Another composer I was “introduced to” during Lockdown was Joseph Bologne. Later he became known as “Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges” and his story is really rather interesting.

He was born in 1745 in the French West Indies on a plantation on the island of Guadeloupe. His father was a rich plantation owner, and his mother was Nanon, a black slave who was said to be the most beautiful woman in the French West Indies. “He owes a lot to his mother,” researcher and historian Mario Valdes says. “Both for her colour and his damn good looks.” Joseph’s father was a minor nobleman named George Bologne de Saint-Georges. Most plantation owners would have disavowed their mistresses and illegitimate children. But George Bologne did not. France’s Code Noir, or “Black Code,” imposed harsh restrictions on freedom of religion, marriage and commerce for black slaves and nonslaves living in the colonies. So when Joseph was 7 years old, his father took Nanon and their son to France.

Joseph enjoyed many of the privileges that a white, upper-class French person would have enjoyed in the 18th century. He had a good education. He was well-off. The family lived in St. Germain, which was — and still is — a nice part of Paris.

It is very likely that people would have gawked at him, because he was so good-looking. He was well-dressed and very gentlemanly. However, at the same time, there was an undercurrent of racism everywhere he went. That sounds all too familiar, even today.

When Joseph and his family arrived in France, they found that the Code Noir wasn’t limited to the French colonies. It required every black person in Paris register with the police so Joseph and Nanon did just that. George Bologne’s money and title helped shield them from some of the other effects of the Code Noir. But it wasn’t until Joseph took up a sport that things began looking up.

At school, Joseph Bologne studied maths and history in the morning and in the afternoons, he fenced.

At the age of 13, Joseph enrolled in the Royal Polytechnic Academy of Weapons and Riding. His teacher was Nicolas Texier de la Boëssière, a master swordsman and a huge figure in the development of modern fencing. Fencing was really a way in which people could make their way in society.

It was said that “The sword was everything. If you were not a good swordsman, you need not come to dinner.”

In just a year or two, Joseph Bologne became an expert fencer. He began to compete against the best swordsmen of Europe.

One of his most celebrated contests was against fencing master Alexandre Picard, who had publicly called Joseph “La Boëssière’s mulatto.” That was a heavily loaded term, even in the 18th century. With pro-slavery and abolitionist spectators looking on and wagering, Joseph won the match.

His father was so pleased with him for having won this fencing match that he gifted him with a horse and a carriage that he used to drive around Paris — just like the crème de la crème of Parisian society.

But Joseph excelled at more than just fencing.

He was a brilliant Boxer. He was a good runner. He was a good ice skater and he famously could swim across the Seine with one arm tied behind his back. When it came to shooting, one account says that he was the best marksman in Europe.

The United States ambassador to France — and future US president — John Adams wrote in his diary:

“He will hit the Button, any Button on the Coat or Waistcoat of the greatest Masters. He will hit a Crown Piece in the Air with a Pistoll [sic] Ball.”

Joseph’s dancing ability, along with his good looks and charm, made him a hit in the sophisticated salons of Paris and, I suppose, because he was unusual as a black person in Paris, people were curious about him. Women, in particular, were keen to dance with him.

Joseph Bologne danced and fenced his way into the hearts of French nobility. He graduated from the Royal Academy in 1766 and was made an officer in the court of King Louis XV. He was henceforth known as “Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges”.

That title brought new connections and patronage, which the Chevalier used to pursue a career in music. In 1769, he began playing violin in the Concert des Amateurs. Despite what its name might suggest, the group was made up of the finest musicians from the region.

“His playing must have been very, very good,” says Jeanne Lamon, a concert violinist and the Director Emerita of Tafelmusik, a Baroque orchestra based in Toronto. “There’s something about bow technique and fencing that have something in common that he obviously had an amazing skill for.”

By 1773, the Chevalier was Director of the Concert des Amateurs. Parisians flocked to concert halls to hear the virtuoso soloist and the music he composed. Sometimes you find with composers who are also performers or players that they write virtuosic things to show off but what I love about Le Chevalier De Saint-Georges’ music is that, as difficult and virtuosic as his fast pieces are, the slow ones are very, very tender and intimate. There’s a very touching sadness to the slow parts that, I think, indicates that there was some depth to this guy.

He was Marie Antoinette’s music teacher for a while but was fired from that job, because they got ‘too close.’

However, the Queen of France remained a supporter. She attended the Chevalier’s concerts, sometimes unannounced. She accompanied him on piano at private performances. In 1776, when the Paris Opera needed a new director she put his name forward to the king, who was then Louis XVI, and to please Marie Antoinette the king agreed to the post.

Unfortunately, xenophobia reared it’s ugly head again when two singers and a dancer from the Paris Opera petitioned the queen. They said that their conscience would not permit them ever “to be subjected to the orders of a mulatto”. However, rather than someone else get the job, Louis XVI decided to give it to no one and the position was never filled.

Music continued to be the center of the Chevalier’s life over the next decade and a half. He commissioned six symphonies by Joseph Haydn which he conducted himself. He wrote string quartets, concertos, symphonies and operas which were performed at Paris’ Palais-Royale. He had money, fame and social standing but the coming French Revolution would change everything.

For a lot of his life, he was friends with the aristocracy and he owed a lot of his prosperity to the monarchy yet, when it came down to it, he decided to side with the Revolution and, come the Revolution, a Legion — a black Legion — was organised.

The Chevalier led 800 infantrymen and 200 cavalry against France’s enemies. It came to be known as the “Légion Saint-Georges.” He fought alongside General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, the father of the great novelist Alexandre Dumas. Like the Chevalier, the Dumas men were black. The Chevalier even educated Thomas-Alexandre Dumas in swordsmanship.

Dumas the younger must have learned about the fencing prowess of Le Chevalier from his father. Some believe that Thomas-Alexandre Dumas was the inspiration for Porthos in The Three Musketeers and that Le Chevalier was the inspiration for the high-spirited and politically-connected Aramis.

When the French Revolutionary War ended, the Chevalier was a hero. He and his legion had fought and defeated the Austrian army at Lille. But he was a hero only for a short while.

The French Revolution descended into a paranoid mess. You could be a good revolutionary one day, and the next day you were the enemy of the people. And so Le Chevalier, like many other people who previously had been heroes of the Revolution, was denounced and was in prison for a year. He was lucky to survive, because many people who were arrested were just guillotined.

After his release, the Chevalier was unable to restart his military and musical careers.

No matter how successful and intellectual he was and no matter how much of an accomplished sportsman he was, there was always this “chain of ethnicity” dragging behind him that was pulling him back.

Long before the Revolution, George Bologne de Saint-Georges had returned to Guadeloupe to oversee his plantation. He died there and left his fortune to his white daughter. In the late 1790s, the Chevalier suffered a series of infections and stomach ailments and on 12 June 1799, he died of gangrene. He was poor, alone and just 53 years old. Nowadays, in France, he’s rather more famous than he used to and there is even a street named after him in Paris.

Much of Le Chevalier’s music was lost during the Revolution, and what survived was quickly forgotten but a couple decades ago, the music world began to take notice of his work again. People now programme and do recitals of his music quite often.

Hopefully, this is the beginning of a revival in interest in Le Chevalier. He is often referred to as “The Black Mozart.” He wrote some exquisite music and I am very pleased to have had his work pointed out to me.

Here are a couple of pieces you might like to check out.

Keith.

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint Georges – Violin Concerto in G Major, Op. 2 No. 1

I. Allegro

II. Largo

III. Rondeau

Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie

Reinhard Goebel – Conductor

Yura Lee – Violin

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges – String Quartet No. 5

This performance was given on 15 February 2019, at The Old Church, Portland OR.

Performers:

Emily Cole – Violin

Shin-Young Kwon – Violin

Jennifer Arnold – Viola

Marilyn de Oliviera – Cello