First published in 1974, this landmark work quickly established itself as the definitive study of French music from 1581 to 1733, a period that included masters such as Marin Marais, Lully, Couperin, and Rameau. This expanded edition includes a bibliography of more than 1,300 works.

This volume of essays on Jean-Baptiste Lully and his musical legacy honours the distinguished French baroque scholar James R. Anthony. Jean-Baptiste Lully, court composer to Louis XIV, served as the principal architect of what would become known as the French style of music in the baroque era. The style he created strongly influenced the great musical figures in England (Purcell and Handel) and Germany (Bach and Telemann), but Lully's music itself has received little attention. Recently, through the efforts of scholars and musicians concerned with the performance practices of Lully's time, Lully's own music has begun to come alive in performance and recording. These essays, all by important baroque specialists, cover significant aspects of Lully's life and works and the French tradition he influenced. They constitute the first post-war collection of studies centred on Lully and form a fitting tribute to Professor Anthony whose own French baroque music provided a stimulus for the work of an emerging generation of scholars.

Giovanni Battista Lulli, a young Florentine who settled in Paris, intrigued his way into all the major musical appointments at the court of Louis XIV and--as Jean-Baptiste Lully--created the essentials of what we recognize as French music of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. No one dared to rival Lully as a composer of operas or ballet. But in the chapels, the two most gifted French choral composers of the age, Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Michel-Richard de Lalande, brought French sacred music to a new peak of excellence. The leading instrumental composer around Louis XIV's court was Francois Couperin-le-Grand, master of the keyboard miniature. All these traditions were drawn together in the next generation by Jean-Philippe Rameau, theorist, 'philosophe,' and supreme master of the lyric tragedy. Book jacket.

Drawing on official documents, theoretical writings, letters, diaries, dictionary entries, contemporary reviews and commentaries, this book provides an often entertaining insight into Lully's once-proud Royal Academy of Music.