Lecture @ Noon: Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint Georges

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Chevalier in Context: The Musical Life of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges

This presentation provides an introduction to the life and times of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, tracing the musician’s cinematic trajectory from the plantations of Guadeloupe to the stages of pre-revolutionary Paris. We will situate Saint-Georges’s achievements within the cultural landscape of the French Enlightenment, considering his contributions to public concerts, aristocratic salons, and commercial print markets. More broadly, we will use the composer’s family history to examine the links between the Parisian art world and France’s colonial projects in the Caribbean.

Speaker Bio:

Julia Doe is Associate Professor of Music at Columbia University. She is the author of The Comedians of the King (University of Chicago Press, 2021), as well as articles in the Journal of Musicology, Cambridge Opera Journal, and Eighteenth-Century Music, among other venues. She is the recipient of the Alfred Einstein and M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet awards from the American Musicological Society, as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbright Program. Her current book project addresses the circulation of music and musicians between early modern France and the colonial Caribbean.