Le Mozart Noir - Black Mozart: Chevalier Saint-Georges

Our February 2nd Concert celebrates the extraordinary accomplishments of Joseph Bologne de Saint-Georges (1745-1799), champion swordsman, French colonel, virtuoso violinist, director of Paris’s finest orchestra, and prolific composer. 

Born in the French colony of Guadeloupe to the plantation owner George Bologne de Saint-Georges and his African slave Nanon, Joseph Bologne de Saint-George faced a life of oppression and poverty. French law prohibited children of mixed parentage from inheriting anything from their parents, and racial tensions in the colonies prevented free people of African descent from settling in towns and cities. Colonial lawyer Hilliard d’Auberteuil expressed the sentiments of the time when he wrote in 1776, “Policy and security demand that we crush the race of the blacks with such contempt, that whoever descends from it even to the sixth generation should be marked by an indelible stain.” Though young Joseph held an uncommonly privileged position as his father’s cherished only son, his childhood was tumultuous, including a flight to France at the age of 2, when his father was unjustly accused of murder. Eventually, despairing of the possibility of raising his family in peace and security in the Caribbean, George Bologne permanently moved his household to France.

Seizing the excuse of chaperoning his nieces to boarding school, on August 12, 1753 George Bologne, his two nieces, his son Joseph, and his valet set sail for Paris on Le Bien Aimé. Nanon joined them two years later, and they settled into a spacious Parisian apartment together. Duplicitous French law, while permitting slavery in the colonies, forbade it in France, and permitted fathers of mixed-race children to enroll them in French schools. Provided they could acquire appropriate social graces, such children might even find a place in Parisian high society alongside their fathers. Joseph excelled. He mastered swordsmanship, dancing, and musicianship, those ennobling physical disciplines that were believed to demonstrate an orderly and cultivated mind. He caught the attention of the influential Duke d’Orléans, who also championed nine-year-old Mozart when he visited Paris in 1766. Though no historical evidence survives, it is hard to believe that the duke failed to introduce the two prodigies. Perhaps Saint-Georges was even in the audience for a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony in F Major, KV. Anh. 223, which a manuscript in Leopold Mozart’s hand dates to 1765. The symphony strongly resembles the work of Johann Christian Bach, who young Amadeus had met and admired while on tour in London.

Joseph Bologne de Saint-Georges bolstered his position in Parisian high society when, at the age of 19, he became a Gendarme de la Garde du Roi and received the title of chevalier. Joseph’s peer Antoine Texier de la Boëssiere, the son of his fencing instructor, remembered, “No one had ever deployed more grace, more assurance in the obligatory exercises. His development was superb; his hand held at the highest possible elevation… made him the master of his adversary’s weak point; his left foot, solidly planted, never moved out of position and his right leg remained perpendicular at all times, this afforded him the means to strike with lightning speed.” The dexterity evident in his fencing also characterized his violin playing. The compositions of the Chevalier de Saint-Georges make extensive use of the highest hand positions on the neck of the violin, and the newly invented Tourte bow, longer with the characteristic slight curve and balanced tip and frog, allowed him to achieve bold, détaché strokes and vigorous arpeggiated figuration in fast movements, and long, lyrical lines in slow movements. His virtuosity was so renowned that the early nineteenth-century biographer and music critic François- Joseph Fétis asserted (probably incorrectly) that Saint-Georges must have studied with Jean-Marie Leclair, considered France’s greatest violinist and the founder of the French violin school. Like Saint George’s concerti, Leclair’s Concerto for Violin and Strings in Bb Major, Op. 10/1 demands unprecedented virtuosity from the violinist. Nevertheless, Leclair was most praised for the sweetness he coaxed from his violin. One audience member who heard him perform with fellow Corelli student, Pietro Lo- catelli, wrote, “Once he and Leclair were at the court of Kassel at the same time, prompting the court jester to say that both of them ran like rabbits up and down the violin, the one playing like an angel, the other like a devil. The first (Leclair) with his practiced left hand and through his neat and lovely tone knew how to steal hearts, while the second (Locatelli) brought forth great difficulties and mainly sought to astound the listener with his scratchy playing.”

In 1768, the periodical of Parisian elegant society and courtly life, the Mercure de France (1768), published this word portrait of Saint-Georges. Not surprisingly, a few years later in 1772, he made his solo debut with the Concert des Amateurs, an auditioned orchestra of the best noble and professional musicians in Paris. By 1773, he had become their musical director. It was during this time that he composed and published the two concertos that you will hear on this evening’s programme. When the Amateurs was disbanded in 1781 on account of severe financial losses incurred by its members during the American War of Independence, Saint-Georges appealed to his friend the Duke d’Orléans, who reestablished the group as the Concert de la Loge Olympique, part of the exclusive freemason club to which many members of the nobility and the best professional musicians belonged. At the request of the Loge’s grand-master, Saint-Georges commissioned Haydn’s Paris Symphonies, including the Symphony No. 85 in Bb Major nicknamed “La Reine”, because it was a favorite of Marie-Antoinette. Haydn received a staggering 25 louis d’or per symphony from the Loge. In return, he produced his grandest works to date. Saint-George’s orchestra was more than double the size of the orchestra that Haydn led in Esterhaza, having 65 members: 14 first violins, 14 second violins, 7 violas, 10 cellos, 7 contrabasses, 4 horns, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassons, 2 clarinets, 2 trumpets, and timpani.

Saint-Georges also led in the fight for political equality. He worked with the young Duke d’Orléans, nicknamed Philippe-Egalité, in the abolitionist Société des Amis des Noirs. During the Revolution, he joined the National Guard and in 1792 became the colonel of the Légion des Américains et du Midi, Europe’s first regiment comprised of citizens of color, which included Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, father of the novelist Alexandre Dumas. On account of his close connections with France’s nobility, he was jailed for 18 months during Robespierre’s Reign of Terror, but in 1795, succeeded in reestablishing a masonic orchestra at the Cercle de l’Harmonie. The Mercure reported that this orchestra “left nothing to be desired as to the choice of works or the superiority of their execution.” —Christina Hutten

Thursday, February 2nd, 7:30pm - Kaul Auditorium, Reed College

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