







































Fig. 1. Louis XIV dans Le Ballet de la nuit (Art by Henri 
de Gissey, 1653. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.)

Aisthesis      Volume 10,  201933

Agenda-Driven Music in the Court of Louis XIV

by Kacie Brown

 Louis XIV’s reign was marked by significant 
contributions to the arts, a legacy that is evident in 
his lavish palace at Versailles. Music was ubiquitous 
in his court; he employed many musicians and held 
grand musical events including ballets, operas, 
and instrumental ensembles, and each of these 
genres developed significantly during his reign.1 
Composer Jean-Baptiste Lully was instrumental in 
the propagation of music in Louis XIV’s court. In 
his biography of Lully, Ralph Scott describes the 
transformations Lully heralded under Louis XIV’s 
jurisdiction, including an establishment of strict 
performance practices and a new French national 
opera style.2 In this paper, I argue that Louis XIV’s 
extravagant efforts to promote and centralize the arts 
in his kingdom were almost exclusively politically 
motivated and that this motivation to project his 
absolute power is clearly seen in ballet and opera, 
particularly  Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Ballet de Flore 
and Phaëton. In these works, Lully asserts the king’s 
power through his use of the French overture style, 
overtly laudatory librettos, and text expression 
symbolic of Louis XIV’s superiority. 
 Louis XIV’s reign began when he was just four 
years old.  His mother served as his regent, assisted 
by Italian Cardinal Mazarin, who was responsible for 
introducing the new genre of opera to France.33 The 
music of Louis XIV’s court was clearly influenced and 
informed, at least initially, by Italian music, especially 
given Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Italian background.
 Louis XIV was an avid dancer himself, according 
to Parmenia Migel, who describes his appearances 
in ballets at his own court from ages 12 through 31.4 

1Julie Anne Sadie, “Louis XIV, King of France,” Grove 
Music Online, accessed October 21, 2018, http://www.
oxfordmusiconline.com. 
2 Ralph Scott, Jean-Baptiste Lully (London: Peter Owen, 
1973), 67. 
3 Terence D. Wright, “Lully and Quinault: Musico-Dra-
matic Synthesis in the ‘Tragedies en Musique.’” (PhD 
diss,. University of Kansas, 1983), 12. 
4 Parmenia Migel, The Ballerinas: From the Court of Louis 
XIV to Pavlova (New York: The Macmillan Company, 
1972), 4. 

These early appearances likely provided a unique 
musical background for Louis XIV that helped shape 
his view of music and dance as a vessel for displaying 
his power. Julie Anne Sadie suggests that Louis XIV’s 
nickname, the “Sun King,” came from his frequent 
appearances as Apollo, the “god of sun and music.”5  
 This image of Louis XIV’s costume for an 
appearance as Apollo (see Fig. 1) reveals how 
elaborate his costumes were, undoubtedly 

5 Julie Anne Sadie, “Louis XIV, King of France,” Grove 
Music Online, accessed October 20, 2018, http://www.
oxfordmusiconline.com. 



Agenda-Driven Music in the Court of Louis XIV

Aisthesis      Volume 10,  201934

accentuating the “Sun King” and making it appear as 
if he himself was the center around which everything 
else orbited. Fiona Garlick describes the expectation 
that, when involved in dances, nobles, especially the 
king, “refrain from excessive display of virtuosity, 
demonstrating only those skills which would pass for 
natural graces.”6 This suggests that his appearances 
themselves, adhering to elite decorum, were a display 
of power. 
 Louis XIV’s reign during the mid-17th Century 
was marked by a great level of concern for the 
status of the monarchy; in her book The Triumph 
of Pleasure: Louis XIV and the Politics of Spectacle, 
Georgia Cowart describes the English and French 
monarchical traditions leading up to Louis XIV’s 
reign that likened monarchs to Jesus, suggesting 
that they had both divine power and human 
desires.7 Similarly, Cowart compares the relationship 
between Louis XIV and the music of his court to 
the relationship between God himself and sacred 
music.8 This illustrates the greatly elevated status of 
the music of his royal court. Nobles at the time were 
also highly influenced by the ideas of Neoplatonism, 
specifically the idea of “man drawing closer into 
communion with the harmony of the universe.”9 
Musical productions in the royal court adhered to 
these principals, with many of the operas and ballets 
depicting protagonists who were almost always 
“rewarded for their virtue.”10 Cowart also describes 
how court ballets portrayed Louis XIV’s kingdom 
in a utopian light with perpetual social concord.11 
These portrayals of ideal, virtuous, French heroes 
and perfect societal harmony were likely directed 
towards citizens of France as a kind of indoctrinating 
reminder of the expectations placed upon them, but 

7 Fiona Garlick, “Dances to Evoke the King: The Majestic 
Genre Chez Louis XIV,” The Journal of the Society for 
Dance Research 15, no. 2 (Winter 1997): 24.
8 Georgia Cowart, The Triumph of Pleasure: Louis XIV 
and the Politics of Spectacle (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago, 2008), xix. 
9 Ibid.
9 Keith Pratt, “Art in the Service of Absolutism: Music 
in the Courts of Louis XIV and the Kangxi Emperor,” 
Seventeenth Century 7 no. 1 (June 1992): 89. 
10 Wright, Lully and Quinault, 75.
11 Georgia Cowart, Triumph of Pleasure, 6.

also to foreign nobles visiting the court, as a boastful 
warning of France’s ideological might and prestige.  
 In describing the ideology of French nobles at 
the time, Georgia Cowart notes that the ability to 
enjoy and produce entertainment was “one of the 
highest signifiers of power.”12 Furthermore, in his 
article about the centralization of music in Louis 
XIV’s court, Robert Isherwood asserts that  Louis 
XIV’s primary uses for his authority over the arts 
were to convey his power, preserve an account of 
his reign for future generations, and to establish 
France’s superiority in the arts so that they would not 
have any need to be influenced by the arts in other 
nations.13 He points specifically to the music in Louis 
XIV’s court serving as a distraction to otherwise 
rebellious nobles at Versailles and advancing the 
king’s portrayal as an absolute monarch.14 According 
to Donald Chae, Louis XIV used music as a kind 
of reward system for his subordinate nobles, 
“carefully [doling] out favors and [settling] debts in 
selecting which courtiers could participate in court 
entertainments.”15 Chae suggests that these favors 
of musical participation carried more weight than 
simple praise for good etiquette, as they were “less 
ephemeral than the status that courtiers might build 
up (or lose) through etiquette.”16 Music was clearly 
highly influential in the politics of French nobility, 
and Louis XIV masterfully realized its potential in 
advancing his nationalistic and absolutist agenda 
from his inner circles to the general population of 
his kingdom.
 At the beginning of his reign, Louis XIV’s power 
was threatened by the Fronde, a series of civil wars in 
France from 1648-1653. After the Fronde, however, 
the French no longer needed a valor-based social 
hierarchy, and, as Georgia Cowart explains, “the 

12 Ibid, xvi.
13 Robert Isherwood, “The Centralization of Music in 
the Reign of Louis XIV,” French Historical Studies 6, no. 2 
(Autumn 1969): 156.
14 Ibid, 157. 
15 Donald B Chae, “Music, Festival, and Power in Louis 
XIV’s France: Court Divertissements and the Musical 
Construction of Sovereign Authority and Noble Identity, 
(1661-1674)” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2003), 
158, accessed September 24, 2018, Proquest Dissertations 
and Theses. 
16 Ibid. 



Agenda-Driven Music in the Court of Louis XIV

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pursuit of pleasure, always a component of French 
court life, became its defining characteristic.”17 Isaac 
de Benserade, the poet for many of the ballets in Louis 
XIV’s court, echoed this shift in his poetry; often 
drawing on Greek and Roman mythology, he began 
to focus on the goddess Venus with ideals centered 
around love rather than Athena, the goddess of war.18 
This change in ideological focus characterizes much 
of the music throughout the remainder of Louis 
XIV’s reign, evident in many of the themes of Jean-
Baptiste Lully’s works, including Ballet de Flore and 
Le triomphe de l’amour.
 Under Louis XIV’s authority, Jean-Baptiste Lully 
was a chief influence in spreading and revolutionizing 
the court’s agenda-driven music to make it more 
effective. He was a native Italian who entered Louis 
XIV’s service in 1653 as a dancer, musician, and 
composer.19 In 1661, the king appointed Lully to 
the elite position of surintendant de la musique de 
la chambre du roi.20 According to Ralph Scott, Lully 
naturally retained some of his Italian influences, 
“but he put life into French music, which was then 
almost moribund, and he is regarded as [French] 
rather than an Italian living in France.”21 He carefully 
primed himself to win the king’s sympathy by first 
demonstrating his dedication to Louis XIV and his 
kingdom of France by initiating a rule restricting 
Royal orchestras to only French citizens.22 Lully was 
also in a precarious position as an Italian composer 
in France, because listeners were not enamored 
with Italian opera, but he was quick to become 
acquainted with the tastes of his audience, and, 
according to Ralph Scott, appealed to popular likings 
with simple songs and dances, rather than overly 
virtuosic recitatives and dramatic stage effects.23 The 
king viewed Lully very favorably and rewarded his 
success by granting him his Privilege to establish the 
Royal Academy of Music, a contract whose terms 

17 Cowart, Triumph of Pleasure, 12. 
18 Ibid, 15. 
19 Jérôme De la Gorce, “Lully, Jean-Baptiste,” Grove 
Music Online, accessed September 10, 2018, http://www.
oxfordmusiconline.com.
20 Ibid.
21 Scott, Lully, 9.
22 Ibid, 59.
23 Ibid, 68.

included virtual “control over all musicians in the 
country, because it provided that no public concert 
could be given without his authority, no public plays 
which were musically supported by more than two 
musicians could be put on without payment of a 
royalty to him, and no one in the kingdom could sing 
in public without his license.”24 This extraordinary 
license afforded to Lully demonstrates the king’s trust 
that Lully would expertly centralize music in France. 
As a result of this promotion, Lully had a kind of 
absolute power over music and dance similar in 
extent to Louis XIV’s power over France as a whole. 
Lully could now groom French musical practices to 
disseminate only the king’s agenda, easily denying 
any performances that did not fit his nationalistic 
aesthetic. 
 In his position as surintendant de la musique de 
la chambre du roi, Lully also had lasting impacts on 
rehearsal techniques. Shortly after his promotion, 
according to Scott, he “forbade any embellishment 
which was not in his score.”25 He also established a 
new ensemble called the Petits Violons, for which 
he “enlisted twenty young men, preferring a lack of 
experience to ingrained bad habits.”26 His rehearsals 
were closed, and he would not allow musicians 
to divulge any details of his works until their 
performance.27 He also expected a well behaved 
audience. Audience behavior was unruly before, but 
after Lully’s ascension to musical power, they “eagerly 
awaited…the perfectly drilled premier coup d’archet, 
the first stroke of the bow, which was internationally 
famous.”28 Lully clearly sought careful musical 
standardization, and this unification likely helped 
his music more effectively project Louis XIV’s power. 
Today’s music shows remnants of many of Lully’s 
developments, particularly in the highly uniform 
military ensembles, which still serve many of the 
same nationalistic purposes as Lully’s ensembles did. 
According to Parmenia Migel, dance was not free 
from Lully’s influence, either, as “he choreographed 
most of the court ballets, and he is also credited 
with defining the five basic positions of the feet 

24 Ibid, 60-61.
25 Ibid, 86.
26 Ibid, 37.
27 Ibid, 68.
28 Ibid, 97. 



Agenda-Driven Music in the Court of Louis XIV

Aisthesis      Volume 10,  201936

which are the foundation of all ballet technique.”29 
She also describes his implementation of consistent 
rehearsals and inclusion of female dancers.30 Ballet 
would look much different today without Lully’s 
standardization of the positions of the feet, which is 
still the foundation of modern ballet dancing. Lully’s 
changes to both music and dance helped serve his 
primary efforts to glorify the king, but they also 
allowed for Louis XIV’s subtle influence on music to 
continue for centuries after his death. 
 Lully’s Ballet de Flore is a prime example of Lully’s 
promotion of the king’s power. In this ballet, Louis 
XIV himself was cast as the sun, clearly symbolizing 
his omnipotence and virtuous power.31 The ballet 
begins with an overture characteristic of Lully’s 
style with stately dotted rhythms throughout.32 
According to Fiona Garlick, the dotted rhythms that 
are prevalent in entrées and overtures are intended 
to evoke the king’s gait as he enters a room.33 She also 
claims that Lully is credited with the invention of the 
French overture.34 This demonstrates the importance 
of Lully’s delicately planned portrayal of Louis XIV; 
he created a new, lasting, genre for the sole purpose 
of glorifying the king. Louis XIV obviously was not 
present at all performances of his court-sponsored 
works, and at performances he did not attend, the 
introductory overtures likely evoked the idea that he 
was an all-powerful, ever-present entity similar to 
God. Lully keeps his structure very straightforward, 
with many refrains, rhyming couplets, and tuneful 
melodies that are metrically simple with few 
embellishments. As with his standardization of 
musical practice in the court, Lully’s simple music 
likely left little room for questions about the 
intended message, conveying his agenda with little 
effort. The ballet also includes an uncharacteristic 
amount of vocal music, which Cowart describes as 
another “avenue for monarchical propaganda.”35  The 

29 Migel, Ballerinas, 6.
30 Ibid.
31 Cowart, Triumph of Pleasure, 80. 
32 Jean-Baptiste Lully, Ballet de Flore, ed. André Danican 
Philidor, (Versailles: André Danican Philidor, 1690). 
Libretto translated by the author. 
33 Garlick, Dances, 13.
34 Ibid, 1.
35 Cowart, Triumph of Pleasure, 81.

texts that pervade the ballet, which would normally 
be centered around instrumental music and dance, 
provide yet another outlet for belligerent assertions 
of the king’s power and demonstrate Lully’s use of all 
available resources to serve his royal purpose, which 
he carried out even by breaking conventions. Lully’s 
Ballet de Flore unambiguously praises the king’s 
virtuous power within the first two sections. The 
first section describes a cold winter “surrounded by 
ice cubes of snow and frost,” with “trees stripped of 
adornment.” Then, an entrée follows, introduced by a 
prologue about the sun coming and “bringing peace 
to everyone.” The entrée employs dotted rhythms 
like those of the overture, and these stately rhythms 
clearly equate the sun to Louis XIV. The symbolism is 
overt; Louis XIV, like the sun, which already served 
as his nickname, brings peace and harmony, and 
the earth would be “stripped of adornment” in his 
absence.36 The entrée also includes a more complex 
harmonic texture with winds and string instruments 
and fewer dissonances, rather than the introduction 
with simple continuo and voices. This places even 
more emphasis on the entrée, again making Louis 
XIV’s character the focal point. Finally, the ballet 
ends with an enormous ensemble, reminiscent of the 
grandeur of Versailles, with many strings, woodwind, 
and brass instruments. 
 Lully, aided by his librettist Philippe Quinault, 
was also responsible for establishing the French 
opera tradition.37 According to Ralph Scott, Lully 
wanted to depart from the lighthearted character 
of French music and dance to write a tragedy, as he 
was “convinced…that the tragedy was particularly 
suited to the French language and spirit.”38 In his 
dissertation on their synthesis of music and drama, 
Terence Wright describes how Lully and Quinault 
rooted their new national opera in the already well-
established French literary tragedy.39 These tragedies 
naturally coincided with their efforts to portray the 
king’s power, as “the tragic poet…[maintained] a 
constant, elevated tone of grandeur and gravity.”40 As 
Wright remarks, Lully and Quinault combined the 

36 Wright, Lully and Quinault, 12.
37 Scott, Lully, 67.
38 Wright, Lully and Quinault, 68.
39 Ibid, 70.
40 Ibid, 86. 



Agenda-Driven Music in the Court of Louis XIV

Aisthesis      Volume 10,  201937

leading forms of performing art in France, including 
dramatic theater, ballet, music, and “spectacle” into 
a unique and stunning genre.41 Lully and Quinault’s 
French national operas were perfectly suited for 
their role in Louis XIV’s court—they used what they 
knew of Italian opera and modified it to appeal to the 
tastes of their French audiences, thereby producing 
extravagant spectacles fit for the glorification of one 
of the most extravagant kings. 
 Finally, Lully’s opera, Phaëton, was explicitly 
created in order to further stratify the eminent Louis 
XIV from all others. Nicknamed “the opera of the 
people,” it begins with prologue unrelated to the plot 
that asserts that the king “makes, by his virtue, the 
happiness of the Earth.”42 This description of Louis 
XIV as a heroic peacemaker resolves the tension 
between the “demands of pleasure and power” in his 
court, as Cowart describes, proclaiming the king’s 
absolute rule and divine power to spread pleasure 
from the work’s opening lines.43 The opera follows 
the demise of Phaëton, son of the Sun, whose 
“desires go farther than human power.” Again, 
this opera is a metaphor, demonstrating the king’s 
unsurpassable superiority and dissuading those who 
may be insubordinate. The Sun is portrayed as wise 
and virtuous, and his melodies are relatively tonally 
stable compared to those of his son, Phaëton, who is 
portrayed as naïve and impulsive. This is particularly 
clear in Act IV, Scene II, where the Sun attempts 
to quell his son’s insatiable desire for immortal 
power. The Sun stays centered around G, while 
Phaëton’s line wanders to D and Bb and includes 
more dissonances. The exaggerated characterization 
between the Sun and Phaëton further suggests the 
political motivation behind the work; it was clearly 
a success given its popularity among the French 
people. 
 Louis XIV was an extravagant monarch with 
immense power, and he conferred his power to all 
aspects of French society, particularly music. As 
seen in Lully’s reign as the court’s primary composer 
and his Ballet de Flore and Phaëton in particular, 
all courtly entertainment was primarily created to 

41 De La Gorce, Lully.
42 Jean-Baptiste Lully, Phaëton, ed. Théodore Michaelis, 
(New York: Broude Brothers Limited, 1971). Libretto 
translated by the author.
43 Cowart, Triumph of Pleasure, 126. 

glorify the king and his values. Remarkably, Louis 
XIV’s impact on music, heralded by Jean-Baptiste 
Lully, is still evident in musical practice four centuries 
later. In this sense, he seems to have truly achieved, if 
not greatly surpassed, his goal of projecting the glory 
of his kingdom through the arts. 
 
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Louis XIV’s France: Court divertissements and 
the musical construction of sovereign authority 
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Cowart, Georgia. The Triumph of Pleasure: Louis XIV 
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“Costume design for Louis XIV who danced as 
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De la Gorce, Jérôme. “Lully, Jean-Baptiste.” Grove 
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wiki/File:Ballet_de_la_nuit_1653.jpg. 

Garlick, Fiona. “Dances to Evoke the King: The 
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Harris-Warrick, Rebecca. “Magnificence in Motion: 
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Agenda-Driven Music in the Court of Louis XIV

Aisthesis      Volume 10,  201938

Lully, Jean-Baptiste. Ballet de Flore. Edited by 
André Danican Philidor. Versailles: André 
Danican Philidor, 1690.

Lully, Jean-Baptiste. Phaëton. Edited by Théodore 
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Pratt, Keith. “Art in the Service of Absolutism: Music 
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