Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The great romantic Jean-Jacques Rousseau changed a great many role throughout his life: a footman in a rich house, a music teacher, the secretary of the French envoy in Hungary Count Montague, and a thinker, a man of letters, a botanist, and a composer.
King Louis XVI liked to hum his operetta tunes, which did not persuade Jean-Jacques to wish to be introduced before the royal face.
He believed in the universal equality, denounced civilization and culture, lauded love and sincerity in sentimental novels, tried to work out models for democratic societies, separate elements of which are still used in some contries, e.g., in Switzerland.
His contemporaries used to reproach him for the superficial approach to the multiple fields of his activity, to music in particular. An operetta by him, staged at the royal theatre, was rather popular, though nowadays Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s music is almost completely forgotten.