250th anniversary of Jean-Philippe Rameau's death

Friday, September 12, 2014

Jean-Philippe Rameau died 250 years ago today. The RISM online catalog has 230 works by him in over 40 libraries. The sources are widely disseminated throughout Europe and the United States and are mostly of Rameau’s stage works. There is also one autograph manuscript among them: sketches to a keyboard suite in A minor that are held today by the University Library in Basel, Switzerland.

Many commemorations took place in the days after Rameau’s death in 1764, not only in Paris, where he had lived, but also throughout France: Avignon, Dijon, Marseille, Orléans, and Rouen.

The music that was played during Rameau’s funeral service at St. Eustache is also indexed in RISM. The requiem by Jean Gilles (1668-1705) is here and more information can be found in Wikipedia. The chorus “Que tout gémisse” from Rameau’s tragédie en music Castor et Pollux is in the RISM online catalog. An interesting short film about Rameau’s funeral with excerpts from the requiem and interviews about the other works played is on YouTube and an article is on the Rameau 2014 website.

The most recent publication about Ramau is: Graham Stadler, The Rameau Compendium. New York: Boydell & Brewer, 2014 (ISBN: 9781843839057).

Additional events and information about this anniversary:

International Rameau Ensemble

International Anniversary Conference in Oxford from September 11 to 14, 2014

The Rameau Project