16. French opera in the 17th century. Creativity J. B. Lully.
Aesthetics of French Classicism. French music, along with Italian, is one of the significant cultural phenomena of the 17th-18th centuries. The development of musical art was associated primarily with opera and chamber instrumental music.
French opera was strongly influenced by classicism (from Latin classicus - "exemplary") - the artistic style that developed in France in the 17th century; and above all - the classical theater. Playwrights Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine, showing the complex struggle of passions, sang the sense of duty in tragedies. The actors played in a special manner: they sang out the words, often used gestures and facial expressions. This manner influenced the French style of singing: it differed from the Italian bel canto in its proximity to colloquial speech. The singers, like dramatic actors, clearly pronounced the words, resorted to whispers and sobs.
At the court of the "Sun King" Louis XIV, the opera occupied an important place. The Royal Academy of Music (the theater where opera performances took place) became one of the symbols of the luxury of the royal court and the power of the monarch.
Jean-Baptiste Lully(1632-1687) - An outstanding musician, composer, conductor, violinist, harpsichordist - he went through a life and creative path that was extremely original and in many respects characteristic of his time. In French music, a kind of opera seria appeared - a lyrical tragedy (fr. Tragedie lyrique). The creator of this genre was the composer Jean Baptiste Lully. Lully's operas, large five-act works, were notable for their luxurious staging, the splendor of scenery and costumes, as required by the court, which wanted bright spectacles and a holiday. These are dramas typical of the Baroque era with features of classicism. Here passions raged, heroic events took place. Artificial, refined beauty in music and scenery, characteristic of the Baroque, and classic poise, harmony of construction. This is a feature of Lully's operas.
Lully wrote operas based on subjects from ancient mythology and epic poems of the Renaissance. His best opera - "Armida" (1686) - was created based on the heroic poem of the Italian poet Torquato Tasso "The Liberated Jerusalem". According to the plot, the Queen of Damascus Armida bewitches with her charms the knight of the crusader Reno (Tasso has Rinaldo). However, Reno's associates remind him of military duty, and the knight leaves his beloved, and she destroys the kingdom in despair. The idea of the opera meets the requirements of classicism (a conflict of duty and feeling), but the love experiences of the characters are shown with such expressiveness and depth that they become the center of the action. The main thing in Lully's music is extended monologue arias, in which the themes of a song or dance character alternate with recitative, which flexibly and subtly conveys the feelings of the characters. The influence of the Baroque was manifested not only in the external luxury of the production, but in the increased attention to the love drama; it is the depth of feelings, and not following the duty that makes the characters interesting for the listener. The development of the national opera continued in the work of Lully's younger contemporary, Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764). He also wrote in the genre of lyrical tragedy. In the works of Rameau, the psychological characteristics of the characters deepened, the composer sought to overcome the external brilliance and pomposity of French opera. Having a background in chamber instrumental music, he strengthened the role of the orchestra. An important role was played by dance numbers, which were complete scenes.
Jean Baptiste was born in Florence on November 28, 1632. The son of a miller, Lully, as a child, was taken to France, which became his second home. Being at first in the service of one of the noble ladies of the capital, the boy attracted the attention of his brilliant musical abilities. After learning to play the violin and achieving amazing success, he got into the court orchestra. Lully came to the fore at court, first as an excellent violinist, then as a conductor, choreographer, and finally as a composer of ballet and later opera music.
In the 1650s, he took charge of all the musical institutions of the court service as "Musical Superintendent" and "Maestro of the Royal Family". In addition, he was secretary, confidant and adviser to Louis XIV, who granted him the nobility and assisted in acquiring a huge fortune. Possessing an extraordinary mind, strong will, organizational talent and ambition, Lully, on the one hand, was dependent on the royal power, on the other hand, he himself had a great influence on the musical life of not only Versailles, Paris, but throughout France.
As a performer, Lully became the founder of the French violin and conductor school. Rave reviews of several prominent contemporaries have been preserved about his playing. His performance was distinguished by ease, grace and at the same time an extremely clear, energetic rhythm, which he invariably adhered to when interpreting works of the most diverse emotional structure and texture.
But the greatest influence on the further development of the French school of performance was exerted by Lully as a conductor, moreover, in particular as an opera conductor. Here he knew no equal.
Actually, Lully's operatic work unfolded in the last fifteen years of his life - in the 70s and 80s. During this time he created fifteen operas. Theseus (1675), Hatys (1677), Perseus (1682), Roland (1685) and especially Armida (1686) are widely known among them.
Lully's opera arose under the influence of the classicist theater of the 17th century, was connected with it by the closest ties, and largely adopted its style and dramaturgy. It was a great ethical art of a heroic nature, the art of great passions, tragic conflicts. The very titles of the operas indicate that, with the exception of the conventionally Egyptian "Isis", they were written on subjects from ancient mythology and partly only from the medieval knight's epic. In this sense, they are consonant with the tragedies of Corneille and Racine or the painting of Poussin.
The librettist of most of Lully's operas was one of the prominent classicist playwrights - Philip Kino. In Kino, love passion, the desire for personal happiness come into conflict with the dictates of duty, and these latter take over. The plot is usually associated with war, with the defense of the fatherland, the exploits of generals ("Perseus"), with the single combat of the hero against the inexorable fate, with the conflict of evil spells and virtue ("Armida"), with the motives of retribution ("Theseus"), self-sacrifice ("Alceste "). The actors belong to opposing camps and themselves experience tragic clashes of feelings and thoughts.
The characters were drawn beautifully, effectively, but their images not only remained sketchy, but - especially in lyrical scenes - became sugary. The heroic went somewhere past; courtesy consumed her. It is no coincidence that Voltaire, in his pamphlet The Temple of Good Taste, through the mouth of Boileau, called Cinema a ladies' man!
Lully, as a composer, was strongly influenced by the classical theater of its best days. He probably saw the weaknesses of his librettist and, moreover, sought to overcome them to some extent with his music, strict and stately. Lully's opera, or "lyrical tragedy" as it was called, was a monumental, well-planned, but perfectly balanced composition of five acts, with a prologue, a final apotheosis, and the usual dramatic climax towards the end of the third act. Lully wanted to return to the events and passions, actions and characters of Cinema the vanishing grandeur. For this, he used, first of all, the means of pathetically uplifted, melodious recitation. Melodically developing its intonational structure, he created his own declamatory recitative, which formed the main musical content of his opera. "My recitative is made for conversations, I want it to be perfectly even!" Lully said so.
In this sense, the artistic and expressive relationship between music and poetic text in French opera has developed completely different from that of the Neapolitan masters. The composer sought to recreate the plastic movement of verse in music. One of the most perfect examples of his style is the fifth scene of the second act of the opera Armida.
The libretto of this famous lyrical tragedy is based on the plot of one of the episodes of Torquato Tasso's poem "Jerusalem Delivered". The action takes place in the East during the era of the Crusades.
Lully's opera consisted of more than just recitatives. There are also rounded ariose numbers in it, melodically related to those of that time, sensitive, flirtatious or written in energetic marching or cutesy-dance rhythms. The declamatory scenes of the monologues ended with arias.
Lully was strong in ensembles, especially in characteristic, entrusted to comic characters, which he succeeded very well. A significant place was occupied in the "lyrical tragedy" and choirs - pastoral, military, religious and ritual, fantastically fabulous and others. Their role, most often in crowd scenes, was predominantly decorative.
Lully was a brilliant master of the opera orchestra for his time, not only skillfully accompanying the singers, but also painting various poetic and pictorial pictures. The author of "Armida" modified, differentiated timbre colors in relation to theatrical stage effects and situations.
Particularly famous was Lully's superbly designed introductory "symphony" to the opera, which opened the action, and therefore received the name "French Overture".
Lully's ballet music has survived to this day in the theater and concert repertoire. And here his work was fundamental for French art. Lully's operatic ballet is by no means always a divertissement: it was often assigned not only a decorative, but also a dramatic task, artistically and prudently consistent with the course of the stage action. Hence the pastoral-idyllic dances (in "Alceste"), mourning (in "Psyche"), comic-characteristic (in "Isis") and others.
Before Lully, French ballet music already had its own tradition, at least a century old, but he introduced a new stream into it - "brisk and characteristic melodies", sharp rhythms, lively tempos of movement. At that time, this was a whole reform of ballet music. In general, there were much more instrumental numbers of "lyrical tragedy" than in Italian opera. Usually they were higher in music and more in harmony with the action taking place on the stage.
Shackled by the norms and conventions of court life, morals, aesthetics, Lully still remained "a great raznochintsy artist who recognized himself as equal to the most noble gentlemen." This earned him the hatred of the court nobility. He was not a stranger to free-thinking, although he wrote a lot of church music and largely reformed it. In addition to palace performances, he gave performances of his operas "in the city", that is, for the third estate of the capital, sometimes for free. With enthusiasm and perseverance, he raised talented people from the bottom to the high art, which he himself was. Recreating in music that system of feelings, the manner of expressing himself, even those types of people that often met at court, Lully in the comic episodes of his tragedies (for example, in Acis and Galatea) unexpectedly turned his eyes to the folk theater, its genres and intonations. And he succeeded in this, because from his pen came out not only operas and church hymns, but also drinking and street songs. His melodies were sung in the streets, "strummed" on the instruments. Many of his tunes, however, originated from street songs. His music, borrowed in part from the people, returned to him. It is no coincidence that Lully's younger contemporary, La Vieville, testifies that one love aria from the opera "Amadis" was sung by all the cooks of France.
Significant is Lully's collaboration with the brilliant creator of the French realistic comedy Molière, who often included ballet numbers in his performances. In addition to purely ballet music, the comic performances of costumed characters were accompanied by a singing-story. Monsieur de Poursonac, The Philistine in the Nobility, The Imaginary Sick Man were written and staged on stage as ballet comedies. For them, Lully - himself an excellent actor, who performed on stage more than once - wrote dance and vocal music.
Lully's influence on the further development of French opera was very great. He not only became its founder - he created a national school and brought up numerous students in the spirit of its traditions.
A native of Italy, who was destined to glorify French music - such is the fate of Jean-Baptiste Lully. The founder of French lyrical tragedy, he played a key role in the formation of the Royal Academy of Music - the future Grand Opera House.
Giovanni Battista Lulli (that was the name of the future composer at birth) is a native of Florence. His father was a miller, but the origin did not prevent the boy from becoming interested in art. In childhood, he showed versatile abilities - he danced, played comic scenes. A certain Franciscan monk instructed him in the art of music, and Giovanni Batista learned to play the guitar and violin perfectly. Luck smiled at him at the age of fourteen: the Duke of Guise drew attention to the talented young musician and took him into his retinue. In France, the musician, now called in the French manner - Jean-Baptiste Lully - became the page of the Princess de Montpensier, the king's sister. His duties included helping her practice her Italian, as well as entertaining her with musical instruments. At the same time, Lully filled in the gaps in his musical education - he took singing and composition lessons, mastered the harpsichord, improved his violin playing.
The next stage of his career was the work in the orchestra "Twenty-Four Violins of the King". But Lully conquered his contemporaries not only by playing the violin, he also danced beautifully - so much so that in 1653 the young king wished Lully to perform with him in the ballet Night, staged at court. Acquaintance with the monarch, which took place under such circumstances, allowed him to enlist the support of the king.
Lully was appointed court composer of instrumental music. His duty in this capacity was to create music for the ballets that were staged at court. As we have already seen in the example of "Night", the king himself performed in these productions, and the courtiers did not lag behind His Majesty. Lully himself also danced in performances. The ballets of that era were different from modern ones - along with dancing, they included singing. Initially, Lully was engaged only in the instrumental part, but over time he became responsible for the vocal component as well. He created many ballets - "The Seasons", "Flora", "Fine Arts", "Country Wedding" and others.
At the time when Lully created his ballets, the career of Jean-Baptiste Molière was developing very successfully. Having made his debut in the French capital in 1658, after five years the playwright received a substantial pension from the king, moreover, the monarch ordered him a play where he himself could act as a dancer. This is how the ballet comedy "Reluctant Marriage" was born, ridiculing scholarship and philosophy (the elderly protagonist intends to marry a young girl, but, doubting his decision, seeks advice from educated people - however, none of them can give an intelligible answer to his question ). The music was written by Lully, and Pierre Beauchamp worked on the production along with Molière and Lully. Starting with "Reluctant Marriage", the collaboration with Moliere turned out to be very fruitful: Georges Danden, The Princess of Elis and other comedies were created. The most famous joint work of the playwright and composer was the comedy "The Tradesman in the Nobility".
Being an Italian by birth, Lully was skeptical about the idea of creating a French opera - in his opinion, the French language was not suitable for this primordially Italian genre. But when the first French opera, Pomona by Robert Cambert, was staged, it was approved by the king himself, which made Lully pay attention to this genre. True, the works that he created were not called operas, but lyrical tragedies, and the first in their series was the tragedy Cadmus and Hermione, written to the libretto by Philip Cinema. Later, "Theseus", "Atis", "Bellerophon", "Phaeton" and others were written. Lully's lyrical tragedies consisted of five acts, each of which opened with an extended aria of one of the main characters, and in the further development of the action, recitative scenes alternated with short arias. Lully attached great importance to recitatives, and when creating them, he was guided by the manner of recitation inherent in the tragic actors of that time (in particular, the famous actress Marie Chammele). Each act ended with a divertissement and a choral scene. The French lyrical tragedy, at the origins of which stood Lully, differed from the Italian opera - dancing played no less important role in it than singing. Overtures also differed from the Italian models, they were built on the principle of "slow-quick-slow". The singers in these performances performed without masks, another innovation was the introduction of oboes and trumpets into the orchestra.
Lully's work is not limited to operas and ballets - he created trios, instrumental arias and other compositions, including spiritual ones. One of them - Te Deum - played a fatal role in the fate of the composer: while directing his performance, Lully accidentally injured his leg with a battuta (a cane that beat the rhythm at that time), and the wound caused a fatal illness. The composer died in 1687 before completing his last tragedy, Achilles and Polyxena (completed by Pascal Collas, a student of Lully).
Lully's operas enjoyed success until the middle of the 18th century. Later they left the stage, but interest in them revived in the 21st century.
All rights reserved. Copying is prohibited.
The phrase “tragédie lyrique” itself would be better translated into Russian as “musical tragedy”, which more conveys the meaning that the French of the 17th-18th centuries put into it. But since the term "lyrical tragedy" is well-established in Russian musicological literature, it is also used in this work.
The production of Cadmus and Hermione by Lully in 1673 definitely announced the birth of the second national opera school - the French one, which had spun off from the hitherto only Italian one. It was the first example of lyrical tragedy, a genre that became fundamental to the French opera house. Prior to this, at the French court there were episodic productions of six or seven Italian operas, but even such a talented author as Cavalli did not convince the French public too much. To suit her tastes, Cavalli's scores were supplemented with ballet music composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully, a Florentine commoner who made a meteoric career at the court of Louis XIV. Despite his skepticism about the attempts of Camber and Perrin to create a French opera, a decade later, Lully himself set about implementing this idea, in which he was very successful.
He created his operas in collaboration with Philippe Cinema, whose tragedies were for some time a success with the Parisian public. Their joint works came under the special patronage of Louis XIV, largely due to the solemn allegorical prologue glorifying the monarch (which was absent in the classicist tragedy). Of course, this could not but impress the "Sun King". Gradually, the lyrical tragedy of Lully-Kino ousted Rassin's tragedy from the royal stage, and Lully himself, skillfully catering to the whims of the monarch, received from him almost absolute power within the Royal Academy of Music, to which his literary co-author was also subordinate.
The Clever Florentine captured the main reason for the failure of Italian operas. No musical merits could reconcile the French public, brought up on the classicist tragedy, with their "unintelligibility" - not only in a foreign language, but, most importantly, with the baroque intricacy of the plot and the lack of a "reasonable" beginning in the spirit of classicism. Realizing this, Lully decided to make his opera a drama on the sung theatrical recitation of the Rassin theater, with its "exaggeratedly broad lines both in voice and in gestures." It is known that Lully diligently studied the manner of recitation of the outstanding actors of his time, and, having drawn important intonational features from this source, he reformatorily updated the structure of the Italian recitative with them. He aptly combined the conditional elation of style with the rational restraint of expression, thus pleasing "both the court and the city." Two main types of solo vocal numbers were flexibly combined with this recitative: small melodious-declamatory airs, as generalizations in the course of recitative scenes, and graceful song-and-dance airs, which were in close contact with modern everyday genres, which contributed to their wide popularity.
But in contrast to the staged asceticism of the classicist drama, Lully gave his lyrical tragedy the appearance of a spectacular magnificent spectacle, replete with dances, processions, choirs, luxurious costumes and scenery, and "wonderful" machinery. It was these baroque effects in Italian operas that inspired the admiration of the French audience, which Lully took into account perfectly. Also a very important spectacular component of lyrical tragedy was ballet, which was very well developed at the court of Louis XIV.
If in Italian opera the tendency to concentrate musical expression in solo arias and weaken the role of choral, instrumental and ballet numbers gradually triumphed, then in French reliance was placed on the verbal expression of dramatic action. Contrary to its name, the lyrical tragedy of the XVII century did not give a proper musical expression of images. All the more understandable is the furore created by the production of Hippolyte and Aricia, in which, according to Andre Campr, "there is enough music for ten operas."
In any case, the combination of the classicist harmonious orderliness of the whole, the magnificent baroque effects, the heroic and gallant librettos of Cinema and the new musical solutions greatly impressed Lully's contemporaries, and his opera formed a long and powerful tradition.
However, almost half a century has passed between the premieres of the last lyrical tragedy and the true masterpiece of Lully-Kino "Armida" and "Hippolyte and Aricia" by Rameau. After the death of Lully, he did not find a worthy successor, and the genre of lyrical tragedy suffered an unenviable fate. The strict discipline established by the composer at the Opera was soon greatly shaken, and, as a result, the overall level of performance dropped significantly. Despite the fact that many composers tried their hand at this genre, since it was for it that the highest fee was paid, only a few productions were a lasting success. Feeling their inadequacy in lyrical tragedy, the best creative forces turned to opera-ballet, a new genre with lighter dramaturgy and a preponderance of the gallant-love component over everything else.
From this we can conclude that with the general decline of lyrical tragedy, Rameau was not afraid to make his debut in this genre in the autumn of 1733 and went “against the tide”, nevertheless winning a remarkable victory.
GOU secondary school No. 1399 Hobbydogs for the mini-encyclopedia "Creators of culture of the 18th century in the stories of the participants of the Olympiad on MHK-2009"
Jean Baptiste Lully
Jean Baptiste Lully - an outstanding musician, composer, conductor, violinist, harpsichordist - went through a life and creative path that was extremely original and in many respects characteristic of his time. At that time, unlimited royal power was still strong, but the economic and cultural ascent of the bourgeoisie that had already begun led to the fact that not only the “rulers of thoughts” of literature and art, but also influential figures of the bureaucratic apparatus began to emerge from the third estate.
Jean Baptiste was born in Florence on November 28, 1632. Coming from Florentine peasants, the son of an Italian miller, Lully, as a child, was taken to France, which became his second home. Being at first in the service of one of the noble ladies of the capital, the boy attracted the attention of his brilliant musical abilities. After learning to play the violin and achieving amazing success, he got into the court orchestra. Lully came to the fore at court, first as an excellent violinist, then as a conductor, choreographer, and finally as a composer of ballet and later opera music. In the 1650s, he took charge of all the musical institutions of the court service as "superintendent of music" and "maestro of the royal family". In addition, he was secretary, confidant and adviser of Louis XIV, who granted him the nobility and assisted in acquiring a huge fortune. Possessing an extraordinary mind, strong will, organizational talent and ambition, Lully, on the one hand, was dependent on the royal power, on the other hand, he himself had a great influence on the musical life of not only Versailles, Paris, but throughout France. Lully played the guitar and violin from childhood and began to amuse in the ducal orchestra, and in 1652 he entered the notable court orchestra "Twenty-Four Violins of the King".
As a performer, Lully became the founder of the French violin and conductor school. Rave reviews of several prominent contemporaries have been preserved about his playing. His performance was distinguished by ease, grace and at the same time an extremely clear, energetic rhythm, which he invariably adhered to when interpreting works of the most diverse emotional structure and texture. But the greatest influence on the further development of the French school of performance was exerted by Lully as a conductor, moreover, in particular as an opera conductor. Here he knew no equal.
Actually, Lully's operatic work unfolded in the last fifteen years of his life - in the 70s and 80s. During this time he created fifteen operas. Among them, Theseus (1675), Hatys (1677), Perseus (1682), Roland (1685) and especially Armida (1686) became widely known. In the work of Lully Jean Baptiste, a form of classical French overture has developed.
Lully's last opera is Armide. Painting by Nicolas Poussin.
Lully's opera arose under the influence of the classicist theater of the 17th century, was connected with it by the closest ties, and largely adopted its style and dramaturgy. It was a great ethical art of a heroic nature, the art of great passions, tragic conflicts. The very titles of the operas indicate that, with the exception of the conditionally Egyptian Isis, they were written on subjects from ancient mythology and, in part, only from medieval knightly epic. In this sense, they are consonant with the tragedies of Corneille and Racine or the painting of Poussin.
Lully's work is characterized by accessibility and clarity, combined with a masterful use of the laws of the stage. His orchestra was famous for the elegance of the game: Lully avoided the exaggerated ornamentation fashionable at that time and preferred simplicity of expression and technical perfection. By royal privilege, he received exclusive artistic and material rights in the operatic genre and created 14 great tragic operas, all to the libretto of Lully's constant collaborator, the poet F. Kino. Starting with his first lyrical tragedy, Cadmus and Hermione (Cadmus et Hermione, 1673), and up to the last work of this genre, Armide and Renaud (Armide et Renaud, 1686), Lully demonstrated the the meaning of their words and actions. The librettist of most of Lully's operas was one of the prominent classicist playwrights - Philip Kino. In Kino, love passion, the desire for personal happiness come into conflict with the dictates of duty, and the latter take over. The plot is usually associated with war, the defense of the fatherland, the exploits of generals ("Perseus"), with the hero's single combat against the inexorable fate, with the conflict of evil spells and virtue ("Armida"), with the motives of retribution ("Theseus"), self-sacrifice ("Alceste" ). The actors belong to opposing camps and themselves experience tragic clashes of feelings and thoughts. The characters were drawn beautifully, effectively, but their images not only remained sketchy, but - especially in lyrical scenes - became sugary. The heroic went somewhere, it was swallowed up by courtesy. It is no coincidence that Voltaire, in his pamphlet The Temple of Good Taste, through the mouth of Boileau, called Cinema a ladies' man!
Lully, as a composer, was strongly influenced by the classical theater of its best days. He probably saw the weaknesses of his librettist and, moreover, sought to overcome them to some extent with his music, strict and stately. Lully's opera, or "lyrical tragedy" as it was called, was a monumental, well-planned, but perfectly balanced composition of five acts, with a prologue, a final apotheosis, and the usual dramatic climax towards the end of the third act. Lully wanted to return to the events and passions, actions and characters of Cinema the vanishing grandeur. He used for this the means of pathetically elevated, melodious recitation. Melodically developing its intonational structure, he created his own declamatory recitative, which formed the main musical content of his opera. "My recitative is made for conversations, I want it to be perfectly even!" Lully said so. In this sense, the artistic and expressive relationship between music and poetic text in French opera has developed completely different from that of the Neapolitan masters. The composer sought to recreate the plastic movement of verse in music. One of the most perfect examples of this style is the fifth scene of the second act of the opera Armada.
The libretto of this famous lyrical tragedy was written by Cinema on the plot of one of the episodes of Torquato Tasso's epic poem Jerusalem Liberated. The action takes place in the East during the era of the Crusades. Lully's opera consisted of more than just recitatives. There are also rounded ariose numbers in it, melodically related to those of that time, sensitive, flirtatious or written in energetic marching or cutesy-dance rhythms. Arias ended with declamatory monologue scenes.
Lully was strong in ensembles, especially in characteristic, entrusted to comic characters, which he succeeded very well. A significant place was occupied in the "lyrical tragedy" and choirs - pastoral, military, religious and ritual, fantastically fabulous and others. Their role, most often in crowd scenes, was predominantly decorative. Lully was a brilliant master of the opera orchestra for his time, not only skillfully accompanying the singers, but also painting various poetic and pictorial pictures. The author of "Armida" modified, differentiated timbre colors in relation to theatrical and stage effects and positions. The introductory “symphony” to the opera, which opened the action, and therefore received the name “French Overture” was especially famous for Lully’s superbly designed introductory “symphony”
Lully's ballet music has survived to this day in the theater and concert repertoire. And here his work was fundamental for French art. Lully's operatic ballet is by no means always a divertissement; it was often assigned not only a decorative, but also a dramatic task, artistically and prudently consistent with the course of the stage action. Hence the pastoral-idyllic dances (in "Alceste"), mourning (in "Psyche"), comic-characteristic (in "Isis") and various others. Before Lully, French ballet music already had its own tradition, at least a century old, but he introduced a new stream into it - “brisk and characteristic melodies”, sharp rhythms, lively tempos of movement. At that time, this was a whole reform of ballet music. In general, there were much more instrumental numbers of "lyrical tragedy" than in Italian opera. Usually they were higher in music and more in harmony with the action taking place on the stage.
Shackled by the norms and conventions of court life, morals, aesthetics, Lully still remained "a great raznochintsy artist who recognized himself as equal to the most noble gentlemen." This earned him the hatred of the court nobility. He was not a stranger to free-thinking, although he wrote a lot of church music and largely reformed it. In addition to palace performances, he gave performances of his operas "in the city", that is, for the third estate of the capital. With enthusiasm and perseverance, he raised talented people from the bottom to the high art, which he himself was. Recreating in music that system of feelings, the manner of expressing himself, even those types of people who often met at court, Lully in the comic episodes of his tragedies (for example, in Acis and Galatea) unexpectedly turned his eyes to the folk theater, its genres and intonations. And he succeeded in this, because from his pen came out not only operas and church hymns, but also drinking and street songs. His melodies were sung in the streets, "strummed" on the instruments. Many of his tunes, however, originated from street songs. His music, borrowed in part from the people, returned to him. It is no coincidence that Lully's younger contemporary, La Vieville, testifies that one love aria from the opera "Amadis" was sung by all the cooks of France. Significant is Lully's collaboration with the brilliant creator of the French realistic comedy Molière, who often included ballet numbers in his performances. In addition to purely ballet music, the comic performances of costumed characters were accompanied by a singing-story. "Monsieur de Poursonac", "The tradesman in the nobility", "Imaginary patient" were written and staged on stage as comedies-ballets.
Monsieur de Poursonnac - comedy-ballet in three acts by Molière and J.B. Lully
For them, Lully, himself an excellent actor who performed on stage more than once, wrote dance and vocal music. On January 8, 1687, while conducting the Te Deum on the occasion of the king's recovery, Lully injured his leg with the tip of a cane, which at that time was used to beat time. The wound developed into an abscess and turned into gangrene. On March 22, 1687, the composer died. So, the creator of Perseus and Armida, not only with his music, noble and majestic, suppressed or removed the pretentiously gallant weaknesses of Cinema, raising lyrical tragedy to the level of Racine and Corneille, but made comic ballet consonant with Molière - he was sometimes wider and above the pure classicism of his era.
Lully's influence on the further development of French opera was very great. He not only became its founder - he created a national school and brought up numerous students in the spirit of its traditions.
