Jean-Baptiste Lully

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And today's topic is one that has been on my list for quite a while, but I hadn't thought about him for a bit until I was watching the movie Tar and his name came up. That's another thing related to my travels that was on a flight. We watch this on an airplane. Yes, it comes up in passing very early on in the film. So outside of music circles, Jean Baptiste Lulie is perhaps best known for the unusual circumstances of his death, but he lived a really fascinating life that would rival just about any fictional rags to riches story. The Chateau de Versailles website has a little anecdotal sidebar about him that reads, despite his Italian origins, Lulie was the most ardent defender of French music and the founder of the French operatic tradition. So today we're going to talk about how an Italian kid landed in France and became so deeply ingrained in both the royal court and the country's cultural history. So Giovanni Battista Luli was born November twenty ninth, sixteen thirty two in Florence, Italy. We don't really know a whole lot about his childhood, although he later claimed that a Franciscan monk had taught him a little bit of guitar. He also later claimed that his parents had been part of Florence's noble class, but it really appears that his father, Lorenzo Dimaldo Lulli, was actually a miller. His mother was Katerina del Sera, and she was also from a miller's family. Giovanni had an older brother and sister who died when he was still very young, and he was his parent's only surviving child. When Giovanni was just eleven, he was spotted performing allegedly during carnival festivities by the Duke de guise or possibly a member of the Duke's family. Giovanni's mother had died around this same time, and so it appears that when the offer was made for the Duke de Guisee to take the young boy away to France, it was not met with resistance, so soon Givanni was going by the French version of his name Jean Baptiste Lullie, and he did legally take that name, but he did that when he became a naturalized French citizen, which did not happen for almost two decades after this. The first job that young Loulie had in France was serving as garson de chambre and conversational companion to the young Mademoiselle de Montpencier. This was Anne Marie Louise d'rleon, Duchess of Montponcier, who was fourteen at the time that young Lili appeared in France. She had in him a native Italian speaker that she could practice learning that language with. He was paid one hundred and fifty livres a year for this position, but this also meant that Loulie had access to educational opportunities of his own. He was exposed to a lot of different music of all kinds, which he really loved. He started learning music more formally with a string ensemble who played for the young Royal. There are two different versions of how Louli's time in the Montpencier household. Ended. One is that he showed a lot of promise musically but was abruptly let go from his position when he wrote some verses set to music that were very scandalous and full of innuendo. The other version is much less salacious, at least for Lulie. When the series of French civil wars that came to collectively be known as La Fronde took place over the years of sixteen forty eight to sixteen fifty three, Mademoiselle de Montpensier was caught up in it. At this point, Louis the fourteenth had not yet fully assumed the throne. His mother Anne of Austria, and Jules Cardinal Mazarin, her Italian chief minister, were running that did not sit well with the French nobility or the parlement. Initially, Mademoiselle de Montpensier's involvement in Lafrand seemed kind of minimal. She became friends with participants in the Frande desnoble, that was the segment of the conflict that involved the nobility opposing a reduction in their influence and power. But then she kind of got right in the middle of it when she tried to intercede with the City of Orleans, attempting to stay neutral in all of this, and things kind of spiraled from there, and she did become much more involved. She was ultimately exiled for her part in the conflict, and in this version of Jean Baptiste, Lullie no longer working for her, he simply asked to be let go because he did not want to live in the country. Of course, the relationship that most influenced the course of Loulie's life was the one that he had with the King, Louis the fourteenth. The two men appeared on stage together on February twenty third, sixteen fifty three, in the Le Royale de la Nui. In our two part episode on the history of ballet, which came out in twenty nineteen, we talked about how Louis the fourteenth had formalized ballet, shifting it from being a social activity to a performative art, and Loulis was instrumental in that, although his real power as a leader in the arts came later, But Louli and the King really hit it off from the start. Louis's appointments to various creative roles in the arts that the king's command began not long after they met in the summer of sixteen fifty three, Louis became head of Louis the fourteenth's personal orchestra, nicknamed Peti violon durois a little violins. This was the first step in a historic rise to fame and power. For context, Loulis was six years older than the king, and Louis the fourteenth was still a teenager at this time. He was fourteen or fifteen, so right at the age when having a witty friend in his twenties would probably seem really alluring. From early on, Louis the fourteenth had in Loulie a friend who would devote himself to keeping the monarch entertained and amused and delighted. Louie, of course, benefited from the favor bestowed on him by one of the most powerful men in Europe and really of the world. Although that felt weird to type, so I typed it and deleted it many times. In his role as the king's composer, Loulie started writing music for court ballets, and he also performed in them, and he quickly made a name for himself as a dancer and composer, but also because of his fantastic comedic performances, so he was also considered a comedian he gained the nickname Baptiste as his stage name and became something of a Celebrity's Baptiste is mentioned in a lot of writing of the day as being this amazing performer, and it was Loulie. During this time, Louie had developed the Little Violins into a group so exceptional that it was soon seen is far superior to the Royal Orchestra that it was technically an offshoot of. But eventually the two of them did merge for court ballets. Starting in sixteen sixty one, Jean Baptiste Louie went through a particularly important stretch, lasting a couple of years. This was the year he became a French citizen and took this French version of his name legally. He became Superintendent of Music and Court Composer to the King on May sixteenth, sixteen sixty one. He was not the sole holder of that position. Composer Jean Baptiste was set also held that title. In sixteen sixty two, just before he turned thirty, Louis married. His bride was Madeleine Lambert, who's the daughter of composer Michel Lambert, who was an influence and possibly a teacher of Loulie in his early years in France. This wedding was attended by King Louis the fourteenth, then Queen Maria Theresa. Lee and Madeline went on to have ten children together. Seen sixty four, Loulie began collaborating with Moliere. The two of them produced many comedie ballet pieces over the next several years, including Lamour Medsin Love Medicine or Medical Love in sixteen sixty five, l Sicilian in sixteen sixty seven, and Monsieur de Porsignac in sixteen sixty nine. The duo's final collaboration was Le Bourgeoise gen Dillome in sixteen seventy. The years of sixteen seventy three to sixteen eighty seven are considered Lulie's most productive as a composer. He wrote an opera every year during this time, so fourteen in total. During this time, his collaborator was Lebrest Philippe Killon, and in this phase of Luie's career he tended to focus primarily on tragic opera. There are only a few comedies sprinkled in. Working with Quinon, Lili produced, among other operas, Isis. In sixteen seventy seven, Psyche in sixteen seventy eight, La Tempted pet in sixteen eighty five. His collaborations with other librettists were often pretty fraught. Louie was really picky, he wanted to rewrite things himself sometimes, and he was also very frank with his criticisms. These traits, combined with the fact that he had basically taken over all of music in France, led to just a lot of tension within the arts community. At one point, this turmoil actually resulted in one of his rivals trying to have Louie assassinated with arsenic which was planned to be mixed into his tobacco. And that plot came to light when opera singer Marie Aubrey, who worked with Loulie, told him about it. Her brother had been the man asked to commit the murder. There was a big trial, It went back and forth, there was an appeal, but Lili was never actually nobody attempted to kill him, so it was kind of a trying to prove a plot, which is tricky. In a moment, we'll talk about how Lui monopolized the musical life of France, but first we will hear from our sponsors. During that particularly productive time of his life, Lulie also achieved an incredible coup of sorts for opera in France. He had used his various positions, power and money to basically become the sole arbiter of what was performed on the operatic stage in the country. In addition to having achieved the highest rank possible within the monarch's power structure, he had also purchased the performing rites of librettiest Pierre Perin and composer Robert Cambert. This meant that Lulie was the opera composer of France. No one could produce any operas in the country without his permission. Par have been granted a twelve year permit in sixteen sixty nine to build opera academies anywhere in France, and Louis had been fighting that from the beginning. Initially he insisted that the French language wasn't really a good language for longer form opera. He thought Italian was superior. He would change his opinion on that, though, we'll get to that in a moment. But just a few years after Parenz started this endeavor, he found himself in financial straits, and that was when Louise seized the moment and bought him out. Loulie's offer to Parentz paid off all of his immediate debts and gave him a pension for the rest of his life. In return, Louie was able to parlay the academy rights to an exclusivity deal with the king to create the Academy Royalty Musique, with no one else allowed to open an academy of that nature in France. Although Loulis and Moliere had been colleagues with a lot of success together, Moliere tried to block this whole thing, as did other composers. By the time Loui's machinations were complete, he had managed to cut off all of his competition through one legal arrangement after another, and he profited from it as well. We're talking a bit more about that in a moment. He even managed to seize control over Moliere's theater within weeks of the playwright's death, and he received a royal grant to convert it into the home of the Academy Royal de Musique. When Loulie started working on operas in the sixteen seventies, Italy was considered to be the center of opera He may well have continued to work in ballets were it not for the wavering enthusiasm of Louis the fourteenth. When the King and Louie had met and Louis was a teenager, performing ballet was easy and enjoyable for him. But as the king got older, time gets us all and ballet got more demanding, he didn't want to participate as much, and it stopped being his favorite of the arts, Thus the transition to opera. Many of Louliy's works borrowed from the Italian opera tradition, taking styles that had been popular earlier in his life and then giving them new life by pairing them with French verse and with the French ballet styles that had risen to prominence. Was using the balletic elements as a chorus of sorts. We said just a moment ago that Louli thought that French was not really going to work out for opera, but he challenged himself, probably with some encouragement from Louis the fourteenth, to work with the French language to make a new style of delivery that would work with opera. Some of this involved working with the way verse was spoken and sung by performers, but he also approached the problem from the opposite angle, and it was something that Louis was quite academic about. He's said to have studied the way French stage dramas were performed and then mimicked the patterns of speech musically. This way he innovated the French opera to have a greater continuity from segment to segment. In sixteen eighty one, Loulie made a really interesting move. So he had, as we said, initially performed in the comedy ballet that he wrote for performances at the King's Court. But over the years his appearances on stage had waned to nothing. But that year he returned to perform Monsieur de Porsignac, a ballet that included sections of spoken dialogue written by Moliere. This was not a new ballet. It had first been performed twelve years earlier, but it was popular and it had gone back into rotation. In addition to writing the music for it, Loulie had originated the role of a doctor in the comedy who performed in a dance segment called the Dance of the Enemas. This was pretty broad comedy, and in the sixteen eighty one performance, where Loulie decided to return. He went all out, which included surprising everyone by basically stage diving from the stage into the orchestra pit. Near his part's conclusion, he destroyed a harpsichord in the process. But this whole thing delighted King Louis the fourteenth utterly, who broke out into loud laughter in the theater. One of the reasons it was so odd for Loulie to engage in this kind of just clownery was that he had been working to rise even higher in the ranks of the court. He wanted to become a secretary to the King. So, as a brief explainer, the secretary's zufra were men in service to the king who either served as advisor notary secretary to the King and Household and Crown of France and its finances, or just advisor notary Secretary of the King, House and Crown of France. So that distinction of and its finances in that first description put those secretaries in the Grand chancellery. It meant that they benefited from the country's wealth but were also on the hook for it. This was an office that offered a chance for a common born civil servant to really gain ranking of nobility which could then be inherited by heirs if the secretary served for twenty years or more, or if they died while in office. So this was a really ambitious move for Lolie. So back to that performance of Monsieur de Porsignac and the stage diving. The king's other secretaries did not find vamping around and jumping off the stage to be the kind of behavior suitable for someone who might gain such a position, and their feelings on the matter got Toluli's ears almost instantly, allegedly as he was leaving the stage to change out of costume, but he also received word that he was to return to the stage to give the king another bow and receive the monarch's appreciation. Loulie did something rather bold. He took the opportunity to tell the king what had been going on with the other secretaries, saying from the stage, but Sire, I want to become a secretary of the king. Your secretaries will not receive me, and they may not want to receive you. The implication here was that in openly associating with Louis, the king might be tarnished. It also made very clear to the men who had just called him undignified that they were insulting the King's taste. So this was a little daggery, and the King replied with they will no longer want to receive it will be a great honor for them. If I'm interpreting this direct translation correctly, the implication here is that Louis the fourteenth was essentially telling Louie and everyone else there that it would be an honor to the other secretaries for Louie to become one of their number. This feud over Louie and his rise to power continued. Louie was even confronted over the issue by the French Minister of War, Francois Michel le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois. Louvois had been approached by the other secretaries to intercede on their behalf, and he explained to Loulie it really was not appropriate for him, a performer and comedian, to try to rise to such a station, making a note that Loui's only real skill was making Louis the fourteenth laugh, so that was sort of comparing him to being nothing more than a jester. I feel like gesters can be really powerful, but that was not the It's not the implication here. Louise replied rather indignantly that Louvois would do the exact same thing if he could, implying that the minister had no sense of humor. Things escalated to the point where King Louis the fourteenth made clear to the secretaries through an intermediary that they were the ones who were behaving badly, and that they should see Louise's desire to become a secretary as an honor. At some point, though it's not entirely clear when the king had already given Louie the required lettre de noblesse that made him part of the French nobility, and should have given him enough credentials that he could pursue the office of secretary without issue, although the letters would not have been a requirement for it. Finally, in December sixteen eighty one, Loulie purchased the title of Esquire Advisor Secretary to the King, Household, Crown of France and his finances. He purchased that office from the widow of the prior holder, Joseph Clozel, as would have been customary at the time, basically he was buying out their family's inheritance. Madame Clozell received sixty three thousand livre in exchange for Louie's assumption of the position, having been admonished by the throne. The other secretaries accepted Loulie, at least on the surface, and for his part, Louie invited many of them to a feast in an evening of opera to celebrate the role of secretary was clearly important to Loulie. All of his scores after this had printed at the top by Monsieur Lellie Esquire Adviser, Secretary to the king House Crown of France and its finances, and superintendent of His Majesty's music, just in case she wanted a really long title end business card every time. In just the moment, we will talk about how lucrative becoming a king's secretary was for the composer and where the rest of his wealth came from. First, though, we will hear from the sponsors that keeps stuffy miss in history class going. James P. Fairleie, writing for the periodical Bach in nineteen eighty four, noted that Lulie was through his position as secretary collecting an estimated sixteen hundred livre a year in addition to the money he was being paid for his various other offices. His positions as the master of music to the royal family and the composer to the King would have gotten him an estimated thirty thousand livre a year. Addition, in instances where anyone wished to perform in the country using more than two singers and more than six violins, it was now considered an opera, and Loulie was to be paid a fee in exchange for permission to perform. In This control over who could perform and where in the country really became a rather ruthless pursuit for Loulie, and one that he approached strategically. In sixteen eighty four, Louis the fourteenth granted him the power to approve or deny requests for building opera houses anywhere in the country, and his approval came with a fee. Of course, when Louie's daughter Catherine Madeline married one of the king's household staff, Nicholas Francine, in sixteen eighty four, the composer let his new son in law manage some of the non creative day to day elements of the Academy Royaley musique. This offered him some breathing room and what was a really packed schedule because Louie was not just writing operas, he was also staging, the running rehearsals, training new talent, and by all accounts was kind of a backbreaker in all of it. He was incredibly exacting in his staging and arrangement. There were accounts of him having a violent temper when his performers weren't working as hard as he wanted them to. Audiences, though, saw none of this. They just saw excellence. Almost equivalent to Lulie's excellence in his work and his ambition was his astute accumulation of real estate to ensure that his wealth continued to grow. He purchased multiple properties as he got more and more money, and in sixteen eighty two he moved his family to a huge house outside of Paris that was surrounded by gardens. He even attempted to purchase the entire county of Gregnon, near the Swiss border, and this particular effort caused friction with other nobles for a couple of reasons. One someone else had already been on it when Lulie swooped in and offered fifty percent more than the existing bid, which by most estimations was more than it was worth. So it kind of just seemed like he wanted to be a jerk. There was really like this air of dishonor about the whole thing, like you wouldn't do that to a colleague or an equal. But it also really riled the aristocracy in general, who just thought Loulie was being really showy with his cash. That was to them extra ghosh, because he wasn't even French to begin with. One letter that passed between two members of the nobility read quote, must a wanderer have the temerity to have such land? The wealth of a man of this quality is greater than that of the prime ministers and the other princes of Europe. Lilie did not get Grignond, but he sure did keep on buying properties in Paris. There was more drama in the composer's life in sixteen eighty five, when Lulie's page named Brune was removed from the composer's household. Lilly's romance with Brune has been described by some historians as kind of an open secret in the Journal Historical Reflections. In two thousand and seven, Philip Brett wrote an article titled Issues in Music and Sexuality in the Long eighteenth Century, and in this article Brett mentions that Louis was part of a circle of men within the court of Louis the fourteenth who were known to have affairs with other men, and this was something that was mentioned in the writing of the day. One account of Louie's contemporaries mentions that the king was growing tired of Louie's conduct with other men, particularly because he was becoming less and less covert about such things, and in the case of Brune, it appears that things had become really too obvious they had to be ended by external forces. This was also happening as Louis the fourteenth was becoming more devout himself following Queen Maria Theres's death and his marriage in secret to Francoise d'aubigna Madame de Matino. Eight was also when Louie composed most of his religious music. This was partially a response to the clergy's critiques of Louie's operas, as well as shifting attitudes at court, so he had gone from ballets to operas because the king wanted it, And now he was kind of getting into sacred music because that was what the king was into. Then it was also probably helping to revise Loui's public persona. The king had kind of turned on opera, and Louie did not enjoy royal favor the way he once had, although he did retain his various titles. I read one account that said he kept making Louis the fourteenth angry because of his affairs and his behavior, but he always forgave him in the end. In November of sixteen eighty six, Louis the fourteenth underwent surgery for an anal fistula. The surgery was painful and the recovery process was long. Finally, in early sixteen eighty seven, the king was feeling well and Louie planned a celebratory performance of his piece to Damn. During the concert, which took place on January eighth, he conducted an orchestra of more than one hundred and fifty musicians in the couvon diff Weel, the royal monastery of sam Bernard for that occasion. As part of his renowned perfectionism, Louie was known to beat time with a sharpened cane that also served as his conductor's baton. But during this event, he accidentally brought the sharp end of this cane down on his own foot instead of the stage while marking time, and he pierced through the shoe into his toe. Over the next weeks, that toe became infected and gangrene set in. Loulie's physicians wanted to amputate, but he refused. There are accounts that indicate that he said that he would no longer be able to dance if he submitted to an amputation. But surely he was aware that even if he didn't have an amputation in his foot heeled, his dancing days were probably over. But he became sicker and sicker, and he must have known that he had basically doomed himself because he made various end of life legal arrangements. Jean Baptiste Lui died on March twenty second of sixteen eighty seven. He was buried in the church of Notre Dame de Victoire. To be clear that it is not the same as Notre Dame Cathedral. When Luley died, he left behind an impressive fortune for his heirs. His holdings were estimated to be worth about eight hundred thousand livres, although in some accounts it's closer to a million. He had five homes in Paris, the very large and opulently decorated home he lived in during his last years in the suburb of Villa Leveque, two country houses, one at Puteaux and one at seven. He also had two blocks of apartments in the Rue Royale and Rue de PETITCHMP. As a landlord he had a steady stream of income from those properties alone. Yeah, he did what he set out to do, which was to set up, you know, a name for himself, create family wealth, make his family noble, his children inherited all of that. So he kind of, you know, he set a goal and he achieved it. Today, Loli is often credited with founding the French opera, although we should note there were certainly other composers contributing to the field at the same time, even though Louie did try to have them silenced with his legal maneuvering. The range of feelings about him, bookended by his own time in the modern world, can perhaps be summed up best in two quotes. The first is from James P. Firleigh, who we mentioned earlier. In his nineteen eighty four writing, he said of Loulie quote, he was one of the few men of genius belonging to the company of royal secretaries. Despite his many shortcomings, he was among the brightest lights in the reign of Louis the fourteenth and then the next is a comment from one of Louie's contemporaries, the librettist Jean de la Fontaine, who once stated in the Papers of the day about Louie quote, he is lewde and I'm evil minded, and he devours all. So the good news is if people think you're a monster today, eventually you might be lauded. Is amazing. Yeah, we have some listener mail for us, I do, and unsurprisingly to me, we got emails about hot doctor Pepper. Yeah we did, we did. Uh. The one I'm reading today is from our listener Laura, who writes, Hi, Dracy and Holly. I've been waiting for an excuse to write you to for a long time, and I know I don't need an excuse to tell you how wonderful y'all are, and this week gave me two. I grew up in a very teetotaler household where my father was very anti alcohol in any form. He is loosened up as he's aged. And one of our Christmas winter holiday drinks was mould doctor pepper. My stepmom would heat it on the stove with spices like you do a mould wine, and we would have that on special winter occasions. Maybe it does not sound good to you, but I have fond memories of hot mold Doctor p and Christmas or New Year's celebrations. As for hot doctor pepper from a bottle of heated in a car, I agreed that is gross. Hot plastic does not impart good flavor. Second thing I wanted to write to you about is Anne Hutchinson, which is from the episode Tracy Research. That week I've been meaning to write to ask for an episode about her. Time always gets away from me. It was very excited that she is a big part of the Mary Dier episode. I live for twelve years in the Bronx, New York, right next to the Hutchinson River Parkway, which everyone calls the hutch which is named for Anne Hutchinson. I find her to be very interesting and loved learning about her and Mary Dyer from you. Two. I love stuff you missed in history class and have listened to all the back episodes. I think I started listening in twenty nine or twenty ten. I also listened to all of pop stuff back when that was on. Thank you for all you've taught me, and I'm always excited to listen to a new episode. I love you too, and the previous host too much love Laura. What a sweet sweet email, hot doctor Pee listen. So I do like a Muld wine or a muld cider. Those can be great. No, they're not for you. I don't. I really struggle. I really struggle with hot punches. Sure, I mean I drink hot coffee with sweeteners. So it's not a hot sweet issue. I don't know what it is. It might be a level of sweetness like a hot fruity drinks of any kind. No, but I'm willing to try it. Look, I'm never now I'm like, oh, maybe maybe we'll try a doctor Pepper situation. I would be willing to try kind of like hot muld doctor Pepper. I would try that too. I would probably put alcohol in it. The way my brain auto filled that sentence was, I would probably put it over ice with some vodka that was fun. I was like, that would defeat the purpose of it being able to do it. I'll do it warm with vodka. That's fun. Uh. We have some other doctor Pepper emails we might read because there's some interesting ones, and I appreciate it and I listen. I want everyone to stand up for the things they love, even if I'm like, oh, yuck, because that's one ding dong's opinion. I also think that sometimes people get very uh they will take personally other people's like food and beverage perference, and I'm like, it's okay, It is okay if you personally don't like a particular flavor or texture or whatever that is not that's not a judgment on anybody else's use of that flavor or texture unless you are literally like people who like this are bad. And nobody's saying that this is indicative of moral family. No, everybody eat and drink what you like, so long as it is you know, safe and not gonna hurt anybody. Yeah, Like I know there's a whole like people can make value judgments about like foods and beverages and things that are like racist or classist or whatever. I'm just talking about if you don't like the way something tastes in your mouth, nobody needs to be offended about that. Listen. I eat lots of stuff that I'm sure other people find horrifying. Fine, no big. If you would like to try to us about your hot Doctor Pepper desires or memories, you can do that at Historypodcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also find us on social media at mist in History, and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.