Jean-Philippe Rameau ( French: [ʒɑ̃filip ʁamo] ; ( 1683-09-25 ) 25 September 1683 – ( 1764-09-12 ) 12 September 1764) was a French composer and music theorist . Regarded as one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the 18th century, he replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer of his time for the harpsichord , alongside François Couperin .
156-520: The Baroque ( UK : / b ə ˈ r ɒ k / bə- ROK , US : /- ˈ r oʊ k / - ROHK ; French: [baʁɔk] ) is a Western style of architecture , music , dance , painting , sculpture , poetry, and other arts that flourished from the early 17th century until the 1750s. It followed Renaissance art and Mannerism and preceded the Rococo (in the past often referred to as "late Baroque") and Neoclassical styles. It
312-581: A Medieval Latin term used in logic, baroco , as the most likely source. In the 16th century the Medieval Latin word baroco moved beyond scholastic logic and came into use to characterise anything that seemed absurdly complex. The French philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) helped to give the term baroco (spelled Barroco by him) the meaning 'bizarre, uselessly complicated'. Other early sources associate baroco with magic, complexity, confusion, and excess. The word baroque
468-565: A West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the northern Netherlands. The resident population at this time was generally speaking Common Brittonic —the insular variety of Continental Celtic , which was influenced by the Roman occupation. This group of languages ( Welsh , Cornish , Cumbric ) cohabited alongside English into
624-627: A "coarse and uneven pearl". An alternative derivation of the word baroque points to the name of the Italian painter Federico Barocci (1528–1612). In the 18th century the term began to be used to describe music, and not in a flattering way. In an anonymous satirical review of the première of Jean-Philippe Rameau 's Hippolyte et Aricie in October 1733, which was printed in the Mercure de France in May 1734,
780-632: A bronze bust and red marble tombstone were erected in his memory there by the Société de la Compositeurs de Musique in 1883, the exact site of his burial remains unknown to this day. While the details of his biography are vague and fragmentary, the details of Rameau's personal and family life are almost completely obscure. Rameau's music, so graceful and attractive, completely contradicts the man's public image and what we know of his character as described (or perhaps unfairly caricatured) by Diderot in his satirical novel Le Neveu de Rameau . Throughout his life, music
936-549: A century as Received Pronunciation (RP). However, due to language evolution and changing social trends, some linguists argue that RP is losing prestige or has been replaced by another accent, one that the linguist Geoff Lindsey for instance calls Standard Southern British English. Others suggest that more regionally-oriented standard accents are emerging in England. Even in Scotland and Northern Ireland, RP exerts little influence in
1092-506: A composer who wanted above all to be renowned as a theorist of the art. Nevertheless, it is not solely addressed to the intelligence, and Rameau himself claimed, "I try to conceal art with art." The paradox of this music was that it was new, using techniques never known before, but it took place within the framework of old-fashioned forms. Rameau appeared revolutionary to the Lullyistes, disturbed by complex harmony of his music; and reactionary to
1248-527: A concave traverse. The interior was equally revolutionary; the main space of the church was oval, beneath an oval dome. Painted ceilings, crowded with angels and saints and trompe-l'œil architectural effects, were an important feature of the Italian High Baroque. Major works included The Entry of Saint Ignatius into Paradise by Andrea Pozzo (1685–1695) in the Sant'Ignazio Church, Rome , and The Triumph of
1404-704: A deliberate confusion between the real architecture and the decoration. The architecture is transformed into a theatre of light, colour and movement. In Poland, the Italian-inspired Polish Baroque lasted from the early 17th to the mid-18th century and emphasised richness of detail and colour. The first Baroque building in present-day Poland and probably one of the most recognizable is the Saints Peter and Paul Church, Kraków , designed by Giovanni Battista Trevano . Sigismund's Column in Warsaw , erected in 1644,
1560-533: A didacticism that was specifically intended to illuminate, scientifically, the structure and principles of music. With careful deductive reasoning, he attempted to derive universal harmonic principles from natural causes. Previous treatises on harmony had been purely practical; Rameau embraced the new philosophical rationalism, quickly rising to prominence in France as the " Isaac Newton of Music". His fame subsequently spread throughout all Europe, and his Treatise became
1716-506: A distinct, more flamboyant and asymmetric style which emerged from the Baroque, then replaced it in Central Europe in the first half of the 18th century, until it was replaced in turn by classicism. The princes of the multitude of states in that region also chose Baroque or Rococo for their palaces and residences, and often used Italian-trained architects to construct them. A notable example
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#17330844858531872-526: A few cantatas ; a few motets for large chorus; some pieces for solo harpsichord or harpsichord accompanied by other instruments; and, finally, his works for the stage, to which he dedicated the last thirty years of his career almost exclusively. Like most of his contemporaries, Rameau often reused melodies that had been particularly successful, but never without meticulously adapting them; they are not simple transcriptions. Besides, no borrowings have been found from other composers, although his earliest works show
2028-655: A giant ellipse balance the oversize dome and give the Church and square a unity and the feeling of a giant theatre. Another major innovator of the Italian High Baroque was Francesco Borromini , whose major work was the Church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane or Saint Charles of the Four Fountains (1634–1646). The sense of movement is given not by the decoration, but by the walls themselves, which undulate and by concave and convex elements, including an oval tower and balcony inserted into
2184-502: A great reputation, and it was followed in 1726 by his Nouveau système de musique théorique . In 1724 and 1729 (or 1730), he also published two more collections of harpsichord pieces. Rameau took his first tentative steps into composing stage music when the writer Alexis Piron asked him to provide songs for his popular comic plays written for the Paris Fairs. Four collaborations followed, beginning with L'endriague in 1723, but none of
2340-501: A greater movement, normally [əʊ], [əʉ] or [əɨ]. Dropping a morphological grammatical number , in collective nouns , is stronger in British English than North American English. This is to treat them as plural when once grammatically singular, a perceived natural number prevails, especially when applying to institutional nouns and groups of people. The noun 'police', for example, undergoes this treatment: Police are investigating
2496-520: A knight of the Ordre de Saint-Michel. But he did not change his way of life, keeping his worn-out clothes, his single pair of shoes, and his old furniture. After his death, it was discovered that he possessed only one dilapidated single-keyboard harpsichord in his rooms in Rue des Bons-Enfants, yet he also had a bag containing 1691 gold louis . Rameau's music is characterised by the exceptional technical knowledge of
2652-406: A lesser class or social status and often discounted or considered of a low intelligence. Another contribution to the standardisation of British English was the introduction of the printing press to England in the mid-15th century. In doing so, William Caxton enabled a common language and spelling to be dispersed among the entirety of England at a much faster rate. Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of
2808-502: A major theorist of music with his Treatise on Harmony (1722) and also in the following years as a composer of masterpieces for the harpsichord, which circulated throughout Europe . He was almost 50 before he embarked on the operatic career on which his reputation chiefly rests today. His debut, Hippolyte et Aricie (1733), caused a great stir and was fiercely attacked by the supporters of Lully's style of music for its revolutionary use of harmony. Nevertheless, Rameau's pre-eminence in
2964-446: A narrowing floor and a miniature statue in the garden beyond to create the illusion that a passageway was thirty meters long, when it was actually only seven meters long. A statue at the end of the passage appears to be life-size, though it is only sixty centimeters high. Borromini designed the illusion with the assistance of a mathematician. The first building in Rome to have a Baroque façade
3120-592: A period called Royal Absolutism, which allowed the Portuguese Baroque to flourish. Baroque architecture in Portugal enjoys a special situation and different timeline from the rest of Europe. It is conditioned by several political, artistic, and economic factors, that originate several phases, and different kinds of outside influences, resulting in a unique blend, often misunderstood by those looking for Italian art, find instead specific forms and character which give it
3276-468: A pilgrimage church located near the town of Bad Staffelstein near Bamberg, in Bavaria, southern Germany. The Basilica was designed by Balthasar Neumann and was constructed between 1743 and 1772, its plan a series of interlocking circles around a central oval with the altar placed in the exact centre of the church. The interior of this church illustrates the summit of Rococo decoration. Another notable example of
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#17330844858533432-648: A process called T-glottalisation . National media, being based in London, have seen the glottal stop spreading more widely than it once was in word endings, not being heard as "no [ʔ] " and bottle of water being heard as "bo [ʔ] le of wa [ʔ] er". It is still stigmatised when used at the beginning and central positions, such as later , while often has all but regained /t/ . Other consonants subject to this usage in Cockney English are p , as in pa [ʔ] er and k as in ba [ʔ] er. In most areas of England and Wales, outside
3588-455: A proliferation of forms, and a richness of colours and dramatic effects. Among the most influential monuments of the Early Baroque were the façade of St. Peter's Basilica (1606–1619), and the new nave and loggia which connected the façade to Michelangelo's dome in the earlier church. The new design created a dramatic contrast between the soaring dome and the disproportionately wide façade, and
3744-511: A regional accent or dialect. However, about 2% of Britons speak with an accent called Received Pronunciation (also called "the King's English", "Oxford English" and " BBC English" ), that is essentially region-less. It derives from a mixture of the Midlands and Southern dialects spoken in London in the early modern period. It is frequently used as a model for teaching English to foreign learners. In
3900-528: A rounded surface, which carried images or text in gilded letters, and were placed as interior decoration or above the doorways of buildings, delivering messages to those below. They showed a wide variety of invention, and were found in all types of buildings, from cathedrals and palaces to small chapels. Baroque architects sometimes used forced perspective to create illusions. For the Palazzo Spada in Rome, Francesco Borromini used columns of diminishing size,
4056-590: A scheming musician, Jeanne-Thérèse Goermans , as his mistress. The daughter of harpsichord maker Jacques Goermans , she went by the name of Madame de Saint-Aubin , and her opportunistic husband pushed her into the arms of the rich financier. She had La Poupelinière engage the services of the Bohemian composer Johann Stamitz , who succeeded Rameau after a breach developed between Rameau and his patron. By then, however, Rameau no longer needed La Poupelinière's financial support and protection. Rameau pursued his activities as
4212-509: A sense of mystery. The Santiago de Compostela Cathedral was modernized with a series of Baroque additions beginning at the end of the 17th century, starting with a highly ornate bell tower (1680), then flanked by two even taller and more ornate towers, called the Obradorio , added between 1738 and 1750 by Fernando de Casas Novoa . Another landmark of the Spanish Baroque is the chapel tower of
4368-509: A short while in Milan . On his return, he worked as a violinist in travelling companies, and then as an organist in provincial cathedrals, before moving to Paris for the first time. There, in 1706, he published his earliest-known compositions: the harpsichord works that make up his first book of Pièces de Clavecin , which show the influence of his friend Louis Marchand . In 1709, he moved back to Dijon to take over his father's job as organist in
4524-594: A theorist and composer until his death. He lived with his wife and two of his children in his large suite of rooms in Rue des Bons-Enfants, which he would leave every day, lost in thought, to take a solitary walk in the nearby gardens of the Palais-Royal or the Tuileries. Sometimes he would meet the young writer Chabanon , who noted some of Rameau's disillusioned confidential remarks: "Day by day, I'm acquiring more good taste, but I no longer have any genius" and "The imagination
4680-464: A uniquely Portuguese variety. Another key factor is the existence of the Jesuitical architecture, also called "plain style" (Estilo Chão or Estilo Plano) which like the name evokes, is plainer and appears somewhat austere. The buildings are single-room basilicas, deep main chapel, lateral chapels (with small doors for communication), without interior and exterior decoration, simple portal and windows. It
4836-427: Is a practical building, allowing it to be built throughout the empire with minor adjustments, and prepared to be decorated later or when economic resources are available. In fact, the first Portuguese Baroque does not lack in building because "plain style" is easy to be transformed, by means of decoration (painting, tiling, etc.), turning empty areas into pompous, elaborate baroque scenarios. The same could be applied to
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4992-447: Is also credited with writing the libretto of Rameau's final work, Les Boréades (c. 1763). Many Rameau specialists have regretted that the collaboration with Houdar de la Motte never took place, and that the Samson project with Voltaire came to nothing because the librettists Rameau did work with were second-rate. He made his acquaintance of most of them at La Poupelinière 's salon, at
5148-725: Is also due to London-centric influences. Examples of R-dropping are car and sugar , where the R is not pronounced. British dialects differ on the extent of diphthongisation of long vowels, with southern varieties extensively turning them into diphthongs, and with northern dialects normally preserving many of them. As a comparison, North American varieties could be said to be in-between. Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are usually preserved, and in several areas also /oː/ and /eː/, as in go and say (unlike other varieties of English, that change them to [oʊ] and [eɪ] respectively). Some areas go as far as not diphthongising medieval /iː/ and /uː/, that give rise to modern /aɪ/ and /aʊ/; that is, for example, in
5304-422: Is an example of the balance of opposites in Baroque art; the gigantic proportions of the piece, with the apparent lightness of the canopy; and the contrast between the solid twisted columns, bronze, gold and marble of the piece with the flowing draperies of the angels on the canopy. The Dresden Frauenkirche serves as a prominent example of Lutheran Baroque art, which was completed in 1743 after being commissioned by
5460-424: Is based on British English, but has more influence from American English , often grouped together due to their close proximity. British English, for example, is the closest English to Indian English, but Indian English has extra vocabulary and some English words are assigned different meanings. Jean-Philippe Rameau Little is known about Rameau's early years. It was not until the 1720s that he won fame as
5616-813: Is commonly heard in the Victoria Centre in Nottingham by the Rowland Emett timepiece, the Aqua Horological Tintinnabulator . Emett quoted that Rameau made music for his school and the shopping centre without him knowing it. Rameau's 1722 Treatise on Harmony initiated a revolution in music theory. Rameau posited the discovery of the "fundamental law" or what he referred to as the "fundamental bass" of all Western music. Heavily influenced by new Cartesian modes of thought and analysis, Rameau's methodology incorporated mathematics, commentary, analysis and
5772-453: Is exceptionally small and his organ works nonexistent. Judging by the evidence, it was not his favourite field, but rather, simply a way of making reasonable money. Rameau's few religious compositions are nevertheless remarkable and compare favourably to the works of specialists in the area. Only four motets have been attributed to Rameau with any certainty: Deus noster refugium , In convertendo , Quam dilecta , and Laboravi . The cantata
5928-769: Is included in style guides issued by various publishers including The Times newspaper, the Oxford University Press and the Cambridge University Press . The Oxford University Press guidelines were originally drafted as a single broadsheet page by Horace Henry Hart, and were at the time (1893) the first guide of their type in English; they were gradually expanded and eventually published, first as Hart's Rules , and in 2002 as part of The Oxford Manual of Style . Comparable in authority and stature to The Chicago Manual of Style for published American English ,
6084-605: Is the St. Nicholas Church (Malá Strana) in Prague (1704–1755), built by Christoph Dientzenhofer and his son Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer . Decoration covers all of walls of interior of the church. The altar is placed in the nave beneath the central dome, and surrounded by chapels, light comes down from the dome above and from the surrounding chapels. The altar is entirely surrounded by arches, columns, curved balustrades and pilasters of coloured stone, which are richly decorated with statuary, creating
6240-465: Is the city of Baroque in Portugal. Its historical centre is part of UNESCO World Heritage List . Many of the Baroque works in the historical area of the city and beyond, belong to Nicolau Nasoni an Italian architect living in Portugal, drawing original buildings with scenographic emplacement such as the church and tower of Clérigos , the logia of the Porto Cathedral , the church of Misericórdia,
6396-456: Is worn out in my old head; it's not wise at this age wanting to practise arts that are nothing but imagination." Rameau composed prolifically in the late 1740s and early 1750s. After that, his rate of productivity dropped off, probably due to old age and ill health, although he was still able to write another comic opera, Les Paladins , in 1760. That as due to be followed by a final tragédie en musique, Les Boréades but, for unknown reasons,
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6552-593: The philosophes , who only paid attention to its content and who either would not or could not listen to the sound it made. The incomprehension Rameau received from his contemporaries stopped him from repeating such daring experiments as the second Trio des Parques in Hippolyte et Aricie , which he was forced to remove after a handful of performances because the singers had been either unable or unwilling to execute it correctly. Rameau's musical works may be divided into four distinct groups, which differ greatly in importance:
6708-530: The Chambers Dictionary , and the Collins Dictionary record actual usage rather than attempting to prescribe it. In addition, vocabulary and usage change with time; words are freely borrowed from other languages and other varieties of English, and neologisms are frequent. For historical reasons dating back to the rise of London in the ninth century, the form of language spoken in London and
6864-544: The Pièces de clavecin en concerts (1741), which some musicologists consider the pinnacle of French Baroque chamber music. Adopting a formula successfully employed by Mondonville a few years earlier, Rameau fashioned these pieces differently from trio sonatas in that the harpsichord is not simply there as basso continuo to accompany melody instruments (violin, flute, viol) but as equal partner in "concert" with them. Rameau claimed that this music would be equally satisfying played on
7020-831: The Catherine Palace and the Smolny Cathedral . Other distinctive monuments of the Elizabethan Baroque are the bell tower of the Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra and the Red Gate . British English British English (abbreviations: BrE , en-GB , and BE ) is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland . More narrowly, it can refer specifically to
7176-790: The Chapel of the Holy Shroud (1668–1694) by Guarino Guarini . The style also began to be used in palaces; Guarini designed the Palazzo Carignano in Turin, while Longhena designed the Ca' Rezzonico on the Grand Canal , (1657), finished by Giorgio Massari with decorated with paintings by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo . A series of massive earthquakes in Sicily required the rebuilding of most of them and several were built in
7332-637: The East Midlands became standard English within the Court, and ultimately became the basis for generally accepted use in the law, government, literature and education in Britain. The standardisation of British English is thought to be from both dialect levelling and a thought of social superiority. Speaking in the Standard dialect created class distinctions; those who did not speak the standard English would be considered of
7488-509: The English language in England , or, more broadly, to the collective dialects of English throughout the British Isles taken as a single umbrella variety, for instance additionally incorporating Scottish English , Welsh English , and Northern Irish English . Tom McArthur in the Oxford Guide to World English acknowledges that British English shares "all the ambiguities and tensions [with]
7644-474: The French Revolution , Rameau's did not. By the end of the 18th century, his operas had vanished from the repertoire. For most of the 19th century, Rameau's music remained unplayed, known only by reputation. Hector Berlioz investigated Castor et Pollux and particularly admired the aria "Tristes apprêts", but "whereas the modern listener readily perceives the common ground with Berlioz' music, he himself
7800-603: The Palace of San Telmo in Seville by Leonardo de Figueroa . Granada had only been conquered from the Moors in the 15th century, and had its own distinct variety of Baroque. The painter, sculptor and architect Alonso Cano designed the Baroque interior of Granada Cathedral between 1652 and his death in 1657. It features dramatic contrasts of the massive white columns and gold decor. The most ornamental and lavishly decorated architecture of
7956-639: The Palace of São João Novo , the Palace of Freixo , the Episcopal Palace ( Portuguese : Paço Episcopal do Porto ) along with many others. The debut of Russian Baroque, or Petrine Baroque , followed a long visit of Peter the Great to western Europe in 1697–1698, where he visited the Châteaux of Fontainebleau and Versailles as well as other architectural monuments. He decided, on his return to Russia, to construct similar monuments in St. Petersburg , which became
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#17330844858538112-484: The Royal Spanish Academy with Spanish. Standard British English differs notably in certain vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation features from standard American English and certain other standard English varieties around the world. British and American spelling also differ in minor ways. The accent, or pronunciation system, of standard British English, based in southeastern England, has been known for over
8268-486: The Scots language or Scottish Gaelic ). Each group includes a range of dialects, some markedly different from others. The various British dialects also differ in the words that they have borrowed from other languages. Around the middle of the 15th century, there were points where within the 5 major dialects there were almost 500 ways to spell the word though . Following its last major survey of English Dialects (1949–1950),
8424-447: The Société du Caveau [ fr ] , or at the house of the comte de Livry, all meeting places for leading cultural figures of the day. Not one of his librettists managed to produce a libretto on the same artistic level as Rameau's music: the plots were often overly complex or unconvincing. But this was standard for the genre, and is probably part of its charm. The versification, too,
8580-560: The University of Leeds has started work on a new project. In May 2007 the Arts and Humanities Research Council awarded a grant to Leeds to study British regional dialects. The team are sifting through a large collection of examples of regional slang words and phrases turned up by the "Voices project" run by the BBC , in which they invited the public to send in examples of English still spoken throughout
8736-599: The Wessobrunner School . It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site . Baroque in France developed quite differently from the ornate and dramatic local versions of Baroque from Italy, Spain and the rest of Europe. It appears severe, more detached and restrained by comparison, preempting Neoclassicism and the architecture of the Enlightenment . Unlike Italian buildings, French Baroque buildings have no broken pediments or curvilinear façades. Even religious buildings avoided
8892-601: The West Country and other near-by counties of the UK, the consonant R is not pronounced if not followed by a vowel, lengthening the preceding vowel instead. This phenomenon is known as non-rhoticity . In these same areas, a tendency exists to insert an R between a word ending in a vowel and a next word beginning with a vowel. This is called the intrusive R . It could be understood as a merger, in that words that once ended in an R and words that did not are no longer treated differently. This
9048-688: The cartouche , trophies and weapons, baskets of fruit or flowers, and others, made in marquetry , stucco , or carved. The English word baroque comes directly from the French . Some scholars state that the French word originated from the Portuguese term barroco 'a flawed pearl', pointing to the Latin verruca 'wart', or to a word with the Romance suffix -ǒccu (common in pre-Roman Iberia ). Other sources suggest
9204-469: The 1730s are among Rameau's most highly regarded works. However, the composer followed them with six years of silence, during which the only work he produced was a new version of Dardanus (1744). The reason for the interval in the composer's creative life is unknown, although it is possible he had a falling-out with the authorities at the Académie royale de la musique. The year 1745 was a turning point in Rameau's career. He received several commissions from
9360-422: The 21st century. RP, while long established as the standard English accent around the globe due to the spread of the British Empire , is distinct from the standard English pronunciation in some parts of the world; most prominently, RP notably contrasts with standard North American accents. In the 21st century, dictionaries like the Oxford English Dictionary , the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English ,
9516-423: The Académie Royale de Musique on 1 October 1733. It was immediately recognised as the most significant opera to appear in France since the death of Lully , though its reception drew controversy. Some, such as the composer André Campra , were stunned by its originality and wealth of invention; others found its harmonic innovations discordant and saw the work as an attack on the French musical tradition. The two camps,
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#17330844858539672-486: The Académie royale de musique: three tragédies en musique and two opéra-ballets that still form the core of his repertoire. After the interval of 1740 to 1744, he became the official court musician, and for the most part, composed pieces intended to entertain, with plenty of dance music emphasising sensuality and an idealised pastoral atmosphere. In his last years, Rameau returned to a renewed version of his early style in Les Paladins and Les Boréades . His Zoroastre
9828-651: The English Language (1755) was a large step in the English-language spelling reform , where the purification of language focused on standardising both speech and spelling. By the early 20th century, British authors had produced numerous books intended as guides to English grammar and usage, a few of which achieved sufficient acclaim to have remained in print for long periods and to have been reissued in new editions after some decades. These include, most notably of all, Fowler's Modern English Usage and The Complete Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers . Detailed guidance on many aspects of writing British English for publication
9984-597: The French stage only by assimilating the latter's beautiful works and making them his own." Camille Saint-Saëns (by editing and publishing the Pièces in 1895) and Paul Dukas were two other important French musicians who gave practical championship to Rameau's music in their day, but interest in Rameau petered out again, and it was not until the late 20th century that a serious effort was made to revive his works. Over half of Rameau's operas have now been recorded, in particular by conductors such as John Eliot Gardiner , William Christie , and Marc Minkowski . One of his pieces
10140-434: The Germanic schwein ) is the animal in the field bred by the occupied Anglo-Saxons and pork (like the French porc ) is the animal at the table eaten by the occupying Normans. Another example is the Anglo-Saxon cu meaning cow, and the French bœuf meaning beef. Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of the Anglo-Frisian core of English;
10296-465: The Italian tradition were increasingly looking towards Rameau as a way of reforming their own leading operatic genre, opera seria . Tommaso Traetta produced two operas setting translations of Rameau libretti that show the French composer's influence, Ippolito ed Aricia (1759) and I Tintaridi (based on Castor et Pollux , 1760). Traetta had been advised by Count Francesco Algarotti , a leading proponent of reform according to French models; Algarotti
10452-439: The Lutheran city council of Dresden and was "compared by eighteenth-century observers to St Peter's in Rome". The twisted column in the interior of churches is one of the signature features of the Baroque. It gives both a sense of motion and also a dramatic new way of reflecting light. The cartouche was another characteristic feature of Baroque decoration. These were large plaques carved of marble or stone, usually oval and with
10608-485: The Name of Jesus by Giovanni Battista Gaulli in the Church of the Gesù in Rome (1669–1683), which featured figures spilling out of the picture frame and dramatic oblique lighting and light-dark contrasts. The style spread quickly from Rome to other regions of Italy: It appeared in Venice in the church of Santa Maria della Salute (1631–1687) by Baldassare Longhena , a highly original octagonal form crowned with an enormous cupola . It appeared also in Turin , notably in
10764-621: The Oxford Manual is a fairly exhaustive standard for published British English that writers can turn to in the absence of specific guidance from their publishing house. British English is the basis of, and very similar to, Commonwealth English . Commonwealth English is English as spoken and written in the Commonwealth countries , though often with some local variation. This includes English spoken in Australia , Malta , New Zealand , Nigeria , and South Africa . It also includes South Asian English used in South Asia, in English varieties in Southeast Asia , and in parts of Africa. Canadian English
10920-599: The South East, there are significantly different accents; the Cockney accent spoken by some East Londoners is strikingly different from Received Pronunciation (RP). Cockney rhyming slang can be (and was initially intended to be) difficult for outsiders to understand, although the extent of its use is often somewhat exaggerated. Londoners speak with a mixture of accents, depending on ethnicity, neighbourhood, class, age, upbringing, and sundry other factors. Estuary English has been gaining prominence in recent decades: it has some features of RP and some of Cockney. Immigrants to
11076-399: The Spanish Baroque is called Churrigueresque style, named after the brothers Churriguera , who worked primarily in Salamanca and Madrid. Their works include the buildings on Salamanca's main square, the Plaza Mayor (1729). This highly ornamental Baroque style was influential in many churches and cathedrals built by the Spanish in the Americas. Other notable Spanish baroque architects of
11232-537: The UK in recent decades have brought many more languages to the country and particularly to London. Surveys started in 1979 by the Inner London Education Authority discovered over 125 languages being spoken domestically by the families of the inner city's schoolchildren. Notably Multicultural London English , a sociolect that emerged in the late 20th century spoken mainly by young, working-class people in multicultural parts of London . Since
11388-621: The United Kingdom , as well as within the countries themselves. The major divisions are normally classified as English English (or English as spoken in England (which is itself broadly grouped into Southern English , West Country , East and West Midlands English and Northern English ), Northern Irish English (in Northern Ireland), Welsh English (not to be confused with the Welsh language ), and Scottish English (not to be confused with
11544-458: The West Scottish accent. Phonological features characteristic of British English revolve around the pronunciation of the letter R, as well as the dental plosive T and some diphthongs specific to this dialect. Once regarded as a Cockney feature, in a number of forms of spoken British English, /t/ has become commonly realised as a glottal stop [ʔ] when it is in the intervocalic position, in
11700-410: The adjective little is predominant elsewhere. Nevertheless, there is a meaningful degree of uniformity in written English within the United Kingdom, and this could be described by the term British English . The forms of spoken English, however, vary considerably more than in most other areas of the world where English is spoken and so a uniform concept of British English is more difficult to apply to
11856-481: The arts should communicate religious themes with direct and emotional involvement. Similarly, Lutheran Baroque art developed as a confessional marker of identity, in response to the Great Iconoclasm of Calvinists . Baroque churches were designed with a large central space, where the worshippers could be close to the altar, with a dome or cupola high overhead, allowing light to illuminate the church below. The dome
12012-481: The award of the grant in 2007, Leeds University stated: that they were "very pleased"—and indeed, "well chuffed"—at receiving their generous grant. He could, of course, have been "bostin" if he had come from the Black Country , or if he was a Scouser he would have been well "made up" over so many spondoolicks, because as a Geordie might say, £460,000 is a "canny load of chink". Most people in Britain speak with
12168-463: The balustrades and consoles. Quadratura paintings of Atlantes below the cornices appear to be supporting the ceiling of the church. Unlike the painted ceilings of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel , which combined different scenes, each with its own perspective, to be looked at one at a time, the Baroque ceiling paintings were carefully created so the viewer on the floor of the church would see
12324-402: The career of Claude-Bénigne Balbastre in the capital. Furthermore, he gave his daughter Marie-Louise a considerable dowry when she became a Visitandine nun in 1750, and he paid a pension to one of his sisters when she became ill. Financial security came late to him, following the success of his stage works and the grant of a royal pension. A few months before his death, he was ennobled and made
12480-733: The churches built in the Spanish colonies in Latin America and the Philippines. The church built by the Jesuits for the College of San Francisco Javier in Tepotzotlán , with its ornate Baroque façade and tower, is a good example. From 1680 to 1750, many highly ornate cathedrals, abbeys, and pilgrimage churches were built in Central Europe, Austria, Bohemia and southwestern Poland. Some were in Rococo style,
12636-422: The conductor of La Poupelinière's private orchestra, which was of an extremely high quality. He held the post for 22 years, and was succeeded by Johann Stamitz and then François-Joseph Gossec . La Poupelinière's salon enabled Rameau to meet some of the leading cultural figures of the day, including Voltaire , who soon began collaborating with the composer. Their first project, the tragédie en musique Samson ,
12792-537: The contrast on the façade itself between the Doric columns and the great mass of the portico. In the mid to late 17th century the style reached its peak, later termed the High Baroque. Many monumental works were commissioned by Popes Urban VIII and Alexander VII . The sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini designed a new quadruple colonnade around St. Peter's Square (1656 to 1667). The three galleries of columns in
12948-613: The country. The BBC Voices project also collected hundreds of news articles about how the British speak English from swearing through to items on language schools. This information will also be collated and analysed by Johnson's team both for content and for where it was reported. "Perhaps the most remarkable finding in the Voices study is that the English language is as diverse as ever, despite our increased mobility and constant exposure to other accents and dialects through TV and radio". When discussing
13104-500: The court for works to celebrate the French victory at the Battle of Fontenoy and the marriage of the Dauphin to Infanta Maria Teresa Rafaela of Spain . Rameau produced his most important comic opera, Platée , as well as two collaborations with Voltaire: the opéra-ballet Le temple de la gloire and the comédie-ballet La princesse de Navarre . They gained Rameau official recognition; he
13260-421: The critic wrote that the novelty in this opera was " du barocque ", complaining that the music lacked coherent melody, was unsparing with dissonances, constantly changed key and meter, and speedily ran through every compositional device. In 1762 Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française recorded that the term could figuratively describe something "irregular, bizarre or unequal". Jean-Jacques Rousseau , who
13416-404: The embittered Rousseau nursed a grudge against Rameau for the rest of his life. Rousseau was a major participant in the second great quarrel that erupted over Rameau's work, the so-called Querelle des Bouffons of 1752–54, which pitted French tragédie en musique against Italian opera buffa . This time, Rameau was accused of being out of date and his music too complicated in comparison with
13572-406: The end of 1745, Voltaire and Rameau, who were busy on other works, commissioned Rousseau to turn La Princesse de Navarre into a new opera, with linking recitative , called Les fêtes de Ramire . Rousseau then claimed the two had stolen the credit for the words and music he had contributed, though musicologists have been able to identify almost nothing of the piece as Rousseau's work. Nevertheless,
13728-507: The entire ceiling in correct perspective, as if the figures were real. The interiors of Baroque churches became more and more ornate in the High Baroque, and focused around the altar, usually placed under the dome. The most celebrated baroque decorative works of the High Baroque are the Chair of Saint Peter (1647–1653) and St. Peter's Baldachin (1623–1634), both by Gian Lorenzo Bernini , in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The Baldequin of St. Peter
13884-424: The experiments of a theorist and musical innovator ("L'enharmonique", "Les Cyclopes"), which had a marked influence on Louis-Claude Daquin , Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer and Jacques Duphly . Rameau's suites are grouped in the traditional way, by key. The first set of dances (Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Les Trois Mains, Fanfairenette, La Triomphante, Gavotte et 6 doubles) is centred on A major and A minor, while
14040-401: The exterior. Subsequently, it is easy to adapt the building to the taste of the time and place, and add on new features and details. Practical and economical. With more inhabitants and better economic resources, the north, particularly the areas of Porto and Braga , witnessed an architectural renewal, visible in the large list of churches, convents and palaces built by the aristocracy. Porto
14196-594: The exuberant late Baroque or Rococo style. The Catholic Church in Spain, and particularly the Jesuits , were the driving force of Spanish Baroque architecture. The first major work in this style was the San Isidro Chapel in Madrid , begun in 1643 by Pedro de la Torre . It contrasted an extreme richness of ornament on the exterior with simplicity in the interior, divided into multiple spaces and using effects of light to create
14352-652: The field of French opera was soon acknowledged, and he was later attacked as an "establishment" composer by those who favoured Italian opera during the controversy known as the Querelle des Bouffons in the 1750s. Rameau's music had gone out of fashion by the end of the 18th century, and it was not until the 20th that serious efforts were made to revive it. Today, he enjoys renewed appreciation with performances and recordings of his music ever more frequent. The details of Rameau's life are generally obscure, especially concerning his first forty years, before he moved to Paris for good. He
14508-509: The first decade of the 19th century. In the decorative arts , the style employs plentiful and intricate ornamentation. The departure from Renaissance classicism has its own ways in each country. But a general feature is that everywhere the starting point is the ornamental elements introduced by the Renaissance . The classical repertoire is crowded, dense, overlapping, loaded, in order to provoke shock effects. New motifs introduced by Baroque are:
14664-427: The harpsichord alone, but the claim is not wholly convincing because he took the trouble to transcribe five of them himself, those the lack of other instruments would show the least. After 1733 Rameau dedicated himself mostly to opera. On a strictly musical level, 18th-century French Baroque opera is richer and more varied than contemporary Italian opera, especially in the place given to choruses and dances but also in
14820-453: The idea of two different morphemes, one that causes the double negation, and one that is used for the point or the verb. Standard English in the United Kingdom, as in other English-speaking nations, is widely enforced in schools and by social norms for formal contexts but not by any singular authority; for instance, there is no institution equivalent to the Académie française with French or
14976-582: The influence of other music. Rameau's reworkings of his own material are numerous; e.g., in Les Fêtes d'Hébé , we find L'Entretien des Muses , the Musette, and the Tambourin, taken from the 1724 book of harpsichord pieces, as well as an aria from the cantata Le Berger Fidèle . For at least 26 years, Rameau was a professional organist in the service of religious institutions, and yet the body of sacred music he composed
15132-541: The intense spatial drama one finds in the work of Borromini . The style is closely associated with the works built for Louis XIV (reign 1643–1715), and because of this, it is also known as the Louis XIV style . Louis XIV invited the master of Baroque, Bernini, to submit a design for the new east wing of the Louvre , but rejected it in favor of a more classical design by Claude Perrault and Louis Le Vau . The main architects of
15288-511: The last southern Midlands accent to use the broad "a" in words like bath or grass (i.e. barth or grarss ). Conversely crass or plastic use a slender "a". A few miles northwest in Leicestershire the slender "a" becomes more widespread generally. In the town of Corby , five miles (8 km) north, one can find Corbyite which, unlike the Kettering accent, is largely influenced by
15444-516: The late Baroque include Pedro de Ribera , a pupil of Churriguera, who designed the Real Hospicio de San Fernando in Madrid, and Narciso Tomé , who designed the celebrated El Transparente altarpiece at Toledo Cathedral (1729–1732) which gives the illusion, in certain light, of floating upwards. The architects of the Spanish Baroque had an effect far beyond Spain; their work was highly influential in
15600-459: The later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core of a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance branch of the European languages. This Norman influence entered English largely through the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a "borrowing" language of great flexibility and with a huge vocabulary . Dialects and accents vary amongst the four countries of
15756-488: The leading art historian Jacob Burckhardt , who wrote that baroque artists "despised and abused detail" because they lacked "respect for tradition". In 1888 the art historian Heinrich Wölfflin published the first serious academic work on the style, Renaissance und Barock , which described the differences between the painting, sculpture, and architecture of the Renaissance and the Baroque. The Baroque style of architecture
15912-449: The main church. The contract was for six years, but Rameau left before then and took up similar posts in Lyon and Clermont-Ferrand . During that period, he composed motets for church performance as well as secular cantatas . In 1722, he returned to Paris for good, and there he published his most important work of music theory, Traité de l'harmonie ( Treatise on Harmony ). That soon won him
16068-452: The mass internal migration to Northamptonshire in the 1940s and given its position between several major accent regions, it has become a source of various accent developments. In Northampton the older accent has been influenced by overspill Londoners. There is an accent known locally as the Kettering accent, which is a transitional accent between the East Midlands and East Anglian . It is
16224-641: The model for his summer residence, Sanssouci , in Potsdam , designed for him by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff (1745–1747). Another work of Baroque palace architecture is the Zwinger (Dresden) , the former orangerie of the palace of the electors of Saxony in the 18th century. One of the best examples of a rococo church is the Basilika Vierzehnheiligen, or Basilica of the Fourteen Holy Helpers ,
16380-458: The modern period, but due to their remoteness from the Germanic languages , influence on English was notably limited . However, the degree of influence remains debated, and it has recently been argued that its grammatical influence accounts for the substantial innovations noted between English and the other West Germanic languages. Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting
16536-673: The most celebrated work of Polish Baroque is the Poznań Fara Church, with details by Pompeo Ferrari . After Thirty Years' War under the agreements of the Peace of Westphalia two unique baroque wattle and daub structures was built: Church of Peace in Jawor , Holy Trinity Church of Peace in Świdnica the largest wooden Baroque temple in Europe. The many states within the Holy Roman Empire on
16692-447: The music has survived. On 25 February 1726, Rameau married the 19-year-old Marie-Louise Mangot, who came from a musical family from Lyon, and was a good singer and instrumentalist. The couple had four children, two boys and two girls, and the marriage is said to have been a happy one. In spite of his fame as a music theorist, Rameau had trouble finding a post as an organist in Paris. It
16848-480: The musical continuity that arises from the respective relationships between the arias and the recitatives . Another essential difference: whereas Italian opera gave a starring role to female sopranos and castrati , French opera had no use for the latter. The Italian opera of Rameau's day ( opera seria , opera buffa ) was essentially divided into musical sections ( da capo arias, duets, trios, etc.) and sections that were spoken or almost spoken ( recitativo secco ). It
17004-531: The national destiny of France." In 1894, composer Vincent d'Indy founded the Schola Cantorum to promote French national music; the society put on several revivals of works by Rameau. Among the audience was Claude Debussy , who especially cherished Castor et Pollux , revived in 1903: " Gluck 's genius was deeply rooted in Rameau's works... a detailed comparison allows us to affirm that Gluck could replace Rameau on
17160-569: The new capital of Russia in 1712. Early major monuments in the Petrine Baroque include the Peter and Paul Cathedral and Menshikov Palace . During the reign of Anna and Elisabeth , Russian architecture was dominated by the luxurious Baroque style of Italian-born Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli , which developed into Elizabethan Baroque . Rastrelli's signature buildings include the Winter Palace ,
17316-431: The opera was never produced and did not get a proper staging unil the late 20th century. Rameau died on 12 September 1764 after suffering from a fever, thirteen days before his 81st birthday. At his bedside, he objected to a song being sung. His last words were, "What the devil do you mean to sing to me, priest? You are out of tune." He was buried in the church of St. Eustache , Paris on the same day of his death. Although
17472-404: The operatic reforms advocated in the preface to Gluck's Alceste were already present in Rameau's works. Rameau had used accompanied recitatives, and the overtures in his later operas reflected the action to come, so when Gluck arrived in Paris in 1774 to produce a series of six French operas, he could be seen as continuing in the tradition of Rameau. Nevertheless, while Gluck's popularity survived
17628-521: The period was the expansion of Palace of Versailles , begun in 1661 by Le Vau with decoration by the painter Charles Le Brun . The gardens were designed by André Le Nôtre specifically to complement and amplify the architecture. The Galerie des Glaces ( Hall of Mirrors ), the centerpiece of the château, with paintings by Le Brun, was constructed between 1678 and 1686. Mansart completed the Grand Trianon in 1687. The chapel, designed by Robert de Cotte ,
17784-409: The relatively standardised suite form, which had reached its apogee in the first decade of the 18th century and successive collections of pieces by Louis Marchand , Gaspard Le Roux , Louis-Nicolas Clérambault , Jean-François Dandrieu , Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre , Charles Dieupart and Nicolas Siret . Rameau and Couperin had different styles, and it seems they did not know one another: Couperin
17940-507: The remaining pieces (Les tricoteuses, L'Indifferente, Première Menuet, Deuxième Menuet, La Poule, Les Triolets, Les Sauvages, L'Enharmonique, L'Egiptienne [sic]) are centred around G major and G minor. Rameau's second and third collections appeared in 1724 and 1727. After these he composed only one piece for the harpsichord, the eight-minute "La Dauphine" of 1747, while the very short "Les petits marteaux" (c. 1750) has also been attributed to him. During his semiretirement (1740 to 1744) he wrote
18096-469: The rest of Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, then to Austria, southern Germany, and Poland. By the 1730s, it had evolved into an even more flamboyant style, called rocaille or Rococo , which appeared in France and Central Europe until the mid to late 18th century. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires including the Iberian Peninsula it continued, together with new styles, until
18252-549: The simplicity and "naturalness" of a work like Pergolesi's La serva padrona . In the mid-1750s, Rameau criticised Rousseau's contributions to the musical articles in the Encyclopédie , which led to a quarrel with the leading philosophes d'Alembert and Diderot . As a result, Jean-François Rameau became a character in Diderot's then-unpublished dialogue, Le neveu de Rameau ( Rameau's Nephew ). In 1753, La Poupelinière took
18408-462: The so-called Lullyistes and the Rameauneurs, fought a pamphlet war over the issue for the rest of the decade. Just before that, Rameau had made the acquaintance of the powerful financier Alexandre Le Riche de La Poupelinière , who became his patron until 1753. La Poupelinière's mistress (and later, wife), Thérèse des Hayes , was Rameau's pupil and a great admirer of his music. In 1731, Rameau became
18564-455: The spoken language. Globally, countries that are former British colonies or members of the Commonwealth tend to follow British English, as is the case for English used by European Union institutions. In China, both British English and American English are taught. The UK government actively teaches and promotes English around the world and operates in over 200 countries . English is
18720-478: The style included François Mansart (1598–1666), Pierre Le Muet (Church of Val-de-Grâce , 1645–1665) and Louis Le Vau ( Vaux-le-Vicomte , 1657–1661). Mansart was the first architect to introduce Baroque styling, principally the frequent use of an applied order and heavy rustication , into the French architectural vocabulary. The mansard roof was not invented by Mansart, but it has become associated with him, as he used it frequently. The major royal project of
18876-574: The style is the Pilgrimage Church of Wies ( German : Wieskirche ). It was designed by the brothers J. B. and Dominikus Zimmermann . It is located in the foothills of the Alps , in the municipality of Steingaden in the Weilheim-Schongau district, Bavaria, Germany. Construction took place between 1745 and 1754, and the interior was decorated with frescoes and with stuccowork in the tradition of
19032-534: The term in the Encyclopédie Méthodique as "an architectural style that is highly adorned and tormented". The French terms style baroque and musique baroque appeared in Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française in 1835. By the mid-19th century, art critics and historians had adopted the term baroque as a way to ridicule post-Renaissance art. This was the sense of the word as used in 1855 by
19188-578: The territory of today's Germany all looked to represent themselves with impressive Baroque buildings. Notable architects included Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach , Lukas von Hildebrandt and Dominikus Zimmermann in Bavaria , Balthasar Neumann in Bruhl , and Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann in Dresden. In Prussia , Frederick II of Prussia was inspired by the Grand Trianon of the Palace of Versailles , and used it as
19344-587: The theft of work tools worth £500 from a van at the Sprucefield park and ride car park in Lisburn. A football team can be treated likewise: Arsenal have lost just one of 20 home Premier League matches against Manchester City. This tendency can be observed in texts produced already in the 19th century. For example, Jane Austen , a British author, writes in Chapter 4 of Pride and Prejudice , published in 1813: All
19500-403: The traditional accent of Newcastle upon Tyne , 'out' will sound as 'oot', and in parts of Scotland and North-West England, 'my' will be pronounced as 'me'. Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are diphthongised to [ɪi] and [ʊu] respectively (or, more technically, [ʏʉ], with a raised tongue), so that ee and oo in feed and food are pronounced with a movement. The diphthong [oʊ] is also pronounced with
19656-784: The varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England. One of these dialects, Late West Saxon , eventually came to dominate. The original Old English was then influenced by two waves of invasion: the first was by speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family, who settled in parts of Britain in the eighth and ninth centuries; the second was the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and ultimately developed an English variety of this called Anglo-Norman . These two invasions caused English to become "mixed" to some degree (though it
19812-402: The word 'British' and as a result can be used and interpreted in two ways, more broadly or more narrowly, within a range of blurring and ambiguity". Variations exist in formal (both written and spoken) English in the United Kingdom. For example, the adjective wee is almost exclusively used in parts of Scotland, north-east England, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and occasionally Yorkshire , whereas
19968-560: The world are good and agreeable in your eyes. However, in Chapter 16, the grammatical number is used. The world is blinded by his fortune and consequence. Some dialects of British English use negative concords, also known as double negatives . Rather than changing a word or using a positive, words like nobody, not, nothing, and never would be used in the same sentence. While this does not occur in Standard English, it does occur in non-standard dialects. The double negation follows
20124-411: Was a genre within the reach of a composer who was still unknown. Musicologists can only guess at the dates of Rameau's six surviving cantatas, and the names of the librettists are unknown. Along with François Couperin , Rameau was a master of the 18th-century French school of harpsichord music, and both made a break with the style of the first generation of harpsichordists whose compositions adhered to
20280-467: Was a highly successful genre in the early 18th century. The French cantata, which should not be confused with the Italian or the German cantata, was "invented" in 1706 by the poet Jean-Baptiste Rousseau and soon taken up by many famous composers of the day, such as Montéclair , Campra , and Clérambault . Cantatas were Rameau's first contact with dramatic music. The modest forces the cantata required meant it
20436-405: Was a major influence on the most important "reformist" composer, Christoph Willibald Gluck . Gluck's three Italian reform operas of the 1760s— Orfeo ed Euridice , Alceste , and Paride ed Elena —reveal a knowledge of Rameau's works. For instance, both Orfeo and the 1737 version of Castor et Pollux open with the funeral of one of the leading characters who later comes back to life. Many of
20592-450: Was a musician and composer as well as a philosopher, wrote in the Encyclopédie in 1768: "Baroque music is that in which the harmony is confused, and loaded with modulations and dissonances. The singing is harsh and unnatural, the intonation difficult, and the movement limited. It appears that term comes from the word 'baroco' used by logicians." In 1788 Quatremère de Quincy defined
20748-645: Was a result of doctrines adopted by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in 1545–1563, in response to the Protestant Reformation . The first phase of the Counter-Reformation had imposed a severe, academic style on religious architecture, which had appealed to intellectuals but not the mass of churchgoers. The Council of Trent decided instead to appeal to a more popular audience, and declared that
20904-533: Was a secretive man, and even his wife knew nothing of his early life, which explains the scarcity of biographical information available. Rameau's early years are particularly obscure. He was born on 25 September 1683 in Dijon , and baptised the same day. His father, Jean, worked as an organist in several churches around Dijon, and his mother, Claudine Demartinécourt, was the daughter of a notary . The couple had eleven children, five girls and six boys, of whom Jean-Philippe
21060-529: Was abandoned because an opera on a religious theme by Voltaire—a notorious critic of the Church—was likely to be banned by the authorities. Meanwhile, Rameau had introduced his new musical style into the lighter genre of the opéra-ballet with the highly successful Les Indes galantes . It was followed by two tragédies en musique , Castor et Pollux (1737) and Dardanus (1739), and another opéra-ballet , Les fêtes d'Hébé (also 1739). All those operas of
21216-518: Was also associated with irregular pearls before the 18th century. The French baroque and Portuguese barroco were terms often associated with jewelry. An example from 1531 uses the term to describe pearls in an inventory of Charles V of France 's treasures. Later, the word appears in a 1694 edition of Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française , which describes baroque as "only used for pearls that are imperfectly round." A 1728 Portuguese dictionary similarly describes barroco as relating to
21372-446: Was difficult to understand, just like his handwriting, which was never fluent. As a man, he was secretive, solitary, irritable, proud of his own achievements (more as a theorist than as a composer), brusque with those who contradicted him, and quick to anger. It is difficult to imagine him among the leading wits, including Voltaire (to whom he bears more than a passing physical resemblance ), who frequented La Poupelinière's salon; his music
21528-409: Was during the latter that the action progressed while the audience waited for the next aria; on the other hand, the text of the arias was almost entirely buried beneath music whose chief aim was to show off the virtuosity of the singer. Nothing of the kind is to be found in French opera of the day; since Lully, the text had to remain comprehensible—limiting certain techniques such as the vocalise , which
21684-410: Was encouraged by the Catholic Church as a means to counter the simplicity and austerity of Protestant architecture, art, and music, though Lutheran Baroque art developed in parts of Europe as well. The Baroque style used contrast, movement, exuberant detail, deep color, grandeur, and surprise to achieve a sense of awe. The style began at the start of the 17th century in Rome, then spread rapidly to
21840-700: Was finished in 1710. Following the death of Louis XIV, Louis XV added the more intimate Petit Trianon and the highly ornate theatre. The fountains in the gardens were designed to be seen from the interior, and to add to the dramatic effect. The palace was admired and copied by other monarchs of Europe, particularly Peter the Great of Russia, who visited Versailles early in the reign of Louis XV, and built his own version at Peterhof Palace near Saint Petersburg, between 1705 and 1725. Baroque architecture in Portugal lasted about two centuries (the late seventeenth century and eighteenth century). The reigns of John V and Joseph I had increased imports of gold and diamonds, in
21996-414: Was first performed in 1749. According to one of Rameau's admirers, Cuthbert Girdlestone, this opera has a distinctive place in his works: "The profane passions of hatred and jealousy are rendered more intensely [than in his other works] and with a strong sense of reality." Unlike Lully, who collaborated with Philippe Quinault on almost all his operas, Rameau rarely worked with the same librettist twice. He
22152-401: Was granted the title "Compositeur du Cabinet du Roi" and given a substantial pension. 1745 also saw the beginning of the bitter enmity between Rameau and Jean-Jacques Rousseau . Though best known today as a thinker, Rousseau had ambitions to be a composer. He had written an opera, Les muses galantes (inspired by Rameau's Indes galantes ), but Rameau was unimpressed by this musical tribute. At
22308-424: Was highly demanding and bad-tempered, unable to maintain longstanding partnerships with his librettists, with the exception of Louis de Cahusac , who collaborated with him on several operas, including Les fêtes de l'Hymen et de l'Amour (1747), Zaïs (1748), Naïs (1749), Zoroastre (1749; revised 1756), La naissance d'Osiris (1754), and Anacréon (the first of Rameau's operas by that name, 1754). He
22464-410: Was his consuming passion. It occupied his entire thinking; Philippe Beaussant calls him a monomaniac. Alexis Piron explained that "His heart and soul were in his harpsichord; once he had shut its lid, there was no one home." Physically, Rameau was tall and exceptionally thin, as can be seen by the sketches we have of him, including a famous portrait by Carmontelle . He had a "loud voice". His speech
22620-421: Was his passport, and it made up for his lack of social graces. His enemies exaggerated his faults, e.g. his supposed miserliness. In fact, it seems that his thriftiness was the result of long years spent in obscurity, when his income was uncertain and scanty, rather than being part of his character, because he could also be generous. He helped his nephew Jean-François when he came to Paris and also helped establish
22776-417: Was mediocre, and Rameau often had to have the libretto modified and rewrite the music after the premiere because of the ensuing criticism. This is why we have two versions of Castor et Pollux (1737 and 1754) and three of Dardanus (1739, 1744, and 1760). By the end of his life, Rameau's music had come under attack in France from theorists who favoured Italian models. However, foreign composers working in
22932-469: Was more conscious of the gap which separated them." French humiliation in the Franco-Prussian War brought about a change in Rameau's fortunes. As Rameau biographer Jean Malignon wrote, "...the German victory over France in 1870–71 was the grand occasion for digging up great heroes from the French past. Rameau, like so many others, was flung into the enemy's face to bolster our courage and our faith in
23088-422: Was never a truly mixed language in the strictest sense of the word; mixed languages arise from the cohabitation of speakers of different languages, who develop a hybrid tongue for basic communication). The more idiomatic, concrete and descriptive English is, the more it is from Anglo-Saxon origins. The more intellectual and abstract English is, the more it contains Latin and French influences, e.g. swine (like
23244-430: Was not until he was approaching 50 that Rameau decided to embark on the operatic career on which his fame as a composer mainly rests. He had already approached writer Antoine Houdar de la Motte for a libretto in 1727, but nothing came of it; he was finally inspired to try his hand at the prestigious genre of tragédie en musique after seeing Montéclair 's Jephté in 1732. Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie premiered at
23400-537: Was one of the central symbolic features of Baroque architecture illustrating the union between the heavens and the earth. The inside of the cupola was lavishly decorated with paintings of angels and saints, and with stucco statuettes of angels, giving the impression to those below of looking up at heaven. Another feature of Baroque churches are the quadratura ; trompe-l'œil paintings on the ceiling in stucco frames, either real or painted, crowded with paintings of saints and angels and connected by architectural details with
23556-596: Was one of the official court musicians; Rameau, fifteen years his junior, achieved fame only after Couperin's death. Rameau published his first book of harpsichord pieces in 1706. (Cf. Couperin, who waited until 1713 before publishing his first "Ordres".) Rameau's music includes pieces in the pure tradition of the French suite: imitative ("Le rappel des oiseaux", "La poule") and characterful ("Les tendres plaintes", "L'entretien des Muses"). But there are also works of pure virtuosity that resemble Domenico Scarlatti ("Les tourbillons", "Les trois mains") as well as pieces that reveal
23712-507: Was reserved for special words such as gloire ("glory") or victoire ("victory"). A subtle equilibrium existed between the more and the less musical parts: melodic recitative on the one hand and arias that were often closer to arioso on the other, alongside virtuoso "ariettes" in the Italian style. This form of continuous music prefigures Wagnerian drama even more than does the "reform" opera of Gluck . Five essential components may be discerned in Rameau's operatic scores: Rameau
23868-467: Was the Church of the Gesù in 1584; it was plain by later Baroque standards, but marked a break with the traditional Renaissance façades that preceded it. The interior of this church remained very austere until the high Baroque, when it was lavishly ornamented. In Rome in 1605, Paul V became the first of series of popes who commissioned basilicas and church buildings designed to inspire emotion and awe through
24024-478: Was the greatest ballet composer of all times. The genius of his creation rests on one hand on his perfect artistic permeation by folk-dance types, on the other hand on the constant preservation of living contact with the practical requirements of the ballet stage, which prevented an estrangement between the expression of the body from the spirit of absolute music . During the first part of his operatic career (1733–1739), Rameau wrote his great masterpieces destined for
24180-502: Was the seventh. Rameau was taught music before he could read or write. He was educated at the Jesuit college at Godrans in Dijon, but he was not a good pupil and disrupted classes with his singing, later claiming that his passion for opera had begun at the age of twelve. Initially intended for the law, Rameau decided he wanted to be a musician, and his father sent him to Italy, where he stayed for
24336-534: Was the world's first secular Baroque monument built in the form of a column. The palatial residence style was exemplified by the Wilanów Palace , constructed between 1677 and 1696. The most renowned Baroque architect active in Poland was Dutchman Tylman van Gameren and his notable works include Warsaw's St. Kazimierz Church and Krasiński Palace , Church of St. Anne, Kraków and Branicki Palace, Białystok . However,
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