Rousseau, Jean-Jacques

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (28 June 1712, Geneva; 2 July 1778, Ermenonville), composer and writer, had evinced an early interest in music with his original system of musical notation. He had begun to write his first opera entitled Les Muses galantes before his departure from Paris for Venice in 1743, and the following year he had accepted the duke de Richelieu’s commission to review the text of an opera upon which Rameau and Voltaire had collaborated. Yet the author of The Social Contract would…