: Virtuoso of the sword and the bow #IndiaNEWS #Buzz Luis Dias The gaping wound of racial prejudice in the US has been reopened by the murder of George Floyd by its police. The protests have had

Virtuoso of the sword and the bow #IndiaNEWS #Buzz
Luis Dias

The gaping wound of racial prejudice in the US has been reopened by the murder of George Floyd by its police. The protests have had a domino effect on attitudes across the spectrum, across the world. In the classical music world, it has again highlighted its shameful neglect of ‘minority’ (ie non-white) composers.

I stumbled upon the music of Joseph Bologne (sometimes misspelled as Boulogne), Le Chevalier de Sait-Georges (1745-1799) by accident in the Noughties in London, scouring through ‘bargain buys’ of classical music CDs on the Naxos label, which often had high-quality recordings of lesser-known composers and performers at a fraction of the price of competitive labels like Deutsche Grammophon, Hyperion, Decca, etc. He caught my attention because the CD featured his violin concertos. And he was black, and I’d never heard of him before!

His life story reads like a Hollywood blockbuster. He was the son of a 17-year old African slave Nanon (Anne Danneveau) impregnated by her master, George de Bologne; a plantation owner in the French colony of Guadaloupe; an expert athlete, the “greatest fencer in all of France???, a boxer runner, an ice-skater, the “best marksman in Europe???. He was one of the first black Freemasons in France. He led a legion of over a thousand Black troops (nicknamed the Legion Saint-Georges) to defend the new Republic after the French Revolution. His subordinate lieutenant colonel was Alexandre Dumas père, father of the famous writer. (It is believed that Porthos from the ‘Three Musketeers’ was based on Dumaspère, and Aramis on Saint-Georges. ) However, Saint-Georges was then prosecuted during Robespierre’s Reign of Terror, spent a year in prison but had his life spared (only because Robespierre himself got guillotined first!), although stripped of all his titles, dying at 54.

But now to his music: He was fêted as “one of the best violinists in France???, and commissioned works from the greatest composers (he commissioned and conducted the premières of Haydn’s six ‘Paris’ symphonies; Antonio Lolli, François Gossec, and others dedicated music to him). He started orchestras everywhere he went in his turbulent, peripatetic yet short lifespan. He was a successful operatic composer in addition to writing symphonies, overtures, concertos, sinfonias concertante, ballets, string quartets, and vocal repertoire. He lived in the same building as Mozart in the latter’s Paris years, and it is impossible they couldn’t have known of each other. Indeed, noted virtuoso violinist, former member of the New York Philharmonic, musicologist, author, teacher, and Holocaust survivor Gabriel Banat in his 2006 book ‘The Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Virtuoso of the Sword and the Bow’ furnishes compelling evidence that Saint-Georges strongly influenced Mozart’s own compositions.