Jean-Baptiste Lully

1632–1687

Composer

Italian origins.

Lully, who came to epitomize both the French Baroque musical style and its musical scene, was born Giovanni Battista Lulli in Florence, the son of a miller. He began his musical studies there but moved to Paris as a tutor of Italian to Anne-Marie-Louise d'Orléans, the cousin of Louis XIV, in 1646. There he continued to study music and ballet, and rose quickly to the top of the musical profession. He was appointed composer of instrumental music to the king in 1652. The king, an excellent dancer, was known to appear on stage himself, and Lully's close relationship with Louis helped his career considerably. Lully was a violinist, and was put in charge of a group of sixteen players, the petits violons (the "small violins"). He wrote an early surviving work for this group, the masquerade, La galanterie du temps. Lully worked on their performance practice and discipline so successfully that by 1666, he also conducted the esteemed ensemble, the 24 violons du Roi ("The Twenty-Four Violins of the King"), at performances of the court ballets. In 1662 he married Madeleine, daughter of the court composer Michel Lambert, and became a French subject.

Operatic Composer.

Lully's fame as a composer grew. His compositions would come to include several main types: ballets, comédies-ballets, operas, and sacred music. From 1664–1671 he worked with the great French playwright Molière in writing a number of comédies-ballets, among them Le bourgeois gentilhomme (The Bourgeois Gentleman) and Les amants magnifiques (The Magnificent Lovers). The comédie-ballet was a French genre that combined spoken or sung dialogue and dance. In writing the vocal music for these works, Lully worked to fit the music to the French language and its literary traditions, and he wrote some very popular arias. He developed a recitative style that he continued to use in his operas. Here the continuo supported the voice more than was normal in Italian recitative, while the lines themselves might vary in length. Lully insisted that the singers follow his notations exactly, unlike Italian styles that allowed freer interpretation by the performer. In 1672 Lully took an opportunity to purchase a royal privilege on academies for performing operas in France, and so he became director of the Royal Academy of Music. As he moved to write and produce operas, Lully continued to work very closely with his librettists, who were among France's most capable writers. Together composer and librettist developed plots in five acts, conforming to the ancient standards of writers like Aristotle. Lully also demanded effectively written lines that might be set attractively to music. The subjects of his operas came either from ancient mythology or modern romances.

Innovations and Later Career.

Lully probably did not invent the form known as the French overture, but he did a great deal to popularize it by using it early and often in his dramatic works and elsewhere. He introduced new dances to the court ballet, such as the minuet. French operas typically included ballets, so Lully continued to write dance music even when he had become France's great operatic composer. Lully's career had blossomed thanks to the king's support, but he also found himself caught in some bitter and colorful rivalries with other composers and writers, one of whom he sued for having tried to poison him so that he could assume Lully's operatic privilege. His equally colorful private life also earned some disfavor with Louis XIV when late in his career he was accused of having seduced one of the king's pageboys. Although damaged by the incident personally, it seems to have had little effect on his professional standing. In addition to his music for the stage, Lully also composed a number of important works of religious music for combined voice and instruments, among them a Miserere and a Te Deum. It was his performance of the latter work that caused his fatal injury. In his role as conductor, he beat time (as was then traditional) by striking the floor with a large cane. The point pierced his toe; the toe became gangrenous, and Lully died after refusing its amputation. Although Lully had purchased the exclusive right to produce opera in France from the king, his skill as a composer and producer ensured his fame and the popularity of his works. Lully's innovations set the standards for those who followed him in French music, and his works were frequently revived in France throughout the eighteenth century. Lully's role in fashioning the second major regional style of the Baroque era, the French style, is indisputable as well. He helped establish performance practices, standards concerning ornamentation and embellishments, and musical forms like the French overture, and he ensured as well the central role of dance and dance music in both operatic and instrumental music in France.

sources

James R. Anthony, et al., eds., French Baroque Masters: Lully, Charpentier, Lalande, Couperin, Rameau (London: Macmillan, 1986).

John Hajdu Heyer, et al., eds., Jean-Baptiste Lully and the Music of the French Baroque: Essays in Honor of James R. Anthony (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

John Hajdu Heyer, ed., Lully Studies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Joyce Newman, Jean-Baptiste De Lully and His Tragédies Lyriques (Epping, England: Bowker, 1979).

Caroline Wood, Music and Drama in the Tragédie en Musique, 1673–1715: Jean-Baptiste Lully and His Successors (New York; London: Garland, 1996).