Jean-Baptiste LullyJean-Baptiste LullyBe careful when you conduct! Good advice, you never know what will happen. Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) was the son of a poor Florentine farmer. His talent for music made itself apparent at an early age. He went off to Paris as a teenager, when he became a page to Mlle. D’Orléans. She was a cousin of the young Louis XIV. to seek fame and fortune and he had several good musical jobs. The Mademoiselle went through some political hard times in 1652 and was forced to leave Paris.
Lully was dismissed but his musical career kept accelerating. He even danced in a ballet with still young Louis XIV. He soon became part of the King’s musical entourage, and was responsible for getting together the instrumental ensemble for various functions. He became friends with the playwright Molière, who then enlisted him to create incidental and ballet music for his stage works.
By the time he was 40, he was given the task of forming a Royal Academy of Music which allowed him to forbid performances of anyone else’s work except his own. This led to incredible hostility in the French musical world, and at one point, he accused one of his enemies of mixing arsenic with his snuff in order to kill him.
Lully wrote a great deal of ballet and operatic music , and despite many of his faults, the King continued to support him. His end came about in a typically tragic way. This was in an era before conducting had really become perfected. He did not hold a baton, but used a pointed cane and pounded it on the stage. He was conducting a performance of his Te Deum, and accidentally punctured his foot with the cane. Gangrene set in and within a few months, he was dead (two years after the birth of J.S. Bach).
Here is an example of his music. This is the Prelude of the Night from The Triumph of Love.
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