Jean-Féry Rebel

Jean-Féry Rebel (1666–1747) was a French Baroque composer and violinist, a child prodigy spotted and taught by Jean-Baptiste Lully himself. He spent his career at the centre of French royal music, joining the king’s famous string band, the Vingt-quatre Violons du Roi, and eventually becoming Chamber Composer to the King. Though much of his output consists of elegant violin sonatas and dance music, he is remembered above all for one astonishing piece: the prologue ‘Le Chaos’ to his late ballet Les Élémens, in which he anticipated the harmonic experiments of the twentieth century by nearly two hundred years.