Despite having worked in music libraries for quite a few years, it still seems that rarely a week goes by in which I don’t come across a composer I’ve never heard of before. Recently, that composer was Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, who caught my eye not least because of having to check his unusually long name was catalogued properly (if anyone’s interested, this turned out to be: “$a Saint-Georges, Joseph Bologne, $c chevalier de, $d 1745-1799.”). However, in the course of trying to figure out the various parts of his name, I discovered his fascinating life story. Something of the archetypal romantic hero, being both exceptionally gifted and somewhat of an outsider due to his African ancestry, he was well-known in his time as a swordsman, violin virtuoso and composer.
It is a biography that so clearly lends itself to literary treatment that it has captured the imagination of writers since the 19th century, occasionally making it a little difficult to disentangle fact from fiction (which, incidentally, further complicates the spelling of his name.)
Born in 1745, he was the son of a Guadeloupe planter, George Bologne, and his African slave Nanon. Upon being unjustly accused of murder, his father fled with his young family to Paris, eventually settling them there permanently. At 13, he enrolled his son as a pupil of master of arms La Boëssière, where he especially excelled in fencing. When still a student he beat Alexandre Picard, a fencing-master of Rouen, who had publicly mocked him, and on graduating at 19 he was made a Gendarme de la Garde du Roi and given the title chevalier. The young chevalier soon became the darling of fashionable society and contemporary accounts all speak of his various dalliances. In 1766 the Italian fencer Giuseppe Faldoni came to Paris to challenge Saint-Georges, and although Faldoni won, he proclaimed Saint-Georges the finest swordsman in Europe.
Saint-Georges’ early musical training remains shrouded in mystery. However, works dedicated to him by Gossec and Lolli after 1764 suggest that Gossec was his composition teacher and that Lolli taught him violin. In 1769 he became a member of Gossec’s new orchestra, the Concert des Amateurs, at the Hôtel de Soubise, and was soon named its leader.
It was with the Amateurs in 1772 that Saint-Georges made his début as a solo violinist, performing his first two violin concertos op.2 to critical acclaim. The scores of his concertos reveal him to have been a prodigious virtuoso. The solo parts use the very highest positions frequently, as well as making full use of effects made possible by the newly-invented Tourte bow, with bold, détaché strokes, and intricate batteries and bariolage.
However, his concertos are not merely virtuosic showpieces, as their highly expressive, songful slow movements display Saint-Georges’ considerable lyrical gifts. In fact, his friend the actress Louise Fusil wrote that ‘the expressivity of his performance was his principal merit’. When Gossec became a director of the Concert Spirituel in 1773, Saint-Georges was appointed musical director of the Amateurs, which rapidly became one of the best orchestras in Europe.
It was between 1773 and 1779 that Saint-Georges published most of his instrumental music, including a dozen violin concertos, two sets of string quartets (some of the first in Paris), and at least 10 symphonies concertantes, becoming a chief exponent of that new Parisian genre. By the standards of the times, he wasn’t an especially prolific composer, but perhaps that isn’t too surprising given his dual career as both athlete and artist.
In 1777 he became affiliated with the private theatres and concets of Mme de Montesson, who was secretly married to the Duke of Orléans. Acknowledging Saint-Georges’ other talents, the Duke also put him in charge of his hunting retinue at his seat in La Raincy. It was in 1781 that Saint-Georges also founded the Concert de la Loge Olympique, the orchestra for whom Count d’Ogny commissioned Haydn to compose his set of six ‘Pairs symphonies. However, when the Duke died in 1785, Saint-Georges lost his position in his household forcing him to seek his livelihood elsewhere.
In 1787 he went to London, where he gave exhibition fencing matches, including one at Carlton House on the 9 April 1787 in the presence of the Prince of Wales, members of the nobility and fencing aficionados. A painting by Robineau records the event, showing Saint-Georges fighting the enigmatic transvestite ‘La Chevalière’ d’Eon (another person with a colourful biography – The Chevalier d’Éon was a decorated soldier, spy, diplomat, and master fencer who lived the first half of their life as a man, and the second as a woman, and received a certain amount of notoriety for this reason.)
He also joined the National Guard and in 1792, wanting to play a more active part in the Revolution, he formed a corps of light troops known as the Légion Nationale du Midi, which comprised ‘citizens of colour’. Saint-Georges was accused of misconduct but managed to clear his name, going on to help save Lille from a counter-revolutionary plot by General Dumouriez. However, in November 1793 he became a victim of the Reign of Terror and spent 18 months in a military prison. Freed after the fall of Robespierre, colonel Saint-Georges fought a long and unsuccessful battle to regain his regiment, ultimately ending with an order that forbade him from living near his former comrades.
In 1795 Saint-Georges sailed with Lamothe to Saint Domingue, which was in the grip of a slave revolt. Having been given up for dead, they returned to Paris two years later. Saint-Georges went on to briefly direct another orchestra at the masonic Cercle de l’Harmonie, based in the former residence of the Orleans family. He died in Paris in June 1799 of an ‘ulcerated bladder’.
And so concludes my brief blogular journey into the life of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. A good reminder, if ever one was needed, that the history of classical music is populated by a seemingly limitless parade of fascinating personalities, and so it’s well-worth investigating any new ones that catch the eye – all in the name of accurate cataloguing, of course.
The newly acquired scores of his music can be found in the Pendlebury Library at the following two sets of classmarks:
871.C.S29 – .S34
and
Pa.314.74S.C1 – .C6
JL
MusiCB3 Blog 
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