Music and Monarchy: Jean-Baptiste Lully, Absolutism, and the Origins of French National Opera

This paper examines Jean-Baptiste Lully's role as court composer to Louis XIV, considering both his music's function as an instrument of royal absolutism and its role in founding a distinct French national opera style. As Louis XIV sought to consolidate his authority through the arts, Lully rose from an Italian-born immigrant to become the dominant figure in French court music, eventually gaining a royal monopoly over French opera. Historians have long debated whether Lully should be understood primarily as an agent of absolutist propaganda or as the architect of France's national musical identity, generally treating the two as competing interpretations. This paper finds that Lully's service to absolutism and his founding of a national musical tradition were mutually reinforcing rather than opposed, with his royal patronage providing the institutional and stylistic foundation for a French operatic style that outlasted the regime that produced it. The paper will trace Lully's rise under royal patronage, examine how his operas fused propaganda with French musical conventions, and consider his posthumous reception through the eighteenth-century Querelle des Bouffons.