Accordingly, Coleridge-Taylor incorporated elements of Black spirituals into many of his later works (although not the piece on this disc). His idol was famed Czech composer Antonin Dvorak, who encouraged the use of ethnic folk music, including Negro spirituals. He visited the US several times and was a White House guest of President Theodore Roosevelt. The Coleridge-Taylor Society, a Black choral group, was founded in his honor in 1901.

His circle of American admirers included Booker T. ”Įngland’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.

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.” When White performed in the US in 1876, one music critic called him “The best violinist who has visited this country. In 1792, he was appointed colonel and commander of an all-Black military regiment of French Caribbeans and former American slaves.Ĭuba’s Joseph White was born to a French businessman and an Afro-Cuban mother. The dashing Saint-Georges (who graces the disc’s cover) was a champion swordsman and extraordinary athlete, as well as a violin virtuoso. Also active in Paris was Guadeloupe-born Saint-Georges, son of an aristocratic French plantation owner and an African slave. 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. These composers of color lived colorful lives. The Center for Black Music Research at Chicago’s Columbia College helped rediscover the musical compositions and locate the printed scores. Performers are violinist Rachel Barton Pine, a celebrated performer who champions less well-known music, and Chicago’s Encore Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Hege. Celebrities in their day, they’ve been all but forgotten in our era. All were men of mixed African and European descent who made important contributions to European music in the 1700s and 1800s. de Meude-Monpas and Chevalier de Saint-Georges, as well as later composers Joseph White and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Say “classical music,” and most people think of names like Mozart.Ĭedille Records want the world to know about two of Mozart’s less-familiar contemporaries, Chevalier J.J.O.

Most famous violin concerto