Sound Bites by Ed Le Brocq

Author:Ed Le Brocq [Brocq, Ed Le]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC Books
Published: 2023-07-26T00:00:00+00:00

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Symphonie Concertante in F Major

There are some people in life who just seem to have everything: physical grace and good looks, athletic ability, intelligence (emotional and the other type) and are just generally good eggs. Here’s looking at you. Oh, and Joseph Bologne is also one of those people. He is known as the greatest swordsman in Europe and is a superlative violinist, athlete and marksman. He is also genteel and a spunk. Bologne’s mum is an enslaved woman from Senegal, his dad is an army officer exiled from France for manslaughter, hanged in absentia then pardoned, who brings his family to France from Guadeloupe and makes sure Joseph receives an aristocratic education.

Bologne’s dad is no slouch either and already has a few pieces dedicated to him, including quartets by Carl Stamitz (the Mannheim rocket man’s son).

So Joseph is one of those people whose career could take them in any direction, but he chooses music and is successful as the director of the Concert des Amateurs when Gossec goes off to direct the Concert Spirituel (the orchestra that gave some of the early public concerts in Paris with that guy Anne who lost all his money). Eventually Bologne is considered for the Paris Opera top job but is denied the position because of racism. Stuff those idiots because Bologne goes on to form another orchestra, the Concert de la Loge Olympique, and they commission Joseph Haydn to write his six Paris symphonies with Bologne directing their spectacular premieres.

This is all very well, but here we are hurtling towards revolution. The Olympique band is dis-Olympique-banded, Bologne goes to England to earn money from exhibition fencing matches, then he returns to France and joins the National Guard, as the Revolution has given him equal rights as a mixed-race chap and he wants to give something back. He becomes a commander, then is denounced for ‘unrevolutionary behaviour’ and imprisoned for eighteen months. This brilliant man is now completely disillusioned and leaves France for St Domingue, now known as Haiti, becomes disillusioned there as well and heads back to France.

Bologne tries to re-enter the National Guard, fails, gets a gig leading a new band and abruptly dies of a bladder illness at the age of fifty-three.

Here is the life of a hero; surely there is no other character in music, apart from Clara Schumann, who faces so many adversities with so much valour.

Bologne’s symphonie concertante for a couple of violins and viola is, to be honest, exceptional not because it is unusual but because it is very, very usual for its age. Despite revolution surging in the blood of the nation, this music is just so . . . polite. As heads are about to be chopped off and society violently reshaped, the shape of these musical phrases could hardly be milder. But that is its beauty. This music is just the right amount of predictable; it is symmetrical, elegant, refined, occasionally dashing and thrilling, but never too much. Here is the epitome of classicism, with a real mensch at its heart.

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