Background
Jean Baptiste Lully was born in or near Florence, Italy on November 28, 1632.
Jean Baptiste Lully was born in or near Florence, Italy on November 28, 1632.
At the age of 12 he went to Paris, where he received his musical training. He used to say that a Franciscan friar gave him his first music lessons and taught him guitar. He also learned to play the violin.
He performed successfully as violinist, dancer, and conductor. He started his own orchestra of stringed instruments and trained it to play with exceptional precision; it was famous throughout Europe for the quality of its performance. At the same time, Lully was writing music and achieving a reputation as a composer.
He was very much favored at the French court, particularly by King Louis XIV. In 1661 Lully was appointed Superintendent of Music; the following year he was named Master of Music of the Royal Family. These prestigious appointments carried high salaries, and Lully built up a large fortune.
Apart from a small body of sacred music, Lully's work belongs to the realm of theater music. He composed the music for over 40 ballets and other entertainments in the theater. Among his collaborators was the great dramatist Molière. Molière's comedy Le Bourgeois gentilhomme was performed in 1670 with incidental music by Lully. This music, which is still used occasionally in performances of the Molière play, is a brilliant complement to the spoken drama.
Lully's main achievement, however, was his composition of 14 operas between 1673 and 1687. He was provided with excellent French librettos, mainly by Philippi Quinault, on a variety of subjects: classical, pastoral, and heroic. Musically, Lully modeled his operas to a large extent upon Italian operas of a slightly earlier period. Italian operas had been performed in Paris in the 1640 to the 1660, and he had taken part in some of the performances. When Lully came to write his own operas, he took over the essential features of these Italian operas: a flexible, expressive kind of recitative and a contrasting musical style in the arias. His recitative is somewhat different, being set to French words; but it is expressive in its own way and notable for its correct declamation of the words. Lully was particularly careful in setting words to music. He listened to the best actors at the Comédie Française and aimed to reproduce in music the inflections of spoken French drama. His arias are usually quite short and quite simple structurally, but in performance the singers decorated them with graceful ornaments.
Other elements in Lully's operas are derived from French traditions. The ballet had been a favorite entertainment in itself, and it now became an important element in French opera. The chorus was equally important to Lully. In many of his scenes the chorus is treated in rondo fashion: it performs a refrain and thus serves to unify the opera. To accompany the choral passages and ballets in Lully's operas, there was an orchestra of strings and woodwinds, supplemented by brass and percussion instruments when the situation called for them. Sometimes the orchestra played alone, in separate instrumental pieces. Many long scenes are devoted to dancing and to other kinds of stage spectacles; in them the orchestra has a most important function.
He was ambitious to the point of ruthlessness and seems to have had no scruples when it came to advancing his own interests. He gained a monopoly over French opera and virtually eliminated any possible rivals in this field. Lully had many enemies, along with many admirers
Quotes from others about the person
Titon du Tillet 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. "
He married Madeleine Lambert (1643–1720), the daughter of the renowned singer and composer Michel Lambert in 1662.