In France, the troubadours had borne melody into the domain of
sentiment, and laid a solid foundation for musical growth. Adam de la
Halle's pastoral, "Robin et Marion," was an actual prototype of the
opera. During the seventeenth century Corneille and Moliere refined the
dramatic taste of their compatriots. Attempts to introduce Italian opera
only resulted in arousing a desire for an opera in accord with French
ideals.
This was gratified by Jean Battiste Lully, who had come to the French
court from Italy in boyhood, and had risen, in 1672, from a subordinate
position to that of chief musician. Undertaking to make reforms, he
succeeded in giving his adopted country a national opera. He established
the overture, gave recitative rhetorical force, added coloring to the
orchestra, and introduced the ballet. New life was infused into the
traditions he left when Jean Philippe Rameau, in 1733, at fifty years of
age, wrote his first opera. He was well-known as a theorist and
composer, and was the author of a harmony treatise in which were set
forth the laws of chord inversions and derivations, a stroke of genius
that hopelessly entangled him in perplexities.
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