Jean-Baptiste Lully

It is no small paradox that the man who most embodied the inflections and vocabulary of the 17th-century French musical Baroque was, in fact, an Italian. Born Giovanni Battista Lulli in Florence in 1632, Lully capitalized on his skills as a dancer and violinist following a move to Paris at the age of 14, proving himself an adroit careerist. Favored by King Louis XIV, he rose seamlessly through the ranks until he arrived at the top, eventually becoming one of the King’s secretaires, a position customarily reserved for members of the nobility. The king was an accomplished dancer, and Lully—together with the dramatist Molière, a close friend—pioneered the genre of Comédie-ballet, an exotic fusion of spoken word, dance, and music. A man of the theater to his fingertips, Lully also enthusiastically embraced opera, thereby paving the way for Rameau and Gluck. In works such as Alceste (1674), Atys (1675), and Psyché (1678), Lully invested mythological characters with an affecting human immediacy, adapting Italian models to distinctly French ends. The orchestra was reimagined, the distinction between aria and recitative blurred and the Gallic entente cordiale between gracefulness and statuesque monumentality reinforced. But the Royal Chapel wasn’t neglected, and a clutch of double-choir Grands Motets and a powerful funerary setting of the Miserere consummate Lully’s all-encompassing domination of French musical life.