RAMEAU, JEAN PHILIPPE (1683-1764), French mu sical theorist and composer, was born at Dijon, the son of an organist, on Oct. 23, 1683. His father wished him to study law, but the boy's head was full of music, which he could only pursue in haphazard fashion. In 1701 his father sent him to Milan to break off a foolish love-match. But he learned little in Italy, and soon returned in company with a wandering theatrical manager, for whom he played the second violin. He next settled in Paris, where he published his Premier livre de pieces de clavecin, in 1706. He succeeded his father as organist of Notre Dame, Dijon, in 1709, and in 1714 removed to Lyons, where he was organist at the Jacobins. In 1715 he was organist at Clermont-Ferrand and work ing on his Traite de l'harmonie. There he remained until 1722. He studied the writings of Zarlino, Descartes and other theorists.
Rameau's keen insight into the constitution of certain chords, which in early life he had studied only by ear, enabled him to propound a series of hypotheses, many of which are now accepted. While the older contrapuntists were perfectly sat isfied with the laws which regulated the melodious involutions of their vocal and instrumental parts, Rameau demonstrated the possibility of building up a natural harmony upon a fundamental bass, and of using that harmony as an authority for the enactment of whatever laws might be considered necessary for the guidance either of the contrapuntist or the less ambitious general composer. And in this he first explained the distinction between two styles, which have been called the "horizontal and vertical systems," the "horizontal system" being that by which the older contrapuntists regulated the onward motion of their several parts, and the "vertical system" being that which is built up perpendicularly from the bass. From fundamental harmonies he passed to
inverted chords, to which he was the first to call attention; and the value of this discovery fully compensates for his erroneous theory concerning the chords of the eleventh and the great (Angl. "added") sixth. (See HARMONY.) Rameau first set forth his new theory in his Traite de l'harmonie (Paris, 1722), and followed it up in his Nouveau systeme (1726), Generation harmonique (1737), Demonstration (175o) and Nou velles re flexions (1752). After his return to Paris in 1722 he pro duced some light dramatic pieces, and then showed his real powers in his opera, Hippolyte et Aricie, founded on Racine's Phedre and produced at the Academie in 5733. He wrote more than twenty operas, the most successful of which were Dardanus, Castor et Pollux, Les hides galantes and La princesse de Navarre. Honours were showered upon him. He died in Paris on Sept. 12, Rameau was undoubtedly the greatest French musician of his day.
See biographies by Charles Poisset (1864), Nisard (1867), Pougin (1876), and L. de la Laurencie (1908) ; also Chabanon, Eloge (1764) ; Masson, L'Opera de Rameau (1926). His Oeuvres com pletes, ed. Saint-Saens (1894 seq.), had reached the 18th vol. in 1924.