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Monsieur de Saint-George: Virtuoso, Swordsman, Revolutionary: A Legendary Life Rediscovered
The first full biography of one of the greatest figures of eighteenth-century Europe, known in his time as the "Black Mozart"
Virtually forgotten until now, his life is the stuff of legend. Born in 1739 in Guadeloupe to a slave mother and a French noble father, he became the finest swordsman of his age, an insider at the doomed court of Louis XVI, and, most of all, a virtuosic musician. A violinist, he directed the Olympic Society of Concerts, which was considered the finest in Europe in an age of great musicians, including Haydn, from whom he commissioned a symphony, and Mozart, to whom he was often compared. He also became the first Freemason of color, embracing the French Revolution with the belief that it would end the racism against which—despite his illustrious achievements—he struggled his whole life. This is the life of Joseph Bologne, known variously as Monsieur de Saint-George, the “Black Mozart,” and, because of his origins, "the American." Alain Guédé offers a fascinating account of this extraordinary individual, whose musical compositions are at long last being revived and whose story will never again be forgotten.
Virtually forgotten until now, his life is the stuff of legend. Born in 1739 in Guadeloupe to a slave mother and a French noble father, he became the finest swordsman of his age, an insider at the doomed court of Louis XVI, and, most of all, a virtuosic musician. A violinist, he directed the Olympic Society of Concerts, which was considered the finest in Europe in an age of great musicians, including Haydn, from whom he commissioned a symphony, and Mozart, to whom he was often compared. He also became the first Freemason of color, embracing the French Revolution with the belief that it would end the racism against which—despite his illustrious achievements—he struggled his whole life. This is the life of Joseph Bologne, known variously as Monsieur de Saint-George, the “Black Mozart,” and, because of his origins, "the American." Alain Guédé offers a fascinating account of this extraordinary individual, whose musical compositions are at long last being revived and whose story will never again be forgotten.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published October 9, 2001
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87 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 25, 2023
Whew! I have gotten a little bit behind on my reviews thanks to a car accident, but after this one, I am caught up!
Joseph Bologne was born December 25, 1745 in the French West Indies. He was the illegitimate child of his father, Georges Bologne de Saint-Georges, and his slave, Nanon. Joseph was sent to France at age 7 and enrolled in a Jesuit boarding school. As he grew up, he excelled in horsemanship and fencing. He was made a Chevalier in 1761, afterwards being known as the Chevalier Saint-Georges. He had an amazing affinity for violin, creating wonderful compositions and playing with some well-known musicians of the time.
I had heard of this man on a history podcast that I had listened to, and familiarized myself with some of his works. I love violin and string quartet music, as well as opera, so this seemed right up my alley. The book was interesting, informative, and well written. It was not boring or dry like some biographies tend to be, but I am sure all of the interesting things that Chevalier de Saint-Georges did in his life helped make that easy for the author. This was a great find at the used bookstore, and I am really glad that I got it.
Joseph Bologne was born December 25, 1745 in the French West Indies. He was the illegitimate child of his father, Georges Bologne de Saint-Georges, and his slave, Nanon. Joseph was sent to France at age 7 and enrolled in a Jesuit boarding school. As he grew up, he excelled in horsemanship and fencing. He was made a Chevalier in 1761, afterwards being known as the Chevalier Saint-Georges. He had an amazing affinity for violin, creating wonderful compositions and playing with some well-known musicians of the time.
I had heard of this man on a history podcast that I had listened to, and familiarized myself with some of his works. I love violin and string quartet music, as well as opera, so this seemed right up my alley. The book was interesting, informative, and well written. It was not boring or dry like some biographies tend to be, but I am sure all of the interesting things that Chevalier de Saint-Georges did in his life helped make that easy for the author. This was a great find at the used bookstore, and I am really glad that I got it.
December 16, 2011
Nobleman, swordsman, music virtuoso, soldier, revolutionary and socialite would easily sum up the life of Joseph Boulogne de Saint-George.
Born in Guadeloupe in the 1700's, he was famous during this day as a master swordsman (in fact the best sword fencer in France) and musician (violinist, composer and conductor). His musical compositions made him as popular as his contemporaries including Mozart, Haydn and Gluck. He was also to rise to the rank of Colonel in the army of France. Later he spent a short time in revolutionary Saint-Domingue (Haiti) as a representative of the French government following the fall of slavery there.
Despite his many credentials, connections to the nobility as well as many high profile supporters, he was still to suffer bigotry and prejudice at the hands of those who were either jealous of his accomplishments or unwilling to recognise his abilities.
Whenever I read about his life I am amazed that he isn't more well known! But the fact that he was to fade into obscurity after his death may have something to do with it.
Alain Guede has covered the story of Saint-George in detail and included many of the events and people which touched his life. "Monsieur de Saint-George" is a book which brings to light the life of a very fascinating character.
Born in Guadeloupe in the 1700's, he was famous during this day as a master swordsman (in fact the best sword fencer in France) and musician (violinist, composer and conductor). His musical compositions made him as popular as his contemporaries including Mozart, Haydn and Gluck. He was also to rise to the rank of Colonel in the army of France. Later he spent a short time in revolutionary Saint-Domingue (Haiti) as a representative of the French government following the fall of slavery there.
Despite his many credentials, connections to the nobility as well as many high profile supporters, he was still to suffer bigotry and prejudice at the hands of those who were either jealous of his accomplishments or unwilling to recognise his abilities.
Whenever I read about his life I am amazed that he isn't more well known! But the fact that he was to fade into obscurity after his death may have something to do with it.
Alain Guede has covered the story of Saint-George in detail and included many of the events and people which touched his life. "Monsieur de Saint-George" is a book which brings to light the life of a very fascinating character.
December 18, 2023
book #42 of 2022: Monsieur de Saint-George: Virtuoso, Swordsman, Revolutionary (pub. 1999) by French journalist and author Alain Guédé. so, there’s a movie…Chevalier, already filmed, but being released to the public in April, featuring a rather attractive actor, Kelvin Harrison, Jr 👇, so I watched the trailer and learned about a 🔥 (on like every level) historical figure I knew nothing about! I’m gonna give you the highlights below, so if you, like me, prefer to know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about a book before you start reading it, please stop reading this review.
note: this book is almost impossible to get for under $100. I was very lucky that my library had it - and in English. if your library doesn’t have it, maybe they can get it for you through inter-library loan?
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Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George, was born in 1745, the son of an, by all accounts, absolutely gorgeous enslaved woman, Nanon, in Guadeloupe and a French noble, trying to bolster his treasury by managing a sugar plantation there. the author masterfully describes the environs and realities of life on the island at that time. eventually, his father, Guillaume-Pierre Bologne, had made enough bank to return to France and he brought his little family with him, though eventually he married a white woman, as custom expected. the father evaded strict slavery laws by giving his young son the antiquated title of chevalier. he also gave him an excellent education, particularly in fencing and playing violin. Joseph (who would claim the name of Saint-George) quickly became the best fencer and violinist in Europe. he was out hunting with a lady, which was a custom at that time, and they instead used the outing as an excuse for a rendezvous in an out of the way farm shelter. their letters were eventually discovered by a relative and she was sent away, he surreptitiously witnessed her marriage to a young white man not long after, his subsequent musical compositions and the plot of his first opera perhaps reflect some of the melancholy of this ill-fated experience. he never considered marriage again because he knew it could not be, but he definitely still got around. and of course he was deliciously fashionable and who was selecting his daily wardrobe, none other than the beautiful Nanon, to whom he came home and told every everything about his adventures…well, most everything. I was crushing pretty hard on this excellent and attractive specimen until I got to chapter 10 (and here you might want to stop reading if you, too, would prefer to keep your crush untarnished)…in short, he was a freemason. 😔 (the freemasons, and their similar orders and brotherhoods, are the largest pyramid scheme mafia in the world and unless you are the offspring of an incredibly small set of families, you’ll never learn what they’re really about - you’ll just be their ignorant tool: the genetic highest orders are absolutely pathological) so, while his father had worked so hard to protect him from enslavement, those assh*les recognized a young prodigy who felt out of place and pulled him into the clutches of their “brotherhood”, which of course meant he was on call to their every whim: he also pulled his father and some friends in. he continued to excel in fencing and went from playing violin to composing and also conducting various extremely successful orchestras, but when the French Revolution, which the freemasons were very much behind, was in the offing, he was everywhere they wanted him to be, taking extreme personal risk and showing, of course, brilliant valor in the campaign. despite endless acts of loyalty to the revolutionary cause, he was imprisoned and in line for the guillotine three times, but managed to elude it, due to his impeccable record and his friends standing with him (as soon as it was safe to do so). he was again in the service of France when he sailed to Haiti and returned with Toussaint L’ouverture’s two sons, who Napoleon used to lure L’ouverture to his death in France. - Saint-George was, his entire life, a fierce defender of black rights, so I’m going to take a look at a copy of The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (pub. 1938) by Trinidadian historian C. L. R. James (which I read EXACTLY a year ago) to see if it has any mention of Saint-George that I had missed because I wasn’t yet aware of his significance because how could he do that to such a crucial black cause?? was this another case of freemason go where I send thee? Napoleon returned Haiti to slavery for another fifty years upon the murder of L'Ouverture and a bloodbath of the new democracy. - I’ll update this review with whatever I find out: seems like the kids had a choice to go, but that choice was based on lies from French gov reps promising slavery would end in Haiti. 😔 Saint-George ended up dying in 1799, at 53, of an ulcerated bladder. I have to wonder if they offed him so he wouldn’t see what they did to Haiti after his help there. betrayal after betrayal and yes, Napoleon was def a freemason, too. 🤮 if you can get your hands on a copy, the research and writing are superb - I look forward to seeing the movie, though I know it will gloss over the freemasonry and glamorize the French Revolution, but at least (to quote the trailer, though entirely out of context) the eye candy “will be spectacular…bold!”
note: this book is almost impossible to get for under $100. I was very lucky that my library had it - and in English. if your library doesn’t have it, maybe they can get it for you through inter-library loan?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George, was born in 1745, the son of an, by all accounts, absolutely gorgeous enslaved woman, Nanon, in Guadeloupe and a French noble, trying to bolster his treasury by managing a sugar plantation there. the author masterfully describes the environs and realities of life on the island at that time. eventually, his father, Guillaume-Pierre Bologne, had made enough bank to return to France and he brought his little family with him, though eventually he married a white woman, as custom expected. the father evaded strict slavery laws by giving his young son the antiquated title of chevalier. he also gave him an excellent education, particularly in fencing and playing violin. Joseph (who would claim the name of Saint-George) quickly became the best fencer and violinist in Europe. he was out hunting with a lady, which was a custom at that time, and they instead used the outing as an excuse for a rendezvous in an out of the way farm shelter. their letters were eventually discovered by a relative and she was sent away, he surreptitiously witnessed her marriage to a young white man not long after, his subsequent musical compositions and the plot of his first opera perhaps reflect some of the melancholy of this ill-fated experience. he never considered marriage again because he knew it could not be, but he definitely still got around. and of course he was deliciously fashionable and who was selecting his daily wardrobe, none other than the beautiful Nanon, to whom he came home and told every everything about his adventures…well, most everything. I was crushing pretty hard on this excellent and attractive specimen until I got to chapter 10 (and here you might want to stop reading if you, too, would prefer to keep your crush untarnished)…in short, he was a freemason. 😔 (the freemasons, and their similar orders and brotherhoods, are the largest pyramid scheme mafia in the world and unless you are the offspring of an incredibly small set of families, you’ll never learn what they’re really about - you’ll just be their ignorant tool: the genetic highest orders are absolutely pathological) so, while his father had worked so hard to protect him from enslavement, those assh*les recognized a young prodigy who felt out of place and pulled him into the clutches of their “brotherhood”, which of course meant he was on call to their every whim: he also pulled his father and some friends in. he continued to excel in fencing and went from playing violin to composing and also conducting various extremely successful orchestras, but when the French Revolution, which the freemasons were very much behind, was in the offing, he was everywhere they wanted him to be, taking extreme personal risk and showing, of course, brilliant valor in the campaign. despite endless acts of loyalty to the revolutionary cause, he was imprisoned and in line for the guillotine three times, but managed to elude it, due to his impeccable record and his friends standing with him (as soon as it was safe to do so). he was again in the service of France when he sailed to Haiti and returned with Toussaint L’ouverture’s two sons, who Napoleon used to lure L’ouverture to his death in France. - Saint-George was, his entire life, a fierce defender of black rights, so I’m going to take a look at a copy of The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (pub. 1938) by Trinidadian historian C. L. R. James (which I read EXACTLY a year ago) to see if it has any mention of Saint-George that I had missed because I wasn’t yet aware of his significance because how could he do that to such a crucial black cause?? was this another case of freemason go where I send thee? Napoleon returned Haiti to slavery for another fifty years upon the murder of L'Ouverture and a bloodbath of the new democracy. - I’ll update this review with whatever I find out: seems like the kids had a choice to go, but that choice was based on lies from French gov reps promising slavery would end in Haiti. 😔 Saint-George ended up dying in 1799, at 53, of an ulcerated bladder. I have to wonder if they offed him so he wouldn’t see what they did to Haiti after his help there. betrayal after betrayal and yes, Napoleon was def a freemason, too. 🤮 if you can get your hands on a copy, the research and writing are superb - I look forward to seeing the movie, though I know it will gloss over the freemasonry and glamorize the French Revolution, but at least (to quote the trailer, though entirely out of context) the eye candy “will be spectacular…bold!”
July 25, 2021
I was searching for a biography of the Chevalier Saint-George and this one seemed like the best of a very small lot. Then I read the first couple of chapters and almost threw the book against the wall. The author begins by describing Saint-George's mother. According to his fevered imagination, Nanette was a beautiful woman who used her wiles to seduce Saint-George's father, an ambitious younger son of a recently ennobled family. There are a couple of major problems with this fanciful account. First, Nanette was enslaved and therefore incapable of meaningful consent. The retribution for enslaved women who said no to the sexual predations of plantation owners was brutal and cruel, making refusal almost unthinkable. The second problem comes down to simple math. At the time Nanette was supposedly indulging in her vixenish powers of seduction, she was all of 14 years old. Children do not seduce thirty-year-old men. Full stop.
Beyond the really problematic characterization of Nanette's relations with Saint-George's father, the author indulges in what amounts to some educated speculation about Saint-George's paternity. His descriptions of the lives of the enslaved on Guadaloupe amount to a romanticized fantasy that elides the brutal reality of life on Caribbean sugar plantations.
Once Saint-Georges and Nanette arrive in France, the factual details of this biography stand on firmer ground, although the author continues to fill in sparse details with heavy doses of speculation. As the author chronicles Saint-George's adult career, it's evident that the virtuoso violinist and fencer was not only multi-talented, but also a man of immense integrity whose dedication to the French Revolution was repaid with persecution on the ground of his ethnicity as well as his association with the Duke d'Orleans, who fell from grace as an early hero of the Revolution and lost his head to the guillotine in 1793. Saint-George escaped this grim fate, but due to the entrenched racism of his European peers, died unmarried and impoverished, despite his fame and many talents. In the end, Saint-George's genius allows him to transcend the limitations of this biography to assume his rightful place as one of the giants of the late 18th century.
Beyond the really problematic characterization of Nanette's relations with Saint-George's father, the author indulges in what amounts to some educated speculation about Saint-George's paternity. His descriptions of the lives of the enslaved on Guadaloupe amount to a romanticized fantasy that elides the brutal reality of life on Caribbean sugar plantations.
Once Saint-Georges and Nanette arrive in France, the factual details of this biography stand on firmer ground, although the author continues to fill in sparse details with heavy doses of speculation. As the author chronicles Saint-George's adult career, it's evident that the virtuoso violinist and fencer was not only multi-talented, but also a man of immense integrity whose dedication to the French Revolution was repaid with persecution on the ground of his ethnicity as well as his association with the Duke d'Orleans, who fell from grace as an early hero of the Revolution and lost his head to the guillotine in 1793. Saint-George escaped this grim fate, but due to the entrenched racism of his European peers, died unmarried and impoverished, despite his fame and many talents. In the end, Saint-George's genius allows him to transcend the limitations of this biography to assume his rightful place as one of the giants of the late 18th century.
March 10, 2013
This is a great window on race in the 18th century, in the French Pre-revolutionary and Revolutionary context. I really don't know very much about the French Revolution, and this book reminds me that I need to read a good history of it. The author paints the "forgotten" life story of the mulatto son of a French aristocrat and a Colonial French slave woman, as he becomes the best swordsman and most famous musician of his day. The book interweaves an account of developments in culture, theater and music in which Monseiur de Saint-George played a central role with the developing currents of revolution in France. Much of the presentation is beyond my expertise or familiarity but is nonetheless interesting and somewhat comprehensible to a naive reader. It describes what was possible socially and artistically for Monseiur de Saint-George in his time and place, and what avenues (marriage to a white woman, certain levels of military command, social acceptance in certain circles) were permanently blocked for him. French racism has a different cast than Anglo racism, but in the end it was all of the same stinking corpse. Monseiur de Saint-George's life of achievement in that late 18th century world of the French revolution is fascinating to discover.
August 7, 2023
At the library and saw this book on Joseph Boulogne de Saint-George, the subject of the film Chevalier.
So it could be the classism. Or the racism. Or the translation. Or the lack of sources and citations and quote. Or the conjecture and speculation which runs rampant through this book. Or the snarkiness. Or that France/French biographers are not as enlightened as they believe they are. Or the lack of historical information available. Or. Or.
Anyway despite and after a bland recitation and lack of outraged commentary over Joseph’s birth to a 14 yes 14! year old enslaved African girl purchased, raped, and bred by a French male seeking his fortune in the Islands (p. 14), reading that the sire who did not work was upset at the enslaved people’s indolence (p. 38) and that Nanon, Joseph’s mother, understood her rapist had to marry a white French woman so she stepped aside (p.51), and the constant references to the ‘handsome mulatto’ I did not stop reading this book which somehow managed to be published.
1 star since 0 stars is not an option.
So it could be the classism. Or the racism. Or the translation. Or the lack of sources and citations and quote. Or the conjecture and speculation which runs rampant through this book. Or the snarkiness. Or that France/French biographers are not as enlightened as they believe they are. Or the lack of historical information available. Or. Or.
Anyway despite and after a bland recitation and lack of outraged commentary over Joseph’s birth to a 14 yes 14! year old enslaved African girl purchased, raped, and bred by a French male seeking his fortune in the Islands (p. 14), reading that the sire who did not work was upset at the enslaved people’s indolence (p. 38) and that Nanon, Joseph’s mother, understood her rapist had to marry a white French woman so she stepped aside (p.51), and the constant references to the ‘handsome mulatto’ I did not stop reading this book which somehow managed to be published.
1 star since 0 stars is not an option.
June 23, 2025
The writing and information is very good. The story of Saint-George’s life is very interesting. Occasionally the language is a bit dense, perhaps the translation could have been simplified somewhat. Also I am not familiar with this part of French history; it is not easy to keep track of all the names.
December 1, 2024
It was fine
December 12, 2025
j'ai adoré
January 6, 2009
Enjoyable, but Guede doesn't seem to be a particularly impartial biographer, he comes across as determined to make Saint-George as perfect a person as possible, when Saint-George's life is interesting enough. Less Mary Sue-ing, more critical thinking, please.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews