CD Details

Performer: Chevalier Meude-Monpas
Orchestra: Joseph Boulogne Chevalier de Saint-Georges
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1999-11-01
Music Label: Cedille
Soundtracks:

Allegro (7:57)
Adagio (5:47)
Rondeau allegretto (3:02) Violin Concerto in A Major, Op. 5, No. 2 (23:43) - CHEVALIER DE SAINT-GEORGES
Allegro moderato (10:23)
Largo (8:36)
Rondeau (4:35)Violin Concerto in F-sharp Minor (21:34) - JOSEPH WHITE
Allegro (11:40)
Adagio ma non troppo (4:51)
Allegro moderato (4:58)
Romance in G Major for Violin and Orchestra (12:33) - SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLORTOTAL TIME (75:17)

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Description of Violin Concertos by Black Composers of the 18th & 19th Centuries

Cedille Records wants the world to know about two of Mozart's less-familiar contemporaries, Chevalier J.J.O. de Meude-Monpas and Chevalier de Saint-Georges, as well as later composers Joseph White and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. All were men of mixed African and European descent who made important contributions to European music in the 1700s and 1800s. Celebrities in their day, they've been all but forgotten in our era. Relatively little is known of the early background of French composer Meude-Monpas, but we do know that he was born in Paris and was a musketeer in the service of French king Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette -- when he wasn't composing and writing books on music. Also active in Paris was Guadeloupe-born Saint-Georges, son of an aristocratic French plantation owner and an African slave. The dashing Saint-Georges (who graces the disc's cover) was a champion swordsman and extraordinary athlete, as well as a violin virtuoso. Cuba's Joseph White was born to a French businessman and an Afro-Cuban mother. A concert sensation in Europe and Latin America, White's violin playing was admired by the finest musicians of his day, including the great opera composer Gioacchino Rossini, who wrote, "The warmth of your execution, the feeling, the elegance, the brilliance of the school to which you belong, show the qualities in you as an artist of which the French school may be proud." England's Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the son of a physician from Sierra Leone and an Englishwoman, was esteemed in the US, especially among cultured African-Americans. His circle of American admirers included Booker T. Washington. The Coleridge-Taylor Society, a Black choral group, was founded in his honor in 1901. He visited the US several times and was a White House guest of President Theodore Roosevelt.

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