Black classical KS3/4/5 composers Jonathan James Introduction This resource has been inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and the stimulus of recent events for cultural discussion in the classroom. Black composers have been notoriously overlooked in the history of Western classical music. It’s telling that the earlier Black composers who achieved wider recognition were either given epithets bound to white composers – for example the ‘Black Mozart’ (Chevalier de Saint-Georges) or the ‘African Mahler’ (Samuel Coleridge-Taylor) – or feature mainly Jonathan James is a freelance through their encounters with the ‘greats’ (eg Bridgetower and Beethoven). music educator and conductor, This resource focuses on the life and work of six Black composers from the 1700s to the present and was previously a head of music day, with the objective of prompting wider listening and a discussion of cultural prejudice. It makes in the post-16 sector. He leads a good partner project to the discussion of female composers (see Music Teacher, November 2017) workshops for orchestras and and the question of why a white male bias in Western art music has been allowed to exist for so long, presents in venues across the UK. particularly when other musical genres have welcomed diversity. The composers featured in this resource range from the Classical period to the present day: Ɂ Chevalier de Saint-Georges (Joseph Bologne) Ɂ George Bridgetower Ɂ Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Ɂ Florence Price Ɂ William Grant Still Ɂ Nkeiru Okoye There are very many Black composers to focus on, particularly in the 20th and 21st centuries, but the composers above created works where there are clear influences to be identified and where comparisons to set-works could readily be made. Some of the music they produced is on the Spotify playlist (https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2DXV7GjPh6oyMlYqwNJPIh?si=1qvgKugCRF- SRP7EmSiotA) that accompanies this resource. Addressing potential contentions We cannot be naive to the sensitivities of discussing diversity. As teachers, we’d probably be wise to address potentially contentious issues openly and right from the start. The two questions that typically present themselves are around issues of tokenism and merit. Are we belittling the cause by mentioning a few Black names before quickly moving onto the next Beethoven symphony? And what if their music isn’t any good? Isn’t that then just positive discrimination? It is not tokenistic to devote a series of lessons to exploring a part of musical history when the alternative may have been to neglect it altogether, and when the exploration itself opens up longer- lasting debate on cultural issues and the importance of widening our historical lens. Such discussions are timely and deeply relevant. There’s debate as to the capitalisation of Black as an Nor is it our role in this context – nor in this resource – to talk about the merit or quality of any adjective of race: many people particular work when value judgements of that kind are discouraged in other areas in the specifications. prefer it capitalised, so we’ve Rather, the emphasis is on redressing an imbalance and diversifying students’ listening experiences, so decided to do that. that any such comparison would, in any case, be colour-blind. www.musicteachermagazine.co.uk MUSIC TEACHER F October 2020 F 1 Black classical composers KS3/4/5 Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745-1799) Chevalier de Saint-Georges is the aristocratic title adopted by Joseph Bologne when he graduated from the military academy in Paris. ‘Chevalier’ is the French equivalent of ‘Sir’, and Bologne then took the suffix to his father’s surname – Saint-Georges – as his moniker. Saint-Georges had many things going for him. He was rich, of aristocratic stock and formidably good-looking, a prodigious athlete, a virtuoso violinist and a composer. The stuff, in other words, of living legend. This perhaps explains why he was able to succeed as a person of mixed race in Parisian society, which was, like almost all Western society in this period, conservative and racist. And it also points to why, aside from issues of colour, his musical talent has not historically been taken seriously. His composing ability was deemed just another feather in a peacock display. He was born to George Bologne Saint-Georges, a plantation- owner in Guadeloupe who had an affair with one of his African slaves, Nanon. Rather than abandoning his charges, George took the mother and son to Paris and enrolled the boy in a prestigious military school when he was a teenager. It was there that Saint-Georges first showed his prowess as a fencer, a sport he was to excel at. He was ambidextrous and had ‘the speed of lightening’, according to his trainers. As a champion fencer and the darling of the court – his exoticism enchanted the entourage there – he was appointed music tutor to Queen Marie Antoinette. So, by his 20s, he was both a celebrity and a curiosity. When you came to watch Saint-Georges in action, you would be treated to both a stunning display of swordsmanship and a violin recital. It was a unique and intoxicating combination. As an extension of his royal duties, Saint-Georges led and then conducted Paris’s main orchestra, performing his own works as violin soloist. Within two years of his musical leadership, he had transformed it into an enviable ensemble that gave the premiere performances of Joseph Haydn’s Paris symphonies. The success of this ensemble under Saint-Georges’s musical leadership should have been enough to assure him of the much-coveted position conducting the Paris Opera. For anybody else, it would have been a shoo-in. And yet several leading ladies there petitioned the Queen to bar him from the post, saying they could not take orders from someone of his cultural heritage. Saint-Georges was therefore refused the role, and this would be the first of several discriminatory acts. Teachers should be aware when discussing these issues that original sources contain ethnic slurs that were common to the period, but which might cause offence in a lesson. After the Revolution of 1789 he was imprisoned and faced execution, a sentence that was eventually commuted. It was here and in his final years before his death aged 53 that he turned back to his childhood love of the violin and composing. Music was his last solace. Many of his compositions were lost in the Revolution, but those that survive include three sets of string quartets, two symphonies, eight symphonie-concertantes (a new Parisian genre he championed), six comic operas, three violin sonatas, and 14 violin concertos. Quick dip: Violin Concerto No. 9 in G The first movement to the Concerto https://open.spotify.com/track/0BwAWPuaYyC8JUub( DQHMir?si=K-BgHsrtRcGJTsMj9ime2Q) is a bracing Allegro with a long orchestral statement before the soloist enters. You can imagine the dashing Chevalier in the soloist’s role here. The style is energetic, athletic even, but tempered with elegance. The emphasis is less on harmonic or motivic development and more on technical brilliance, as befits the concerto style. The overall assurance of the writing and the idiomatic treatment of the violin is striking, and you can see why Mozart had reason to be envious of Saint-Georges’s dominance in the world of Parisian court music. In the specifications Saint-Georges’s music would fit into these areas of study: Ɂ AQA GCSE AoS1 Western classical tradition 1650-1910 Ɂ AQA A level AoS1 Western classical tradition 1650-1910 Ɂ Edexcel GCSE AoS1 Instrumental music 1700-1820 Ɂ Edexcel A level AoS2 Instrumental music Ɂ OCR GCSE AoS2: The concerto through time Ɂ Eduqas A level AoS1: Western classical tradition www.musicteachermagazine.co.uk MUSIC TEACHER F October 2020 F 2 Black classical composers KS3/4/5 George Bridgetower (1778-1860) George Bridgetower, like Saint-Georges and other composers of the day, first attracted interest as a soloist. He was a child prodigy on the violin who was paraded before George IV and an adoring London public aged just ten. The King was so impressed by the young virtuoso that he paid for his musical education, and Bridgetower spent most of his adult life in England. Bridgetower composed very little. His colourful life story, though, is good for the classroom, and his inclusion in this resource reflects what an inspiration he was in his day and how that has been subsequently forgotten in musical history. Bridgetower’s father was from Barbados and his mother was German-Polish. Both served in Royal courts, including the Esterházy estate where Haydn was court composer. His father claimed to be an African prince and baptised George ‘Hieronimo Hyppolito de Augusto’, clearly intending his son for greatness. Sadly, after his early flourishing, Bridgetower developed arthritis in his fingers, depriving him of his playing, and died in a home for the destitute in Peckham. A review in the Bath Chronicle of 1789 of the 11-year-old prodigy: ‘The young African Prince, whose musical talents have been so much celebrated, had a more crowded and splendid concert on Sunday morning than has ever been known in this place. There were upwards of 550 persons present, and they were gratified by such skills on the violin as created general astonishment, as well as pleasure from the boy wonder. The father was in the gallery, and so affected by the applause bestowed on his son, that tears of pleasure and gratitude flowed in profusion.’ The Kreutzer saga After his early days touring England, Germany and France as a soloist, Bridgewater was invited to perform for Beethoven in 1802 and so impressed him that the master dedicated his Violin Sonata No.