Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges

In 1785 the most celebrated composer in Europe, Joseph Haydn, was asked to write six symphonies for a Paris orchestra. The man who wrote to him to settle the terms, and who stood in front of the orchestra at the premieres, was born on a sugar plantation in Guadeloupe. His father was a French planter and his mother was Nanon, a young African woman his father enslaved. His name was Joseph Bologne, and Paris knew him as the Chevalier de Saint-Georges.

He was a master fencer before he was famous for music, and a colonel in the Revolution after it. John Adams heard about him in 1779 and wrote him down as the most accomplished man in Europe. Yet the Paris Opéra would not let him lead it because of his colour, the Terror jailed him without charge, and within a few years of his death his concertos had all but disappeared from the concert hall.

From the colony to the capital

The lifeline

1745

Born at Baillif, Guadeloupe, to a planter and Nanon, the African woman he enslaved

1753

Aged seven, sent to France for schooling; the family settles in Paris

1773

Becomes conductor of the Concert des Amateurs, one of the leading orchestras in Paris

1776

Put forward to direct the Paris Opéra; three of its stars petition the Queen against him

1792

Made colonel of a Revolutionary cavalry legion that bears his name

1799

Dies in Paris in June, aged 53

By the numbers

The measure of him

12

Violin concertos he wrote, mostly for himself to play

6

Haydn “Paris” symphonies (Nos. 82–87) his orchestra commissioned and premiered

~11

Months he spent in prison during the Terror, 1793–94, with no specific charge

202

Years from his death until Paris named a street after him, in 2001

Sword, bow, baton, sabre

The deeds

1766

Leaves La Boëssière’s fencing academy and is made a gendarme of the King’s guard and a chevalier. Fencers across Europe came to know his name.

1772

First appears as a violin soloist with the Concert des Amateurs, playing violin concertos he wrote himself.

1773

Takes over as the orchestra’s conductor. Under him it becomes one of the best ensembles in Paris, and he leads it until 1781.

1785

Brings Haydn to Paris, on paper. For the Concert de la Loge Olympique he settles the commission for Haydn’s six Paris symphonies, then conducts their premieres.

1787

Fences the Chevalier d’Éon at Carlton House in London on 9 April, before the Prince of Wales. The bout became one of the famous images of the age.

1792

Raises the Légion Saint-Georges, a light cavalry unit of volunteers from the West Indies and southern France, and serves as its colonel in defence of the Republic.

Celebrated, barred, then forgotten

Recognition

In his lifetime

Famous in Paris and London as a swordsman and a violinist
Turned down to run the Opéra in 1776 after singers protested being directed by a man of mixed race
Arrested in 1793, held for about eleven months, then freed without trial
In 1797 asked for his old post back, writing: “I have no other resources”

Afterwards, and today

After France brought back slavery in 1802, his music dropped out of the repertoire for most of two centuries
In 2001 Paris renamed rue Richepanse, which honoured the general who restored slavery on Guadeloupe, after him
His concertos and symphonies are recorded and played again
His life was told in the feature film Chevalier (2022)

The island that made him

Guadeloupe

He was born near Basse-Terre on a Caribbean sugar island, where his father’s fortune came from plantations worked by enslaved people. His mother was one of them. Guadeloupe’s history of freedom given and taken away again runs alongside his own life.

1794

The Revolutionary Convention abolishes slavery in the French colonies

1802

Napoleon restores it, three years after Saint-Georges’s death

1848

France abolishes slavery for good, 103 years after his birth

“He is the most accomplished Man in Europe in Riding, Running, Shooting, Fencing, Dancing, Musick.” — John Adams, diary, 17 May 1779
(writing down what he had been told in Paris)

Joseph BologneChevalier de Saint-Georges