Seminar – Approaches to vocal performance in the operas of Jean-Philippe Rameau

This seminar will explore ways of approaching the music of Jean-Philippe Rameau with a view to understanding better, and performing more stylistically, the vocal music in his operas. We will employ techniques of music analysis (the interpretation of metre, rhythmic notation, tonality and dissonance), study the musical sources, and examine eighteenth-century treatises. In a new approach, the seminar will also on draw the early modern literary expertise of Dr Jonathan Patterson (St Hilda’s Career Fellow in French) to explore how critical study of the text – its pronunciation, meaning, versification and structure – can inform future Rameau performance practice.