A King's Musicians

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 630, 27 July 1951, Page 16

A King's Musicians

‘THOUGH Italian by birth, Lullycourt’ composer and friend of Louis XIV.-became the father of French Opera when Les Fétes de L’Amour et de Bacchus was presented at the Académie de Musique in Paris on November 15, 1672. For the Florentine turned Frenchman-whose first job in his adopted country had been as a kitchen scullion-this was the peak of success. But/long before this night when French opera was born, Lully, as a naturalised Frenchman, had gained the King’s favour, and his word was law on matters musical. A trained dancer, as well as an accomplished violinist, Lully took part in many of his thirty court ballets, when often the man next to him was none other than Le Roi Soleil himself. Lully was feared and envied by many of the King’s followers, but he was a great artist and a master of music in France. A later composer at the same French Court was Francois Couperin, member of a distinguished family of Court musicians. He was famous as a harpsichordist, and his manual L’Art de toucher le clavecin influenced Bach. Wanda Landowska, on Friday, August 3, at 7.20 p-m., will be heard from 3YC playing a group of his compositions in a programme that presents also some notable French singers in excerpts from Lully’s 17th Century operas.