Sonata for Two Violins, no. 2 in E-flat Major

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745 – 1799)

Joseph Bologne, later known as Chevalier de Saint-Georges, was a French violin virtuoso, conductor, composer, fencer and Colonel in the light cavalry.

Saint-Georges was the son of a wealthy French planter and his wife’s Senegalese slave. Despite convention of the time, Saint-Georges father gave his illegitimate, mixed-race son his last name, an expensive education, and recognized him in his will. This recognition, combined with exceptional abilities, allowed Saint-Georges to mix with the same aristocratic society as his father, despite the many laws and prejudices at the time limiting the rights and social status of those with African ancestry. 

At thirteen, his father enrolled him at an academy for fencing and horsemanship, where his peers reported that he excelled at every sport he attempted, from skating to shooting. One fellow student described watching him swim regularly across the Seine with only one arm, and that he practically never missed his target with a pistol. At seventeen, while still a student at the academy, Saint-Georges beat a fencing master, one who had taunted him for his skin color, in a bout. This well-recognized match, bet on widely by supporters and opponents of slavery, began to establish Saint-Georges’ reputation long before his musical career took off.

While his athletic endeavors are documented, almost nothing is known about his musical education. Several major composers, including Lolli and Gossec, dedicated works to him at a young age, however, indicating he showed exceptional early skill. When he was in his mid-twenties he was appointed concertmaster of a Parisian orchestra conducted by Gossec, an orchestra he later took over as conductor, and with which he debuted Haydn’s “Paris” symphonies. 

His fame as a conductor, soloist and composer led him to be considered for the directorship of the Royal Academy of Music at the Opéra. This move was opposed by some of the Opéra’s female singers, however, who signed a petition to the Queen asking that Saint-Georges be denied the appointment. They stated that despite his numerous abilities and qualifications, their “honour and the delicacy of their conscience made it impossible for them to be subjected to the orders” of someone of his skin color. While this discrimination crushed his rise as a conductor, he went on to spectacular success as an opera composer. Sadly, only one of these many opera manuscripts survives today.

Saint-Georges was made a chevalier and Gendarme du roi (officer of the king’s bodyguard), then later served as a Colonel in the revolutionary army, fighting to bring equality to all men. Throughout his extensive military career Saint-Georges continued to perform music whenever he could. Shortly before his death, when for political reasons he was no longer allowed to continue fighting for the revolution, he was quoted as saying “towards the end of my life I was particularly devoted to my violin… never before did I play it so well!”

The duo sonata on this program, published posthumously, is essentially a violin concerto accompanied by a very spare second violin accompaniment. The main violin part demands both agility and flexibility, with the melody flying rapidly across all four strings of the instrument and back again, often in the same bow. It is likely Bologne had very large hands, since he wrote intervals much larger than was standard at the time due to the difficulty in reaching them. The first movement of this duo features an entire passage in tenths, an interval not normalized until Paganini half a century later. Both movements, and particularly the second, feature the main violinist moving twice or four times as fast as the other, highlighting the efforts of the soloist.