But nature’s own simplicity,
Then what a small man is Rameau!—
(Frederick H. Martens’ translation of A History of Music by Paul Landormy.)
It is curious how often a new style in music has been greeted with just such criticism and prejudice as the “Lullyists” showed for Rameau’s opera! They claimed that the work was not French, that he used strange chords, that his music was too difficult to be understood! In fact they said exactly the same things that are said today about new works which are different from what the public is used to hearing. Voltaire said that it takes a whole generation for the human ear to grow familiar with a new musical style!
His third opera, Castor and Pollux, in 1737, was his first real success. With this work, he became famous, and was regarded as France’s greatest composer. An English noble in Paris at the time stated “that although everyone was abusing Rameau’s ‘horrible’ work, yet it was impossible to get a seat at the opera.”
Although Rameau brought nothing new to opera, he was the step between the Lully traditions and the innovators who came with Gluck. The French composers today turn to him in their search for the direct road along which French music has traveled.
In spite of Rameau’s unfriendly reserved nature, he won fame by force of his genius. He was as unlike Lully as two men could possibly have been. Rameau accepted favors from no one, and was generous in his attitude towards his fellow composers. He talked very little and was not popular. However, he was at the height of his career, when a company of Italian singers arrived in Paris (1752), and played La Serva Padrona by Pergolesi. The fresh sparkling little opera took Paris by storm, and this was the beginning of a sharp fight known as the war of the buffoons (page [330]), which divided Paris into two factions,—those who stood by Lully and Rameau, and those who wanted to see French opera replaced by the new Italian comic opera.
“The charm of these light operas,” says Mary Hargrave in her little book, The Earlier French Musicians, “lay in the simplicity of their subjects, taken from scenes and persons in ordinary life, humorously treated. They came as a delightful relief after the stilted classical heroes and heroines, the threadbare episodes of gods and goddesses, the Greek and Roman warriors in tunics, with ribbons and helmets on powdered wigs, in short, all the artificial conventions of which people had at last grown unutterably weary.”
Even the court was divided: Louis XV was on the side of French music, but the Queen was for the Italian, and crowds gathered nightly at the opera near the royal boxes, which were known as the “King’s corner,” and the “Queen’s corner.” Word bombshells were thrown from one camp into the other, and sometimes these became real insults! Poor Rameau! First he was the butt of the Lullyists because he was too modern, and now storms of abuse were heaped on his head because he was too old-fashioned! Nevertheless, to the end of his life his operas were received with great enthusiasm, and on one occasion when the old man of eighty was seen hiding in the corner of a box during one of his operas, he was called out with storms of applause. He was always very shy about appearing in public, applause embarrassed him, and no doubt much of his disagreeableness was due to his being bashful.
Rameau looked upon his scientific studies as more important than his composing, and Bach, Handel and many other composers studied his theory work even when they were not great admirers of his compositions. We never hear his operas, but his lovely pieces for the harpsichord, many of which are out of his operas, are played in piano recitals and are unsurpassed as examples of the French dance suite. Following the fashion of his time, he gave his pieces amusing titles such as The Call of the Birds, The Hen, The Whirlwinds, The Egyptian.