This book discusses the influence rhetoric had on Rameau’s solo vocal cantatas and his treatise of 1722 and how the bond between rhetoric and music in France occurred. The effect that Cartesian methodology and the desire to add clarity and reason to rhetoric had on music is also studied. The French cantata is traced with reference to musical, poetic, social, and political ramifications. The book concludes that Rameau is at the same time revolutionary and conservative.