Jean-Joseph de Mondonville
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Jean-Joseph de Mondonville, also known as Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville, (December 25, 1711, Narbonne - October 8, 1772, Paris) was a French violinist and a composer. He was a young contemporary of the esteemed composer Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764).
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[edit] His Life
Mondonville was born in Narbonne in Southwest France. In the 1730s he was in Lille in North France. In 1738 he moved to Paris where he was engaged as a violinist by the Concert Spirituel.
Between 1734 and 1755 Mondonville composed 17 grands motets, of which only 9 have survived. The motet Venite exultemus domino (actually not a motet, but Psalm 95), published in 1740, won him the post of Maître de musique de la Chapelle (Master of Music of the Chapel). In 1734 he was the first violinist at the "concerts de Lille."
His first opus was a volume of instrumental music, in Paris (Sonates), published in 1733. He appeared as a violinist at the Concert Spirituel in 1734, then took a post with the Concert de Lille. Returning to Paris in 1739, he became a violinist of the royal chapel and chamber and performed in some 100 concerts; some of his grands motets were also performed that year due to considerable acclaim. He was appointed sous-maître in 1740 and then intendant in 1744 of the royal chapel. He produced operas and grands motets for the Opéra and Concert spirituel, respectively, and was associated with the Théatre des Petits-Cabinets, all the while, maintaining his career as a violinist throughout the 1740s. He died in Belleville at the age of sixty.
[edit] His Music
The music of Mondonville is characterized by its inventiveness and expressiveness as, for example, in the formal slowness of the Dominus regnavit, the impetuousity of the Elevaverunt flumina, the lyricism of the Gloria patri and the storminess of the Jordanis conversus est retrorsum.
Thanks to his mastery of both orchestral and vocal music, Mondonville brought to the grand motet -- the dominant genre of music in the repertory of the Chapelle royale (Royal Chapel) before the Revolution -- an intensity of color and a dramatic quality hitherto unknown. His works clearly merit a place of honor in the annals of Baroque music.
[edit] Some works
- Sonates pour violon op.1
- Sonates en trio op.2
- Pièces de clavecin en sonates op.3 (later adapted as Sonates en symphonie, essentially orchestral works of considerable freshness and élan)
- The preface of op.4 contains the first evidence of a written text concerning playing with harmonic sounds, "Les sons harmoniques (Paris uand Lille, 1738)
- Pièces de Clavecin avec voix ou violon op.5 (1748)
- Operas
- Le carnaval du Parnasse (Paris, 1749)
- Titon et I'Aurore (Paris, 1753)
- Daphnis et Alcimadure (1754)
- Thésée(1765)
- Grand Motets
- Jubilate Deo (1734)
- Venite exultemus (1743)
- Nisi Dominus (1743)
[edit] Sources
- The first draft of this article was based on a translation of an article on Mondonville in the French Wikipedia.
- Brief biographical entry in the Grove Concise Dictionary of Music, 1994, published by Oxford University Press, Inc. on the Gramophone site.
[edit] External links
- Free scores by Jean-Joseph de Mondonville in the Werner Icking Music Archive
