Rameau Four Pieces

Music Appreciation
Written By Edward Wolfe

Rameau (1683-1764)

Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764), a French composer, is one of the four great composers of the High or late Baroque Period in music. The Baroque is usually described as 1600-1750. The other three composers were the German Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), the Italian Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), and the German, living for a long time in England, George Frideric Handel (1685–1759).

Rameau composed operas, cantatas, songs, and a great deal of instrumental music. His pieces for keyboard—in his day, the harpsichord—are still performed today by both students and concert pianists.

In addition to being a great composer, he was an influential music theorist. His Treatise on Harmony used the tonal system of major and minor keys to teach readers his what to do to create music that sounded good.

The four pieces I’d like you to hear today include a

  • Gavotte (a French peasant dance in duple meter),

  • “Le rappel des oiseaux” (“reminiscent of birds”),

  • “Les sauvages” (“wild ones”), and

  • “Les niais de Sologne” (“the simpletons of Sologne”).

Hearing this music gives us 21st-century Americans a little glimpse into the brilliant thinking of profound Baroque French thinking.

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Edward Wolfe

Edward Wolfe has been a fan of Christian apologetics since his teenage years, when he began seriously to question the truth of the Bible and the reality of Jesus. About twenty years ago, he started noticing that Christian evidences roughly fell into five categories, the five featured on this website.
Although much of his professional life has been in Christian circles (12 years on the faculties of Pacific Christian College, now a part of Hope International University, and Manhattan Christian College and also 12 years at First Christian Church of Tempe), much of his professional life has been in public institutions (4 years at the University of Colorado and 19 years at Tempe Preparatory Academy).
His formal academic preparation has been in the field of music. His bachelor degree was in Church Music with a minor in Bible where he studied with Roger Koerner, Sue Magnusson, Russel Squire, and John Rowe; his master’s was in Choral Conducting where he studied with Howard Swan, Gordon Paine, and Roger Ardrey; and his doctorate was in Piano Performance, Pedagogy, and Literature, where he also studied group dynamics, humanistic psychology, and Gestalt theory with Guy Duckworth.
He and his wife Louise have four grown children and six grandchildren.

https://WolfeMusicEd.com
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