Music from Africa Part 1: Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges
Hello, everybody! I was very happy to accept an invitation to do a second series about Music from Africa.
I'm going to start with the first classical composer of African ancestry, Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (December 25, 1745 – June 10, 1799). He was the son of George Bologne de Saint-Georges, a wealthy planter in Guadeloupe, and Nanon, an African slave.
When he was seven years old, his father took him to Paris, where he was educated at a school for fencing and horsemanship. He was such a good fencer that he eventually became an officer of the king's bodyguard, hence earning the title "chevalier".
Nothing is known about his early musical training, but he joined the orchestra of composer François-Joseph Gossec as a violinist in the 1760s, creating a sensation with his debut as a soloist playing his own concertos. Eventually he took over the management of the orchestra, Le Concert des Amateurs, and turned it into one of the best in Europe. So good, in fact, that he was suggested as a possible director of the Paris Opéra, but three of its leading ladies presented a petition to the queen, Marie Antoinette, complaining that they were too delicate to report to a mulatto.
Saint-Georges withdrew his application and returned to the life of a soldier in the National Guard. He eventually died in 1799, fighting in the civil war in Saint-Domingue.
He was a prodigious composer of operas, symphonies, violin concertos and chamber music. Here's the first movement, Allegro, from his Symphony No. 1 in D major:
Today in Tokyo (who lives in Tokyo but was born in South Africa)
