Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/283

Rh R A M R A M 265 bear insisted on a ceremonious gallantry from their suitors and friends (though it seems from Tallemant's account that practical jokes of a mild kind were by no means excluded from the Hotel de Rambouillet), and especially favoured an elaborate and quintessenced kind of colloquial and literary expression, such as at the end of the 16th and in the earlier part of the 17th century was fashionable throughout Europe. The immortal Precieuses Ridicules was no doubt directly levelled not at the Hotel de Ram- bouillet itself but at the numerous coteries which in the course of years (for the salon had been open for more than a generation when Moliere's piece, which was patronized by the real Precieuses themselves, appeared) had sprung up in imitation of it. But the satire did in truth touch the originators as well as the imitators, the former more closely perhaps than they perceived. The Hotel de Ram- bouillet continued open till the death of its mistress, 27th December 1665, but latterly it lost its peculiar position. It had no doubt a very considerable influence in bringing about the classicizing of French during the 17th century, though the literary work with which it is chiefly identified was of an older school than that of the age of Louis XIV. proper. The chief original authorities respecting Madame de Rambouillet and her set are Tallemaut des Reaux in his Historiettes and Somaize in his Dictionnaire des Precieuses. Many recent writers have treated the subject, among whom MM. Cousin, Livet, and De Barthelemy deserve special mention. RAMEAU, JEAN PHILIPPE 1 (1683-1764), musical theorist and composer, was born at Dijon, 25th September 1683. His musical education, partly in consequence of his father's desire to prepare him for the magistracy, still more through his own wayward disposition, was of a very desultory character ; but his talent manifested itself at a very early age. In 1701 his father sent him to Milan to break off a foolish love-match. But he learned little in Italy, and soon returned, in company with a wandering theatrical manager, for whom he played the second violin. He next settled in Paris, where he published his Premier Livre de Pieces de Clavecin, in 1706. In 1717 he made an attempt to obtain the appointment of organist at the church of St Paul. Deeply annoyed at his unexpected failure, he retired for a time to Lille, whence, however, he .soon removed to Clermont-Ferrand, where he succeeded his brother as organist at the cathedral, and here it was that his true art-life began. Burning with desire to remedy the imperfection of his early education, Rameau now diligently studied the writ- ings of Zarlino, Descartes, Mersenne, F. Kircher, and certain other well-known authors. He not only mastered their several theories but succeeded in demonstrating their weak points and substituting for them a system of his own, which, notwithstanding its manifest imperfection, was based upon firm natural principles, and ultimately led to discoveries of the utmost possible value to musical science. His keen insight into the constitution of certain chords, which in early life he had studied only by ear, enabled him to propound a series of hypotheses, many of which are now accepted as established facts ; and, if, in his desire to carry out his system to a logical conclusion, he was sometimes tempted into palpable and dangerous error, it was only in obedience to the law which invariably renders the inventor of a new theory blind to the stubborn facts which militate against its universal application. His theory was based upon an instinctive anticipation of the discoveries of modern science. While the older con- trapuntists were perfectly satisfied with the laws which regulated the melodious involutions of their vocal and instrumental parts, Rameau demonstrated the possibility ff building up a natural harmony upon a fundamental bass, 1 Not Jean Baptiste, as erroneously stated by Gerber. and of using that harmony as an authority for the enact- ment of whatever laws might be considered necessary for the guidance either of the contrapuntist or the less ambi- tious general composer. And in this he first explained the distinction between two styles, which, in deference to the views expressed by a popular critic of the present day, have been called the "horizontal and vertical systems," the " horizontal system " being that by which the older contrapuntists regulated the onward motion of their several parts, and the " vertical system " that which constructs an entire passage out of a single harmony. From fundamental harmonies he passed to inverted chords, to which he was the first to call attention ; and the value of this discovery fully compensates for his erroneous theory concerning the chords of the eleventh and the great (Anyl. "added") sixth. 2 Rameau first set forth his new theory in his Traite de VHarmonie (Paris, 1722), and followed it up in his Nouveau Systeme (1726), Generation Harmonique (1737), Demonstra- tion (1750), and Nouvelles Reflexions (1752). But it was not only as a theorist that he became famous. Returning to Paris in 1722, he first attracted attention by composing some light dramatic pieces, and then showed his real powers in his first great opera, Hijypolyte et Aricie, founded on Racine's Phedre, and produced at the Academic in 1733. Though this work was violently opposed by the admirers of Lully, whose party spirit eventually stirred up the famous "guerre des bouffons," Rameau's genius was too brilliant to be trampled under foot by an ephemeral faction, and his ultimate triumph was assured. He afterwards produced more than twenty operas, the most successful of which were Dardanus, Castor et Pollux, Les Indes Gal- antes, and La Princesse de Navarre. Honours Avere now showered upon him. He was appointed conductor at the Opera Comique, and the directors of the opera granted him a pension. King Louis XV. appointed him composer to the court in 1745, and in 1764 honoured him with a patent of nobility and the order of Saint Michael. But these last privileges were granted only on the eve of his death, which took place in Paris on 12th September 1764. RAMESES (Gen. xlvii. 11 ; Exod. xii. 37; Num. xxxiii. 3), or, with a slight change in the vowel points, RAAMSES (Exod. i. 11), the name of a district and town in Lower Egypt, is notable as affording the mainstay of the current theory that King Rameses II. was the pharaoh of the oppression and his successor Menptah the pharaoh of the exodus. The actual facts, however, hardly justify so large an inference. The first three passages cited above are all by the priestly (post-exile) author and go together. Jacob is settled by his son Joseph in the land of Rameses and from the same Rameses the exodus naturally takes place. The older narrative speaks not of the land of Rameses but of the land of Goshen ; it seems probable, therefore, that the later author interprets an obsolete term by one current in his own day, just as the Septuagint in Gen. xlvi. 28 names instead of Goshen Heroopolis and the land of Rameses. Heroopolis lay on the canal connecting the Nile and the Red Sea, and not far from the head of the latter, so that the land of Rameses must be sought in Wady Tumilat near the line of the modern freshwater canal. In Exod. i. 11, again, the store-cities or arsenals which the Hebrews built for Pharaoh are specified as Pithom and Raamses, to which LXX. adds Heliopolis. Pithom (the city of the god Turn) is probably the Patumus of Herod, ii. 158, which also lay on the canal, so here again Wady Tumilat is the district to which we are referred. But did the Israelites maintain a continuous recollection of the names of the cities on which they were forced to build, or were these names rather added by a writer who knew what fortified places were in his own time to be seen in Wady 2 For further information on this subject, see vol. xvii. p. 92. XX. 34