String Players of the Enlightenment: 3 Remarkable Musicians Who Deserve More Attention

Most books about music during the Enlightenment era focus on the “big three”— Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. But there were, of course, a lot more musicians around at the time! Here are a few books that look at some other musicians who helped shape musical culture at a very interesting time in history.

George Kennaway’s John Gunn: Musician Scholar in Enlightenment Britain is one of the most fascinating. Gunn was a Scottish cellist, writer, and thinker who was the first to codify a lot of what we know about how to play the cello. Kennaway paints a portrait of a man who was both performer and scholar in the lively intellectual circles of Edinburgh and London. Kennaway also documents the life and work of Gunn’s wife Anne, an important creator and thinker in her own right.

Gabriel Banat’s The Chevalier de Saint-Georges: Virtuoso of the Sword and the Bow tells the story of Joseph Bologne (known also by his noble title, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges), a composer, violinist, and champion fencer of African descent who became a celebrity in pre-Revolutionary France. For many decades, Bologne was relegated to the footnotes of music history. Thanks in part to Banat’s book (first published in 2006), he’s been restored to his rightful place in the textbooks and on the concert stage.

Then there’s Clifford D. Panton’s George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower, Violin Virtuoso And Composer Of Color In Late 18th Century Europe Bridgetower is often remembered only for his connection with Beethoven, but this biography reveals Panton’s research into every existing source that can tell us more about this important musician.
These books tell the story of musicians who helped shape the Enlightenment but never became household names. They offer us a glimpse into a time when music and society were closely interrelated, and when both were more diverse than we might have imagined.