Jean-Philippe Rameau, France's leading musical figure of the mid-18th century, was born in 1683 in Dijon. His early music training began there with his father, a church organist. However, Rameau entered adult life not as a musician but a lawyer. When his law career failed, he traveled briefly in 1701 throughout northern Italy as a violinist and organist before settling first at Avignon and later at Clermont-Ferrand to play organ and teach. There he began composing works for the harpsichord and for church use. In 1705, he moved to Paris, hoping to establish himself in Europe's most sophisticated city as a composer and performer.

Although he published his first book of harpsichord pieces during his three years in Paris, he did not find great success and in 1708 he returned to Dijon to succeed his father as organist at Notre Dame. In 1722, he published his most important work, Traite de l'harmonie, a monumental treatise codifying the important advances in music theory and harmony during the preceding decades. He then became organist at Sainte-Croix-de-la-Brétonnerie, and continued to compose keyboard works while preparing a series of sequels to his treatise.

His work eventually brought him to the attention of Le Riche de la Pouplinière, a wealthy tax collector who devoted a considerable portion of his fortune to supporting musicians, La Pouplinière made Rameau head of his household orchestra. When he learned of his protégé’s ambition to compose for the stage, he put him in touch with the librettist, Simon-Joseph Pellegrin. Together they produced the opera Hippolyte et Aricie in Paris in 1733 (Rameau had just turned 50). It stirred the rage of the conservative partisans of Lully's operas when it achieved a fine and unexpected success because of its harmonic audacities and extravagant orchestration. As other successful operas followed -- Les Indes galantes (1735), Castor et Pollux (1737), Dardanus (1739)-- his opposition increased, notably from that great lover of all things natural and unspoiled, Jean Jacques Rousseau, who contended that the simple style of Italian opera was superior to Rameau's elaborate French variety. Despite Rousseau's venomous attacks, Rameau's acclaim continued, and he wrote steadily for the stage until his death in 1764 at the age of 81. He left nearly 30 examples of the tragédie lyrique and opera-ballet to supplement his reputation as a theorist and composer for the harpsichord.

The French composers of Rameau's time commonly headed their instrumental pieces with descriptive titles noting the music's mood or technique, or perhaps evoking a person or a programmatic subject. Rameau's six collections of Pièces de Clavecin (i.e., harpsichord) are filled with evocative and charming character pieces, elegant ornamentations, and graceful melodies so characteristic of the French Baroque.