After Purcell´s London (cf. Goldberg 2), this article presents another window on the history of music through which we see a personality in his sphere of influence.
True, the splendour of Versailles was created by the will of a king, Louis XIV, whose youth, damaged by the outrages of the Fronde, gave him a lust for power and renown. A name appears, the first servant of his glory. It is that of a foreigner, an Italian to boot, whom the royal patronage raises to the highest echelons.
His name is Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) who within the temple of the French monarchy composes music for the “greatest sovereign on earth.” In Lully’s career, Versailles embodies the creation of an aesthetic ambition which imposes French art on all of Europe—to assimilate Italian models and match Classical drama as transmitted by Seneca and taken up by Corneille and Racine, to give France a “French opera” within the most ostentatious court in Baroque Europe.
The plan takes shape in 1673 with the birth of lyric tragedy. But musical creativity at Versailles also illustrates another auspicious alliance between art and power.
Following the example of the ancient heroes, Pericles, Alexander, Augustus and Hadrian, Louis the Great elaborates for his propaganda and pleasure a policy through which, whether in church, chamber, stable, garden or park, music builds the mythological status of Versailles. |
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