Search - Jean-Philippe Rameau, Marc Minkowski, Les Musiciens du Louvre :: Rameau - Une Symphonie imaginaire

RAMEAU - MINKOWSKI & Les Musiciens du Louvre: sur le Ouvre p

John Nemaric - PhD - AGO | Pittsburgh - Pennsylvania - USA | 12/28/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Before Rameau (1683-1764) there was instrumentation; after Rameau, there was orchestration. Then came Mozart, Beethoven, von Weber, Berlioz, Fry, Lizts, Gottschalk, Wagner, Lèfébure-Wélly, Franck, Bruckner, Mahler, and the rest is part of the world's music history.



In the beginning, Rameau was an expert organist intensely interested with the exploration of new instrumental possibilities in music which he had already explored with organ music both as an instrumentalist and composer. He treated the organ as a great symphonic instrument rather than a polyphonic instrument. What we have here is what we call now "homophonic" music. He was not the only one to enter this form of thinking and composing; indeed there were others, but that does not take any away from his enormous accomplishments and advances in music theory.



Rameau was throughly contemporary with François Couperin Le Grand (1668-1733), Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767), Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), Giussepe Tartini (1692-1770), Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) and many other very well known composers of the early and mid 1700's. There is no doubt that for the most part all of the above knew in great detail about each other's whereabouts and current musical developments; assimilation of each other's theoretical and compositional ideas and forms was a widely accepted practice during that time period.



Rameau as a matter of fact did not discover anything whether in music and/or instrumental sound acoustics but formally stated sound and acoustic "combinations" which if and when executed by composer and instrumentalists added to the clarity of the whole.



As our old friend Mr. Plato (428-347 BC) remarked (I hope more than once), the foundation of anything in this universe (music included) in itself is indifferent to the existence of our universe. Indeed, indifferent to our minds and evanescent existence. Put it another way, music would exist even if musicians and/or we the listeners did not. I know this could be a debatable philosophical point for some but that's a theme for another discussion somewhere else.



With his compositions Rameau explored first at the organ and then with opera, ballet and overtures orchestral and musical methods, and acoustic forms which in the end provided other musicians/composers in general with highly idealized representations of the real world, whatever the real world of acoustics in reality can be said to be.



There is so much music (of all kinds), and composers which to this date knowingly or not, having adopted and assimilated Rameau's dictums have achieved such a mastery of acoustic "combinations" with effects of space, sonority, tone placement, antiphony, echo, silence, etc., etc, that have made this a wonderful world. One that Rameau re-discovered and which now-a-days is an integral and essential part of recognized music theory.



Rameau wrote a number of "treatises" and books on music theory; the two most important are "Traité de l'harmonie" and "Gènération harmonique." In these two studies he described or "explicated" exhaustively all known to him blends of timbres/tones, space and reverberation combinations; to this day no musician could do without them! His main point was that melody and harmony are not independent of each other. These musical combinations were known by many, but Rameau was the first to write about them and put them to practice in a formal fashion - again - as far as we know now.



I may add here that organists in general knew what Rameau knew; organistis knew very well how to score and employ acoustics and concomitant specific reverberation times and silences to obtain desired sound effects with their organ compositions. J.S. Bach was a master of this technique incidentally. It was and still is part of every good organist to "have the knowledge" and the skills to partake with organ music in such way; we also intuitively know when an organist is not for whatever reason applying these acoustic principles during a performance, generally to everybody's dislike.



We must add here that Archangelo Corelli, Giuseppe Tartini and J.S. Bach for example scored "in scordatura" for string instruments, especially for viola da gambas but also for violins. Scoring "in scordatura" basically produces the same acoustical effects and results as those organists obtained with their organs;"in scordatura" in plain musical language means "mis-tuning." Scoring in this manner was a common practice during the 1600 and 1700's because it produced acoustical effects of the desired kind, that is, natural sound effects.



Never-the-less, Rameau was apparently the first one to write and compose music following "natural" sound combinations without the need for scordatura. This is Rameau's legacy for the ages.



He was (again, probably) the first to describe, justify and explain harmonic practice in music whithin a coherent system derived from the "nature" of sounds. It had been there all the time and Rameau just "nurtured" the idea. Again, we have here another example of "nature" and "nurture." Remember Mr. Plato's dictum?



Very few composers before Rameau had conciously exposed and/or utilized that knowledge aside for the ocassional "in scordatura." We must resort here to Nikolaus Harnoncourt's "The Musical Dialogue - Thoughts on Monteverdi, Bach and Mozart" and Paul Bekker's "The Orchestra" to fully understand the inner works of this process. I highly recommend lecture of these two capital books as well as Dr. Philip Gossett's English translation of Rameau's "Traité de l'harmonie."



With this SACD Marc Minkowski and his Les Musiciens de Louvre amply succeed in the representation of Rameau's orchestral music.



Rameau never wrote a symphony as such; let's consider that for a moment. At about the same time J.S. Bach was calling some of his compositions "Symphonias", but it was not ultil his son Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach (1714-1788) threw away the traditional polyphonic media (instrumentation) or subordinated them to the dominant idea of harmonic development that a "formal" symphonic form appeared; we call this "homophonic" music incidentally.



There were no symphonies until that time (C.P.E. Bach's time) but only "concertos" of the "grosso" kind. Concerti grossi (Italian for big concerts) were a popular form of Baroque music whereby an orchestra ensemble passed musical material between an small group of soloists (the concertino) and the full orchestra (the ripieno).



That's the main reason for the added title to this SACD: "...un symphonie imaginaire." This SACD is about symphonies; symphonies which were never formally scored by Rameau. We are asked here and now to think about this music as being an imaginary symphony...or pieces of symphonies, or opera...ballets. Indeed not an easy proposition but, just after the first few bars of the the first track we realize that Rameau had a new perspective in music; his music was all about orchestration.



Did Minkowski and his group succeed in their mission? Obviously the answer is a resounding yes! Minkowski and his musicians created these imaginary symphonies out of some orchestral music originally written for operas and ballets, and some specific overtures. These were orchestral parts composed during the last thirty years of Ramaeau's life. Previously he had only composed keyboard music mostly for organs.



Presently, the question might be as follows: where do we begin with this SACD?



The instruments: the instruments are all original period instruments

and tuned to a prevalent a'= 415 Hz (so it's stated in the notes and my chromatic tuner corroborates exactly that) and that's very different than today's a'= ~ 440 Hz. The instrument's sound in this recording is different, totally different, and the tuning of the strings bespeaks well of the mastery of this orchestra's players. Remarkable, it's all I can say!



Minkowski, the conductor. There is no doubt in my mind that he, along with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Andrew Manze, is the dominant figure in Baroque music at the present time. You can not do better than this or these if we include the other two conductors.



The musicians. What can I say about them? That they have perfect pitch? Yes. That they play all the notes? Yes. That their string instruments had to be re-strung to a'= 415 Hz instead of playing "in scordatura"? I think so. Can they play in harmony? This is a great rendition of musical harmony at it's purest form.



I think Rameau with this music and specially it's orchestration showed to the future the shape of things to come. This was the beginning of the end of the Baroque and the start of a new era.



There are no words that could possibly describe the level of excellence which is achieved in this and the other Baroque recordings this conductor and musical group have been involved with. We do know this is the normal state of affairs with Minkowski and the musicians that subordinate to him. This is absolutely perfect.



The sound, again, Archiv has produced another SACD reference recording. It's a true 5.1 DTS recording which means the sound will be coming out of six speakers if played in an SACD player. The total surround sound is as real as one could get and much better and more realistic than the same version in just plain stereo. In my opinion the SACD is far superior than the stereo version.



I would not hesitate for a moment in recommending this SACD or any other that Minkowski and his musicians throw at us. Please hit us again and again with recordings of this caliber.



FINAL WORDS: B U Y I T - NOW.





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