Monsieur de Saint-George.(a book by by Alain Guede )(Book Review)

by Alain Guede Picador 304 pp. $26

Known posthumously as the "Black Mozart," Monsieur de Saint-George (1739-99), ne Joseph Bologue, was born on a sugar plantation in Guadeloupe, the son of a Senegalese slave mother and an aristocratic French father. Whereas Mozart was paraded around Europe as a musical prodigy, Saint-George served in the not-so-enlightened age of the lumieres and waning years of the Ancien Regime as a poster child for what so-called negres a talent (Negroes with talent) might achieve, given benevolent, paternalistic assistance. His childhood violin instructor, Monsieur Plato, reproached his charge: "Follow the score. If you persist in letting your instrument be guided by your instincts, you'll never do anything but play like a negre."

Celebrated for his swordsmanship as well as his musical prowess, Saint-George fell into obscurity in the nineteenth century. In the past decade, though, some two dozen recordings of his compositions (chamber and orchestral music, and some opera) have appeared, along with several biographies and a CBC documentary. This latest entry, by Alain Guede, is part biography, part historical novel, part screed (concluding piously, "The time has come to perform and listen to Saint-George's music again, and thus to begin a process of rehabilitation"). Gracefully translated by Gilda Roberts, Monsieur de Saint-George is a challenging read, because it straddles several different genres, and because its subject's life coincided with such momentous movements and counter-movements in European history.