Today we will continue our exploration of French music from the Baroque period, focusing on the successor of Lully — Jean-Philippe Rameau.
Rameau: The Founding Father of Harmony Theory
- Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque period. Following in the footsteps of Lully, Rameau became the greatest French opera composer of his time. While building upon Lully’s musical foundation, Rameau brought innovation and development to French music. He not only led the French music scene but also laid the groundwork for modern harmony theory.
- Rameau was born in Dijon, France. His mother came from a noble family, and his father was an organist who, despite his profession, initially opposed Rameau’s pursuit of music, hoping he would become a lawyer instead. At the age of 18, Rameau finally received his father’s permission to travel to Italy. After returning to France, he worked as an organist. Rameau made significant contributions to harmony theory and established the modern harmonic system. As a theorist, he authored important works such as Treatise on Harmony.
- Rameau developed a highly influential system of harmonic theory, which provided composers with a convenient and powerful tool for composition. While music is ultimately an art form, its realization relies on technique. A composer’s inspiration is often melodic in nature, but in order to translate that inspiration into a complete piece, technical and theoretical support is essential — and harmony is one of the most vital tools in this process.
- Rameau considered harmony a key compositional device because major and minor keys define the basic color of a piece. The shifts in mood and tone throughout a piece are primarily driven by harmony. Harmony refers to multiple notes of different pitches sounding together. Depending on the pitch combinations, the result can be either consonant and pleasant or dissonant and tense. Therefore, arranging harmony effectively is crucial in music composition.
- Rameau established a cyclical progression using the tonic, dominant, and subdominant chords, which became the foundation of Western classical harmony. Music tends to follow a pattern of moving from consonance to dissonance and then back to consonance. The three chords Rameau identified allow this transition to occur smoothly. Starting with the tonic, moving to the subdominant, then to the dominant, and finally resolving back to the tonic — this cycle forms the basic unit of traditional Western harmony.
- Rameau formulated the relationships between the tonic, dominant, and subdominant chords based on the principle of the harmonic overtone series. When a musical instrument sounds, we hear not just a single tone but a combination of vibrations — 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 of the string length, and so on. These overtones mix with the fundamental tone, creating a spectrum of sound that ranges from highly consonant to more dissonant. In this way, the three foundational chords — tonic, dominant, and subdominant — represent a gradual progression from consonance to dissonance and back.
- In addition to Treatise on Harmony, Rameau also wrote other theoretical works such as A New System of Music Theory, Generation of Harmony, and Demonstration of the Principle of Harmony. These books not only explain his theoretical insights and establish the harmonic system but have also continued to influence students in conservatories today. They remain essential texts in the study of music theory.
