This conference coincided with the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the composer's death and formed part of the Rameau Project, a large-scale multidisciplinary research programme devoted to the operas of Jean-Philippe Rameau, supported by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities and directed by Graham Sadler (University of Oxford and Birmingham Conservatoire), Alain Viala (University of Oxford) and Jonathan Williams (University of Oxford).

A few papers focused on the composer's immediate context and reception. Aileen Dawson (British Museum) discussed a little-known porcelain bust kept at the British Museum, while Érik Kocevar (Institut de Recherche en Musicologie, Université Paris-Sorbonne) shed light on some aspects of Rameau's biography and psychology by analysing five wills left by Jean-Philippe's father, Jean Rameau. The presentation by Florence Gétreau (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)) considered the construction and cultural meaning of Rameau's fame. She analysed and put into context some familiar caricatures and others from the Rothschild collection that are largely unknown. This incredibly inventive and amusing corpus focused primarily on the complexity of Rameau's music and his claims in the field of theory, crystallizing the opposition to the growing role played by Rameau in French musical life of the time.

Thierry Favier (Université de Poitiers) showed how the competition between Rameau and Mondonville in the fields of opera and sacred music was used in critical discourse in order to renew French musical identity. From the 1760s critical discourse connected Mondonville more and more exclusively to sacred music despite his operatic production, and presented the pair of Mondonville and Rameau as the heirs of Lalande and Lully, showing the permanence of ideological representations derived from the grand siècle. Françoise Escande (Université de Toulouse) and Benoît Dratwicki (Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles) discussed the impact of Rameau's production on the programming of the Académie Royale de Musique. They demonstrated that the intense competition between Rameau, Destouches and Colin de Blamont led the two surintendants to modify their own styles and to ally themselves with Rameau's aesthetics. Francesca Pagani (Università di Bergamo) shone light on an unknown contribution to the early reception of Rameau's operas by the Italian writer Jean Galli de Bibiena (‘Mémoires et aventures de monsieur ***, traduits de l’italien par lui-même’ (Paris: Prault, 1735)). His praise of Rameau's music, comparing it favourably to Vinci's Alessandro nell’India, is based on real knowledge and experience of Italian opera seria, unlike many of those who contributed to the querelle des Lullystes et des Ramistes. Considering Rameau's music as following naturally from that of Lully yet also close to modern Italian music, Bibiena provides one of the few Italian viewpoints on the issue of the goûts réunis. Thomas Green (The Royal Conservatory, Toronto) discussed the reception of Rameau's operas based on the reports of the very famous and official Mercure de France. He underlined the evolution of its critical discourse, centred on the librettos and the staging in the 1730s and subsequently placing more and more emphasis on the performance of singers.

A set of papers focused on the context of Rameau's artistic production. Sylvie Bouissou (CNRS) investigated the Recueil Bresou (F-Pc Rés. 1212), containing canons attributed to Rameau, in order to establish its connection with a lost treatise on counterpoint written by Rameau and mentioned by Jacques-Joseph-Marie Decroix. Graham Sadler went on to show evidence that this treatise was sent to the Gentlemen's Catch Club in London, following a competition organized by the Club in 1763 and won by Rameau.

Marie Demeilliez (Université de Grenoble) took us into the heart of the genesis of Linus, a now lost tragédie en musique. Investigating letters by the cardinal de Bernis, she highlighted the network of influence involved in shaping the piece and choosing a composer, underlining particularly the leading roles played by the duc de Nivernais and the comte de Stainville. Graham Sadler discussed a source for Zoroastre, annotated by Saint-Saëns for the publication of the Oeuvres complètes. This source had remained in the storeroom of the publisher Durand for almost a hundred years before being rediscovered. Sadler's close investigation has revealed seven layers of annotations from that of the first copy, corresponding to the first production, to that provided by Saint-Saëns. Sadler then correlated the history of the source with that of the work and provided interesting insights on performance practice. Margaret Butler (University of Florida) discussed the performance of Rameau's works at the court of Parma, under the leadership of Jacques-Simon Mangot, who had previously been director of the Théâtre de Lyon. She gave much information on the troupe, stating that several performers had come from the French provinces, and analysed the repertoire by Rameau performed either privately or at the Teatro Ducale.

Two contributions provided unique insights into the economics of opera and gave us a glimpse of the potential of research in this little-explored field. Élizabeth Giuliani (Bibliothèque Nationale de France) investigated the archives of Bethelin de Neuville, in charge of the Parisian administration of the Académie Royale de Musique. Basing her work on a very detailed investigation of these rich materials, she compared the expenses of and the revenue from Rameau's operas from 1745 to 1756 and deduced the profits made by the Académie. She demonstrated that despite the increasing success of Rameau's first productions and revivals in the early 1750s, and despite the size of the revenue, the composer's operas were unprofitable. Laura Naudeix (Université de Rennes 2) used Les Indes galantes as a case study to demonstrate the influence of economics and production context on the overall shape of the work. She showed that Marie Sallé's return from England and, consequently, the need to introduce a ballet intended for her had modified the structure of the work and changed its genre from that of a tragédie en musique to a choreographic piece.

Seven papers were dedicated to the analysis of Rameau's works and illustrated a wide variety of working methods. Thomas Soury (CNRS) explored the dramatic features of three anonymous librettos written for Rameau's actes de ballet (Io, Nélée et Mirhis and Zéphyre), comparing these to the theoretical writings and librettos of Louis de Cahusac. He concluded from his investigation that Nélée et Mirhis and Zéphyre, at the least, might be attributed to that writer. Bertrand Porot (Université de Reims) discussed the cantata Les amants trahis (before 1721) in order to demonstrate that this ‘dialogic’ work is a kind of prototype for some scenes of the composer's future opéras comiques. He noticed particularly, in contrast to the cantatas of Jean-Baptiste Stuck, the rejection of da capo arias and of the repetition and splitting of lines. The da capo aria was the key point of the contribution by Herbert Schneider (Universität des Saarlandes). Basing his work on the analysis of more than a hundred such arias, he brought out Rameau's preference for the dal segno form but also the wide variety of types of internal organization. Lucy Robinson (Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama) discussed the connections between Rameau's Pièces de clavecin en concerts and those by Mondonville and Guillemain, but also the Nouveaux concerts by Telemann (1738). Rémy-Michel Trotier (Université Paris-Sorbonne) discussed the correlation between the harmonic organization of Rameau's works and all the components of staging. His statistical method shed light on some structural features which correlate specific keys with specific sets, as well as modulations with changes of the sets, operation of the stage machines and performers’ entrances and exits. Marcie Ray (Michigan State University) discussed ‘Violent Expressions of Love in Jean-Philippe Rameau's Cantatas’ from the perspective of gender studies. Comparing Rameau's operas with paintings and novels of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, she underlined the opportunity given to the female characters of Rameau's cantatas to refuse love and the positive assessment resulting from their attitudes. She concluded that such a ‘feminist’ trend, typical of the period, was promoted by Rameau's librettos. The contribution by Roger Savage (University of Edinburgh) linked analysis with the revival of Rameau's works. He analysed the status of the ‘emotional triangle’ in the dramaturgy of Rameau's tragédies en musique, actes de ballet and opera-ballet entrées, and proposed to rebuild an opera-ballet made up of a prologue – a pasticcio from four works by Rameau's contemporaries – and three entrées detached from various of other ballets by Rameau.

The place given to Rameau's works in our time was the central issue of several contributions. Lois Rosow (Ohio State University) discussed modern staging of Rameau's works in order to demonstrate that stage directors do not usually comply with two opposing principles of Rameau's dramaturgy concerning the relation between time and space: an act normally occurs in a single setting and in real time, while an entr’acte accompanies a change of setting and represents the passage of time. She analysed the consequences of such a conception for the reception of the works, and denounced the current inclination to consider the divertissement as lying outside the drama. In a lecture-recital Stephen Gutman (London) explored the problems and possible solutions to playing the Pièces de clavecin en concerts on solo keyboard. Two presentations focused on Denis Diderot's Le neveu de Rameau. Marian Hobson (Queen Mary University of London) and Pascal Duc (Conservatoire National de Musique de Paris) discussed the place of music in the novel and explained their perspectives on the new critical edition in which they have been involved, Denis Diderot's ‘Rameau's Nephew’: A Multi-Media Edition (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2014). Launching this publication, Rupert Gatti (University of Cambridge) showed how digital technologies have allowed for an expansion of both its scope and its accessibility. Patrick Florentin (Société Jean-Philippe Rameau) offered an exhaustive compilation of the 497 records that make up the discography of Rameau's works. The analysis of these records according to genre and work shows that harpsichord music, and particularly some favourites, have been more often recorded than most of Rameau's major achievements for the stage.

The staging of Rameau's works was discussed during two performance-practice presentations. Guillaume Jablonka and Robert Le Nuz (both Compagnie Divertimenty) proposed a choreographic restoration of the chaconne from Naïs based on a late manuscript of 1782 by the dancing master Auguste Ferrère, providing a fascinating look at choreographic practices on the eve of the nineteenth century. Rebecca Harris-Warrick (Cornell University) and Hubert Hazebroucq (Compagnie Les Corps Eloquents) offered a collaborative exploration of the kinds of gestures suitable in the acte de ballet Zéphire. They demonstrated the need for a precise analysis of the music and for a balance between abstract or more imitative gestures.

The influence of Rameau's music was the focus of two original contributions. Thomas Leconte (Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles) shed light on an unknown source of a requiem mass coming from the south of France and based on some borrowings from Castor et Pollux. He analysed the setting and proposed some hypotheses concerning the circumstances of the performance. James Arnold (University of London) discussed a reworking of Castor et Pollux by Pierre-Joseph Candeille in 1791, showing that the so-called disappearance of Rameau's music in French culture from the 1780s was not so complete after all.

A large number of contributions were devoted to the theoretical works of Rameau and their contribution to the history of ideas. Davitt Moroney (University of California Berkeley) discussed Rameau's two mécaniques des doigts (Pièces de clavecin, 1724, and Dissertation sur les différentes méthodes d’accompagnement, 1732). He underlined the parallels between Rameau's instructions for placing the hand or moving the fingers and the Mécanique des animaux by Charles Perrault or the anatomical drawings by Daniel Tauvry (1690, republished 1721). Thomas Christensen (University of Chicago) discussed the importance of sensibility in the Code de musique pratique (1760), based on Rameau's statement that his mécanique was intended even for the blind. He suggested that Rameau was influenced by the Lettre sur les aveugles (Letter on the Blind) of Diderot and by the physiological theories that were being developed by scientists such as Albrecht von Haller, Charles Bonnet and Théophile Bordeu. Michael O’Dea (Université de Lyon) explored the links between Rameau's theoretical thinking and that of Rousseau. He stated that despite Rousseau's extreme criticisms of Rameau's theory, he owed a great deal to Rameau's writings and was one of their most effective proponents.

Charles Dill (University of Wisconsin-Madison) investigated the ways in which Rameau and Descartes thought about the phenomenon of astonishment. According to Descartes, experiencing astonishment begins with a physical sensation before provoking analytical thinking. Rameau's concept of musical expression had been strongly influenced by Descartes's views, with astonishment being described as a physical phenomenon provoked by unexpected cadences, modulations or chords, and moving then to an intellectual level. Nathan Martin (Yale University) discussed the use of the règle de l’octave in Rameau's writings and put it in the context of the thoroughbass tradition and the polemic concerning accompaniment pedagogy (1729–1731). He argued that Rameau, despite his vitriolic attack on the methods of his predecessors, tended to play down the conflict between the règle de l’octave and his novel fundamental-bass theory.

Some related contributions discussed the new and fruitful topic of the dissemination of Rameau's theory in the rest of Europe. Ludwig Holtmeier (Hochschule für Musik Freiburg) placed Rameau's ideas in the context of eighteenth-century theoretical production as a whole. He compared Rameau's main views with those common in German and Italian traditions, according to terminology used and the repertoire referred to. He concluded that some elements of Rameau's theory had been incorporated into other traditions, regardless of their background and origin. Marc Ernesti (University of Sheffield) discussed the early music-theoretical reception of Rameau in German music media from the Neue Zeitungen von gelehrten Sachen (1723) to the Wiener Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (1813). He particularly underlined the fact that Rameau's writings had a limited readership and that his theoretical thought was essentially known through the medium of D’Alembert's Éléments de musique théorique et pratique suivant les principes de M. Rameau (1752). Walter Kreysig (University of Saskatchewan and Universität Wien) examined the influence of fundamental-bass theory on the string-quartet scoring of Leopold and Wolfgang Mozart. He demonstrated that they used Rameau's concept both as a compositional principle and as an educational tool.

The culmination of a series of scholarly events marking the Rameau anniversary year, this conference covered a wide range of topics and offered new insights particularly concerning the dissemination of the composer's works and thought, and his influence on European music. The harpsichord recital given by Davitt Moroney and the collaborative work of scholars and professional dancers, demonstrated in a pair of beautiful danced scenes, were also highlights of the conference. This gives hope for further developments in Rameau scholarship, particularly in the field of performance, which may include the major – but here little discussed – works of the composer.