In 1683, Jean-Philippe Rameau, the seventh of eleven
children, was born into a musical family in Dijon. His
father played the organ at two churches there. At
eighteen he decided to become a musician, although his
father preferred that he enter the legal profession. He
traveled to Italy and spent a few months in Milan,
playing violin with a group of itinerant musicians.
Subsequently, he held various organ posts in Dijon
(replacing his father), Lyons, Clermont, and Paris. Two
years after settling ...(+)
In 1683, Jean-Philippe Rameau, the seventh of eleven
children, was born into a musical family in Dijon. His
father played the organ at two churches there. At
eighteen he decided to become a musician, although his
father preferred that he enter the legal profession. He
traveled to Italy and spent a few months in Milan,
playing violin with a group of itinerant musicians.
Subsequently, he held various organ posts in Dijon
(replacing his father), Lyons, Clermont, and Paris. Two
years after settling in Paris at the age of forty-two,
he married a nineteen-year old girl, Marie-Louise
Mangot. They had four children. He composed cantatas
and motets, and he published books and articles on
music theory and several small collections of solo
harpsichord works. All the while he longed to compose
for the operatic stage. He sublimated this desire in
his harpsichord works, lavishing on them all the
imagination, passion, and drama that would later
enliven his great operas.
Rameau published his Pieces de Clavecin en concerts in
1741. He followed the lead of Gaspar LeRoux and
Jean-Joseph Cassanea de Mondonville, who had published
harpsichord pieces with violin accompaniment.
Five of the titles are names of Rameau’s musical
acquaintances (La Laborde, La Boucon, La Forqueray, La
Marais, and La Cupis) while La Livri and La popliniere
were two patrons of the arts, the former having died
the year Rameau published this collection. To which
family member he dedicated La Rameau, we have no idea.
Le Vezinet, now a suburb of Paris, was part of the
countryside in Rameau’s day. One can imagine a jaunt
on horseback or carriage through a fragrant, pastoral
scene. La Coulicam is a corruption of Thomas Kouli
Khan, eponymous hero of a pseudo-historical novel about
a revolution, set in Persia. The rest are dances
(Menuet, Tambourin, La Pantomime) and character pieces
(L’Agacante, La Timide, and L’Indiscrete).
Although this piece was originally written for
Harpsichord, I arranged it for Woodwind Quintet (Flute,
Oboe, Clarinet, French Horn & Bassoon). There is a
delicate somewhat dissonant interplay between the main
and secondary voices played by the flute, oboe and
clarinet and an echo from the second voice provides
melancholic memories on a cold winter evening of a
beautiful summer day, spent with someone near a quiet
and peaceful wooded river (even birds can be heard).
PARTITION