and usually consists less of recitatives and more of a divertissement with airs, choruses, and ballet. The five acts of the tragedies are written in verse, declaimed in the form of the French recitative. Each of the five acts has another divertissement with airs, choral scenes and ballet, usually – but not always – at the end. Certain scenes became standard, such as the poetic dream scenes (“Sommeil,” e.g., in Atys), pompous battles (“Combats”), the storms (“Vents”), and the concluding great chaconnes and passacailles, often with soloists and chorus.

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French singing style and forms

From the beginning, French opera was intended as a counterpart to the established Italian opera. The difference begins with the voices and registers used. Italian baroque opera was inconceivable without the perfectly trained virtuosity of the male castrato voices. This, together with the female prima donnas, led to a marked emphasis on high soprano and alto voices; there were few roles for low voices and almost no tenors at all. In France, castration was rejected; therefore, all types of male voices are present in supporting roles in French opera. A typical French voice register is the haute-contre, a high, soft-voiced tenor, almost an alto register.

Another difference is also the use of choirs in French opera.

Particularly striking in comparison to Italian opera is the French recitative developed by Lully and Lambert. It is based on the theatrical declamation of French tragedy and is a further development of the Air de Cour. It differs clearly from the Italian recitative, which is notated in even time, but was performed freely; on the other hand, in the French recitative, time changes are frequent, so that in stretches there are different even time meters such as C, 2 or Allabreve and triple meters such as 3

French airs also differ from the arias of Italian opera. French vocal style had fundamentally little in common with Italian bel canto, and French singers would not have been able to compete technically with great Italian castrati and prima donnas. Typical of French opera is a syllabic singing style: each syllable gets one note, not several; long runs or difficult coloratura as in Italian bel canto are taboo (with rare exceptions that must be motivated by the text or situation). As a result, the airs of Lully”s Tragèdie lyrique seem relatively simple, except for occasional preludes and notated trills and mordents. (With the Italians, improvisation of ornaments was part of good performance). Many airs by Lully and his successors correspond formally to one of the contemporary dances, such as the minuet or gavotte, and are also often accompanied by the corresponding stage dance. Such airs may also be repeated by a chorus. The Italian da capo aria, with its improvised cadence in the repeated (“da capo”) A part, does not exist in French opera.

A famous scene is the monologue of Armide from the Tragèdie lyrique of the same name: Enfin il est en ma puissance! (Act II, Scene 5). Contemporaries, like Jean-Philippe Rameau later, considered this passage the ideal of French operatic art.

Aftermath in France

In France, Lully”s style remained binding for another hundred years or so. The forms he gave to the tragédie lyrique with its vocal style and ballet were not touched. It was even taboo to set a text that Lully had already set to music a second time. Thus, French composers in direct succession to Lully composed their operas entirely in his style. Among them were Pascal Collasse, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, André Campra, André Cardinal Destouches, Marin Marais, and later Jean Marie Leclair, François Francœur, Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville, and Antoine Dauvergne. It was not until Jean-Philippe Rameau that a more modern style and some innovations were ventured, especially in the area of instrumentation and virtuoso handling of the orchestra, which partly divided the Parisian public into “Lullysten” and “Ramists”.

With the founding of the Concert spirituel in Paris in 1725 and the increasingly frequent Italian concerts, the dislike of Italian music gave way. When an Italian troupe performed Pergolesi”s La serva padrona in Paris, an open conflict broke out between the supporters of French traditional opera and those of the new opera buffa. Contemporaries report that it was often like religious wars there, at least as far as invective was concerned. This buffonist dispute went down in history and was only settled years later by the first performances of Gluck”s operas. With Gluck, the opera of the Ancien Régime also gradually disappeared; Lully, Campra and Rameau were hardly ever performed. Nevertheless, Gluck and his epigones learned a great deal from the dramatic French declamation and syllabic singing of French opera as invented by Lully. This can also be heard in Gluck”s French operas (Iphigénie en Tauride, Iphigénie en Aulide, Alceste). It is no coincidence that his operatic reform had the greatest and, above all, lasting success in France – French audiences were prepared for dramatic singing without coloratura.

International influence

At least since Plaisirs de l”îsle enchantée, the French court, Versailles and the glamorous person of the “Sun King” exerted an immense fascination. French language and culture set the tone, and there was also great interest in French music. The tragédie lyrique, however, was relatively unpopular, since Italian opera had begun its triumphal march at the same time and before. French opera, with its emphasis on dramatic declamation and its comparatively “harmless” airs, could not do enough to counteract this. Thus, outside of France, there were only a few courts where entire operas by Lully were performed.

Nevertheless, some composers were inspired by French opera. This is especially true of Henry Purcell. In England, musical development from 1660 onward was helped by the Francophile tastes of the Stuart kings Charles II and James II; this is also true of the music of Locke, Humfrey, Blow, and Purcell. In Dido and Aeneas and in his semi-operas, for example, Purcell uses the chorus in a way that goes back to Lully. Arias and dances are also French-influenced, though with a strong English flavor of their own. In general, it can be said that the musical interludes of the semi-operas are actually divertissements in the English manner. Purcell”s famous frost scene in the third act of King Arthur (1692) probably traces directly to the “Chorus of the Trembling” in Lully”s Isis (1677). Several composers of early German opera also drew inspiration from Lully, most notably Reinhard Keiser.

Lully”s influence was particularly noticeable in Baroque orchestral music: The overtures and dances of his operas and ballets circulated as suites in printed form throughout Europe and contributed significantly to the emergence of the orchestral suite. Copies of Lully”s works were found in almost every prince”s music library. Not only was Lully”s music collected at German princely courts, but French musicians were also employed. Even when Lully”s operas were still being written, there were already black copies of his completed scenes being sold on the black market.

Many young musicians came to Paris to study with Lully. These students were to become the so-called European “Lullists”: Pelham Humfrey, Johann Sigismund Kusser, Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer, Agostino Steffani, Georg Muffat and others. They made the style of Lully or the music from the court of the Sun King popular especially in Germany and England. Not only the form of the French overture was spread, but also dances such as minuet, gavotte, bourrée, rigaudon, loure, even such imprecisely defined genres as the air or entrée, even the French forms of the chaconne and passacaille spread in Europe.

The overture suite “in the French manner” was, along with the Italian concerto, the most important orchestral genre in Germany in the first half of the 18th century, albeit with stylistic innovations and also Italian concerto influences: first and foremost by Georg Philipp Telemann, Johann Joseph Fux, Philipp Heinrich Erlebach, Johann Friedrich Fasch and Christoph Graupner. The orchestral suites of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel – the Water Music and the Musick for the Royal Fireworks – are also based on the forms established by Lully. Handel cultivated the French-style overture throughout his life, even in his Italian operas. His opera Teseo (1713) was based on Quinault”s libretto to Lully”s Thésée, and thus unusually has five acts, but is otherwise an Italian opera with dacapo arias.

The minuet of the classical symphonies of Haydn and Mozart ultimately goes back to Lully.

Sacred vocal works

Grands motets

Petits motets

Also read, biographies – Nikos Kazantzakis

Stage works

Ballets de cour, mascarades and divertissements

Intermedia, Comédies-ballets

Tragedies in music, Pastoral, Heroic pastoral

Instrumental works

Sources