Rameau

<p>[Please note that a new much revised and updated edition of this book was published in 2023 under the title ''Rameau: A Life'.]</p><p><br></p><p>Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) was both the greatest French composer and the most influential scientist of music of the 18th century. His personality was as complex and as singular as his music and his ideas. When he finally achieved fame as an opera composer he polarised Parisian society.</p><p><br></p><p>Simon Trowbridge's book is the first general study of Rameau's life and work to be published in English in over half a century. It is both an elegant introduction to Rameau and an exploration of his significance as a major figure in the cultural and intellectual life of Paris during the middle decades of the 18th century.</p><p><br></p><p>Rameau emerges as a musician who was politically as well as artistically radical an often paradoxical figure who worked within the official realms of the Op��ra and the court but who remained his own man.</p>