Lully was born on November 28 or 29, 1632, inFlorence,Grand Duchy of Tuscany, to Lorenzo Lulli and Caterina Del Sera, a Tuscan family of millers.[1] His general education and his musical training during his youth in Florence remain uncertain, but his adult handwriting suggests that he manipulated a quill pen with ease. He used to say that aFranciscan friar gave him his first music lessons and taught him guitar.[2][3] He also learned to play the violin. In 1646, dressed asHarlequin duringMardi Gras and amusing bystanders with his clowning and his violin, the boy attracted the attention of Roger de Lorraine, chevalier de Guise, son ofCharles, Duke of Guise, who was returning to France and was looking for someone to converse in Italian with his niece,Mademoiselle de Montpensier (la Grande Mademoiselle). Guise took the boy to Paris, where the fourteen-year-old entered Mademoiselle's service; from 1647 to 1652 he served as her "chamber boy" (garçon de chambre).[4] He probably honed his musical skills by working with Mademoiselle's household musicians and with composersNicolas Métru,François Roberday andNicolas Gigault. The teenager's talents as a guitarist, violinist, and dancer quickly won him the nicknames "Baptiste", and "le grand baladin" (great street-artist).[5][6]
When Mademoiselle was exiled to the provinces in 1652 after the rebellion known as theFronde, Lully "begged his leave ... because he did not want to live in the country." The princess granted his request.[7]
By February 1653, Lully had attracted the attention of youngLouis XIV, dancing with him in theBallet royal de la nuit. By March 16, 1653, Lully had been made royal composer for instrumental music. His vocal and instrumental music for court ballets gradually made him indispensable. In 1660 and 1662 he collaborated on court performances ofFrancesco Cavalli'sXerse andErcole amante.[8] When Louis XIV took over the reins of government in 1661, he named Lully superintendent of the royal music and music master of the royal family. In December 1661, the Florentine was granted letters of naturalization. Thus, when he married Madeleine Lambert (1643–1720), the daughter of the renowned singer and composerMichel Lambert in 1662, Giovanni Battista Lulli declared himself to be "Jean-Baptiste Lully,escuyer [squire], son of Laurent de Lully,gentilhomme Florentin [Florentine gentleman]". The latter assertion of high birth was an untruth.[9] The couple had six children who survived past childhood: Catherine-Madeleine,Louis,Jean-Baptiste, Gabrielle-Hilarie,Jean-Louis and Louis-Marie.[10]
From 1661 on, the trios and dances he wrote for the court were promptly published. As early as 1653, Louis XIV made him director of his personal violin orchestra, known as thePetits Violons ("Little Violins"), which was proving to be open to Lully's innovations, as contrasted with the Twenty-Four Violins orGrands Violons ("Great Violins"), who only slowly were abandoning thepolyphony anddivisions of past decades. When he becamesurintendant de la musique de la chambre du roi in 1661, the Great Violins also came under Lully's control. He relied mainly on the Little Violins for court ballets.[11]
Lully's collaboration with the playwrightMolière began withLes Fâcheux [fr] in 1661, when Lully provided a single sung courante, added after the work's premiere atNicolas Fouquet's sumptuous chateau ofVaux-le-Vicomte. Their collaboration began in earnest in 1664 withLe Mariage forcé. More collaborations followed, some of them conceived for fetes at the royal court, and others taking the form of incidental music (intermèdes) for plays performed at command performances at court and also in Molière's Parisian theater.
Jean-Baptiste Lully, around 1670
In 1672, Lully broke with Molière, who turned toMarc-Antoine Charpentier. Having acquiredPierre Perrin's opera privilege, Lully became the director of theAcadémie Royale de Musique, that is, the royal opera, which performed in thePalais-Royal. Between 1673 and 1687, he produced a new opera almost yearly and fiercely protected his monopoly over that new genre.
After QueenMarie-Thérèse's death in 1683 and the king's secret marriage toMme de Maintenon, devotion came to the fore at court. The king's enthusiasm for opera dissipated; he was annoyed by Lully's dissolute life and homosexual encounters.[12] Lully had avoided getting too close to the secret homosexual grouping that had gathered in the court around theDuc de Vendôme, theComte de Tallard and theDuc de Gramont. But in 1685 he was accused of improper relations with a page boy living in his household called Brunet. Brunet was removed after a police raid, and Lully escaped punishment.[13] However, to show his general displeasure, Louis XIV made a point of not inviting Lully to performArmide atVersailles the following year.
Lully died fromgangrene, having struck his foot with his long conducting staff during a performance of hisTe Deum to celebrate Louis XIV's recovery from surgery.[14] He refused to have his toe amputated.[15] This resulted in gangrene propagating through his body and ultimately infecting the greater part of his brain, causing his death.[citation needed] He died in Paris and was buried in the church ofNotre-Dame-des-Victoires, where his tomb with its marble bust can still be seen. All three of his sons (Louis Lully,Jean-Baptiste Lully fils, andJean-Louis Lully) had musical careers as successivesurintendants of the King's Music.
Lully himself was posthumously given a conspicuous place onTiton du Tillet'sParnasse François ("the FrenchMount Parnassus"). In the engraving, he stands to the left, on the lowest level, his right arm extended and holding a scroll of paper with which to beat time. (The bronze ensemble has survived and is part of the collections of the Museum of Versailles.) Titon honored Lully as:
the prince of French musicians, ... the inventor of that beautiful and grand French music, such as our operas and the grand pieces for voices and instruments that were only imperfectly known before him. He brought it [music] to the peak of perfection and was the father of our most illustrious musicians working in that musical form. ... Lully entertained the king infinitely, by his music, by the way he performed it, and by his witty remarks. The prince was also very fond of Lully and showered him with benefits in a most gracious way.[16]
Lully's music was written during theMiddle Baroque period, 1650 to 1700. Typical ofBaroque music is the use of thebasso continuo as the driving force behind the music. The pitch standard for the French opera at the time was about 392 Hz for A above middle C, a whole tone lower than modern practice where A is usually440 Hz.[17]
Lully's music is known for its power, liveliness in its fast movements and its deep emotional character in its slower movements. Some of his most popular works are hispassacailles (passacaglias) andchaconnes, which are dance movements found in many of his works such asArmide orPhaëton.
The influence of Lully's music produced a radical revolution in the style of thedances of the court itself. In the place of the slow and stately movements which had prevailed until then, he introduced livelyballets of rapidrhythm, often based on well-known dance types such asgavottes,menuets,rigaudons andsarabandes.
Through his collaboration with playwrightMolière, a new music form emerged during the 1660s: thecomédie-ballet which combined theater, comedy, incidental music and ballet. The popularity of these plays, with their sometimes lavish special effects, and the success and publication of Lully's operas and its diffusion beyond the borders of France, played a crucial role in synthesizing, consolidating and disseminating orchestral organization, scorings, performance practices, and repertory.
Portrait of Several Musicians and Artists byFrançois Puget. Traditionally the two main figures have been identified as Lully and the librettist Philippe Quinault. (Louvre)
The instruments in Lully's music were: five voices of strings such asdessus (a higher range than soprano),haute-contre (the instrumental equivalent of the high tenor voice by that name),taille (baritenor),quinte, andbasse, divided as follows: one voice of violins, three voices of violas, one voice of cello, andbasse de viole (viole, viola da gamba). He also utilized guitar,lute,archlute,theorbo, harpsichord, organ, oboe, bassoon,recorder, flute, brass instruments (natural trumpet) and various percussion instruments (castanets,timpani).[18]
He is often credited with introducing newinstruments into the orchestra, but this legend needs closer scrutiny. He continued to use recorders in preference to the newer transverse flute, and the "hautbois" he used in his orchestra were transitional instruments, somewhere betweenshawms and so-called Baroqueoboes.[18]
Jean-Baptiste Lully and Philippe Quinault's operaAlceste being performed in the marble courtyard at thePalace of Versailles, 1674
Lully created French-style opera as a musical genre (tragédie en musique ortragédie lyrique). Concluding that Italian-style opera was inappropriate for the French language, he and his librettist,Philippe Quinault, a respected playwright, employed the same poetics that dramatists used for verse tragedies: the 12-syllable "alexandrine" and the 10-syllable "heroic" poetic lines of the spoken theater were used for therecitative of Lully's operas and were perceived by their contemporaries as creating a very "natural" effect. Airs, especially if they were based on dances, were by contrast set to lines of less than 8 syllables.[19] Lully also forsook the Italian method of dividing musical numbers into separaterecitatives andarias, choosing instead to combine and intermingle the two, for dramatic effect. He and Quinault also opted for quicker story development, which was more to the taste of the French public.
Lully's grand motets were written for the royal chapel, usually for vespers or for the King's daily Low Mass. Lully did not invent the genre, he built upon it. Grand motets often were psalm settings, but for a time during the 1660s Lully used texts written byPierre Perrin, a neo-Latin poet. Lully's petit motets were probably composed for the nuns at the convent of the Assumption, rue Saint-Honoré.
[6] Motets à deux chœurs pour la Chapelle du roi, published 1684
When Lully began dancing and composing for court ballets, the genre blossomed and markedly changed in character. At first, as composer of instrumental music for the King's chamber, Lully wrote overtures, dances, dance-like songs, descriptive instrumental pieces such as combats, and parody-like récits with Italian texts. He was so captivated by the French overture that he wrote four of them for theBallet d'Alcidiane.
The development of his instrumental style can be discerned in hischaconnes. He experimented with all types of compositional devices and found new solutions that he later exploited to the full in his operas. For example, the chaconne that ends theBallet de la Raillerie (1659) has 51 couplets plus an extra free part; inLe Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670) he added a vocal line to the chaconne for theScaramouches.
The first menuets appear in theBallet de la Raillerie (1659) and theBallet de l'Impatience (1661). In Lully's ballets one can also see the emergence of concert music, for example, pieces for voice and instruments that could be excerpted and performed alone and that prefigure his operatic airs: "Bois, ruisseau, aimable verdure" from theBallet des saisons (1661), the lament "Rochers, vous êtes sourds" and Orpheus's sarabande "Dieu des Enfers", from theBallet de la naissance de Vénus (1665).
Ballet du Temps, text by Benserade, at Louvre, November 30, 1654
Ballet des plaisirs, text by Benserade, at Louvre, February 4, 1655
Le Grand Ballet des Bienvenus, text by Benserade, at Compiègne, May 30, 1655
Le Ballet de la Revente des habits, text by Benserade, at court, January 6, 1655 (or 1661?)
Ballet of Psyché ou de la puissance de l'Amour, text by Benserade, at Louvre, January 16, 1656
La Galanterie du temps, mascarade, anonymous text, February 14, 1656
L'Amour malade, text by Buti, at Louvre, January 17, 1657
Ballet royal d'Alcidiane, Benserade, at court, February 14, 1658
Ballet de la Raillerie, text by Benserade, at court, February 19, 1659
six balletentrées serving asintermèdes toCavalli'sXerse, at Louvre, November 22, 1660
Ballet mascarade donné au roi à Toulouse, April 1660
Ballet royal de l'impatience, text by Buti, at Louvre, February 19, 1661
Ballet des Saisons, text by Benserade, at Fontainebleau, July 23, 1661
ballet danced between the acts ofHercule amoureux, text by Buti, at Tuileries, February 7, 1662
Ballet des Arts, text by Benserade, at Palais-Royal, January 8, 1663
Les Noces du village, mascarade ridicule, text by Benserade, at Vincennes, October 3, 1663
Les Amours déguisés, text by Périgny, at Palais-Royal, February 13, 1664
incidental music between the acts ofOedipe, play by Pierre Corneille, Fontainebleau, August 3, 1664
Mascarade du Capitaine ou l'Impromptu de Versailles, anonymous text, at Palais-Royal, 1664 or February 1665
Ballet royal de la Naissance de Vénus, text by Benserade, at Palais-Royal, January 26, 1665
Ballet des Gardes ou des Délices de la campagne, anonymous text, 1665
Le Triomphe de Bacchus, mascarade, anonymous text, at court, January 9, 1666
Ballet des Muses, Benserade, at St-Germain-en-Laye, 1666
Le Carneval, mascarade, text by Benserade, at Louvre, January 18, 1668
Ballet royal de Flore, text by Benserade, at Tuileries, February 13, 1669
Le Triomphe de l'Amour, text by Benserade and Quinault, at St-Germain-en-Laye, December 2, 1681
Le Temple de la Paix, text by Quinault, at Fontainebleau, October 20, 1685
Intermèdes became part of a new genre, thecomédie-ballet, in 1661, when Molière described them as "ornaments which have been mixed with the comedy" in his preface toLes Fâcheux [fr].[21] "Also, to avoid breaking the thread of the piece by these interludes, it was deemed advisable to weave the ballet in the best manner one could into the subject, and make but one thing of it and the play."[22] The music for the premiere ofLes Fâcheux was composed byPierre Beauchamp, but Lully later provided a sung courante for act 1, scene 3.[23] WithLe Mariage forcé [fr] andLa Princesse d'Élide (1664), intermèdes by Lully began to appear regularly in Molière's plays: for those performances there were six intermèdes, two at the beginning and two at the end, and one between each of the three acts. Lully's intermèdes reached their apogee in 1670–1671, with the elaborate incidental music he composed forLe Bourgeois gentilhomme andPsyché. After his break with Molière, Lully turned to opera; but he collaborated withJean Racine for a fete atSceaux in 1685, and withCampistron for an entertainment atAnet in 1686.
Most of Molière's plays were first performed for the royal court.
Les Fâcheux, play by Molière, at Vaux-le-Vicomte, August 17, 1661[24]
Le Mariage forcé, ballet, play by Molière, at Louvre, January 29, 1664
Lully'scoat of armsPortrait of a gentleman, traditionally said to be Jean-Baptiste Lully, byPaul Mignard
With five exceptions, each of Lully's operas was described as atragédie mise en musique, or tragedy set to music. The exceptions were:Bellérophon,Cadmus et Hermione, andPsyché, each called simply atragédie; andLes fêtes de l'Amour et de Bacchus, described as apastorale, andAcis et Galathée, which is apastorale héroïque. (The termtragédie lyrique came later.)
With Lully, the point of departure was always a verse libretto, in most cases by the verse dramatistPhilippe Quinault. For the dance pieces, Lully would hammer out rough chords and a melody on the keyboard, and Quinault would invent words. For the recitative, Lully imitated the speech melodies and dramatic emphasis used by the best actors in the spoken theater. His attentiveness to transferring theatrical recitation to sung music shaped French opera and song for a century.[25][26]
Unlike Italian opera of the day, which was rapidly moving towardopera seria with its alternating recitative andda capo airs, in Lully's operas the focus was on drama, expressed by a variety of vocal forms: monologs, airs for two or three voices,rondeaux and French-styleda capo airs where the chorus alternates with singers, sung dances, andvaudeville songs for a few secondary characters. In like manner the chorus performed in several combinations: the entire chorus, the chorus singing as duos, trios or quartets, the dramatic chorus, the dancing chorus.
The intrigue of the plot culminated in a vast tableau, for example, the sleep scene inAtys, the village wedding inRoland, or the funeral inAlceste. Soloists, chorus and dancers participated in this display, producing astonishing effects thanks to machinery. In contrast to Italian opera, the various instrumental genres were present to enrich the overall effect: French overture, dance airs,rondeaux, marches, "simphonies" that painted pictures, preludes,ritournelles. Collected into instrumental suites or transformed into trios, these pieces had enormous influence and affected instrumental music across Europe.
The earliest operas were performed at the indoor Bel Air tennis court (on the grounds of theLuxembourg Palace) that Lully had converted into a theater. The first performance of later operas either took place at court, or in thetheater at the Palais-Royal, which had been made available to Lully's Academy. Once premiered at court, operas were performed for the public at the Palais-Royal.
Les Fêtes de l'Amour et de Bacchus, pastoral, text by Quinault, Molière and Périgny, at theSalle du Bel-Air, a converted tennis court (jeu de paume), November 15 (?), 1672
Cadmus et Hermione, tragedy by Quinault, at tennis court (jeu de paume) of Bel-Air, April 27 (?), 1673
Henry Prunières's 1929 novelLa Vie illustre et libertine de Jean-Baptiste Lully (Paris: Plon) was the first 20th-century novel about Lully that raised supposed questions about the composer's "moral character."
Gérard Corbiau's 2000 filmLe Roi danse (The King is dancing) presents libertine and pagan Lully as a natural ally of Louis XIV in the King's conflicts with the Catholic establishment. The movie depicts Lully with a concealed romantic interest in the King.
In 2011 the BBC's hit children's showHorrible Histories featured the death of Lully in the skit "Stupid Deaths" in a live show at the Prom.
^La Gorce 2002, p. 56; compare this statement made by Mademoiselle herself with Le Cerf's comic and probably apocryphal tale (Le Cerf de La Viéville 1705, pp. 185–186).
^La Gorce 2002, pp. 88–91; and for the Petits Violons and the Grands Violons, see Bernard Bardet's articles in Marcelle Benoit,Dictionnaire de la musique en France au XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Fayard, 1992), pp. 724–728.
^Maximilien Titon du Tillet,Le Parnasse françois, ed. of Paris, 1732, pp. 393–401.
^The pipe organ tuning fork in Versailles Chapel in 1795 is 390 Hz, Nicholas Thistlethwaite; Geoffrey Webber, eds. (1999). The Cambridge Companion to the Organ. Cambridge University Press. p. 81.ISBN9781107494039. Concert pitch tended to creep higher in search of greater "brightness".
^abFor Lully's orchestra, see John Spitzer andNeal Zaslaw,The Birth of the Orchestra: History of an Institution, 1650–1815. Chapter 3, "Lully's Orchestra"
^Preface toLes Fâcheux by Molière: "De sorte que pour ne point rompre aussi le fil de la Pièce, par ces manières d'intermedes, on s'avisa de les coudre au sujet du mieux que l'on put, & de ne faire qu'une seule chose du Ballet & de la Comedie". English translation from Henri Van Laun,The Dramatic Works of Molière, vol. 2, 1875,OCLC745054.
Schneider, Herbert. "Lully (les)", in Marcelle Benoit, ed.,Dictionnaire de la musique en France au XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Fayard, 1992), pp. 414–419.
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