Robert de Visée

Like many composers from the Baroque period, Robert de Visée was better referred to as a performer than being a composer. While he performed a number of musical instruments that included the theorbo, lute, and viola da gamba, it had been your guitar with which he’s most closely discovered and which he seems to have exhibited his ideal skill. A musician in the French Courtroom of Louis XIV, Visée constructed mostly for your guitar, theorbo, and lute, and it is arguably the main French author of Baroque electric guitar music. Robert de Visée was created in France around 1655. Small is well known about his early years, nonetheless it is probable he originated from a well-to-do family members who supplied him excellent instructions in music. At around age 25 he was used on being a Courtroom musician with the Ruler. In 1682 Visée’s 1st book of acoustic guitar works was released in Paris; the next adopted in 1686. Collectively the two quantities included 12 suites, all of them comprising sequences of dances well-known in Baroque suites of your day, such as for example courante, allemande, minuet, and bourrée. By enough time that 1686 quantity made an appearance Visée experienced become among the King’s preferred musicians, performing frequently for the monarch in the personal royal chambers. Visée would also become acknowledged for his musicianship in Versailles for this period. While he kept no official Courtroom post until 1709, the entire year he was appointed royal chamber vocalist, Visée made an appearance regularly in Courtroom concerts from 1694 to 1705. In them he used the main French music artists of your day, including harpsichordist Jean-Baptiste Buterne and viola da gamba participant Antoine Forqueray. Visée also started instructing the ruler on acoustic guitar in 1695, but would just be recognized because of this responsibility by royal visit in 1719. He officially kept the post of King’s Instructor for only 2 yrs, ceding it in 1721 to his child Francois, who was simply also a talented musician. A publication of Visée’s functions for theorbo and lute was released in Paris in 1716, and another level of his compositions made an appearance there in 1732. Numerous acoustic guitar pieces were released in other areas of European countries in anthologies in the first 1730s. Visée seems to have continued to be energetic up to enough time of his loss of life, which happened sometime in 1732-1733.