Rameau, JEAN PHILIPPE

Rameau, JEAN PHILIPPE, a French musician, was born at Dijon, 25th September 1683. At eighteen he went to Milan, but soon returned to France, to Paris, Lille, and Clermont in Auvergne. Here he acted as organist to the cathedral, and wrote his Traité de l'Harmonie (1722). Removing to Paris, he published Nouveau Système (1726), Génération Harmonique (1737), and Nouvelles Réflexions (1752). In 1733, at the mature age of fifty, he produced his first opera, Hippolyte et Ariée, the libretto of which was written by the Abbé Pellegrin. It created a great sensation, and Rameau was forthwith elevated to the rank of a rival to Lully (see OPERA). Rameau's best opera was Castor et Pollux, produced at the Académie Royale de Musique in 1737. Between 1733 and 1760 he composed twenty-one operas and ballets, as well as numerous harpsichord pieces. Louis XV. created for him the office of composer of chamber music, granted him letters of nobility, and named him a Chevalier de St Michel. Rameau died 12th September 1764. See A. Pougín's essay (Paris, 1876).—Rameau's nephew, well known as giving the title to a singular dialogue of Diderot's, which Goethe thought worthy of translation into German, had actual existence, being Louis Sébastien Mercier (1740–1814), author of the famous Tableau de Paris.