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Jan Batist LullyFrench composer
Date of Birth: 28.11.1632
Country:  France |
Content:
Jean-Baptiste Lully: The Founder of French Opera
Jean-Baptiste Lully was a French composer who is considered the founder of French opera. He was born in Italy and at the age of 12, he was taken to France, where he entered the service of his cousin, the Duke of Guise, who was a cousin of the French king. Lully was already skilled in playing the guitar and violin from a young age and joined the duke's orchestra. In 1652, he became a member of the famous royal orchestra called "The Twenty-Four Violins of the King." Soon, he gained fame as a solo violinist, dancer, and composer of ballet music for court festivities.
Rise to Prominence
Quickly gaining the favor of the king, Lully obtained the position of "court composer of dance music" and became the conductor of the "Sixteen Violins of the King" (Petits Violons). In 1662, he was appointed the Master of Music for the royal court. In 1661, he became a French citizen, and 11 years later, he was granted a monopoly on the production of operas at the Parisian Royal Academy of Music (established in 1668, later known as the Paris Opera). By that time, Lully had already composed around twenty ballets and provided music for ten comedies with dances known as comédie-ballets, created in collaboration with Molière.
Musical Style and Achievements
Lully's works were characterized by accessibility and clarity, combined with skillful use of theatrical techniques. His orchestra was renowned for its elegance of playing, as Lully avoided the fashionable ornamentation of the time and preferred simplicity of expression and technical perfection. By royal privilege, he obtained exclusive artistic and material rights in the genre of opera and composed 14 major tragic operas, all with librettos by his constant collaborator, poet Philippe Quinault.
Starting from his first lyric tragedy, Cadmus et Hermione (1673), and continuing until his last work in this genre, Armide et Renaud (1686), Lully demonstrated his ability to vividly express the emotions of his characters, reveal the narrative meaning of their words and actions, and achieve artistic coherence in his compositions. The composer also created the genre of the French overture (possibly derived from Venetian opera), characterized by a slow introduction, imitative-polyphonic fast section, and a slow conclusion.
In addition to his stage works, Lully composed sacred and instrumental music. He left an indelible mark on the development of French opera and his contributions to the art of music continue to be celebrated and admired to this day.
