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

This is a tribute to the 10th Anniversary of a landmark CD: "Violin Concertos by Black Composers of the 18th and 19th Centuries", Cedille Records CDR 90000 035 (1997). The violin soloist was a 23-year-old Chicago musician named Rachel Barton; she was accompanied by the Encore Chamber Orchestra and Daniel Hege, conductor. The CD was recorded in June, 1997. News of the forthcoming release reached me via an online classical music group that summer.

An earlier CD had introduced me to the works of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, but this was my first recording of Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges, José Sylvestre White and Chevalier J.J.O. de Meude-Monpas. When I received my copy in September, I knew from the sound, the cover image of Saint-Georges and the thoughtful liner notes of Prof. Mark Clague of the University of Michigan that I had the makings of a website. Saint-Georges had been heard in the 1970s on the CBS Black Composers Series of LPs, and on a handful of Arion CDs from France, but this was the first U.S. CD to present the music of this distinguished composer of the French Enlightenment.

This disc was also my introduction to Cedille Records, the highly respected classical music label of The Chicago Classical Recording Foundation. Cedille's President is James Ginsburg, who subsequently recorded an important “African Heritage Symphonic Series” in 3 volumes, with the Chicago Sinfonietta and its Founder and Conductor, Dr. Paul Freeman.

David Mermelstein wrote in The New York Times on Feb. 22, 1998:

“The young violinist Rachel Barton handles the concertos' varied demands with unaffected aplomb, performing this music lovingly rather than dutifully.”

ClassicsToday.com wrote:

"10/10 -- Soloist Rachel Barton sounds perfectly at home in all four of these stylistically disparate compositions, but she gives an especially impressive performance of White's expressively and technically demanding concerto. The composers would be pleased to hear such committed advocacy on the part of Daniel Hege and the Encore Chamber Orchestra, who present these works as repertoire staples. Cedille's usual top-drawer sound makes this a disc you should not miss."

The Rachel Elizabeth Barton Foundation, www.REBF.org, is a tax-exempt charitable organization founded in 2001 to foster awareness and appreciation of classical music. The website explains its landmark effort to diversify classical music for strings, for which I am an Advisor: “The Rachel Elizabeth Barton Foundation is working on an exciting project to research, commission, and compile classical works by composers of African descent. The String Student’s Library of Music by Black Composers will be a supplemental curriculum to acquaint students of all races and various stages of development with the rich heritage of classical string music from this ethnic background. Dr. Dominique-René de Lerma, the leading authority on black classical composers, is Chief Advisor for this project.

The motivation for The String Student's Library grew out of REB Foundation President Rachel Barton Pine's release in 1997 of a CD with the Encore Chamber Orchestra, "Violin Concertos by Blakc Composers from the 18th & 19th Centuries." Working with Chicago's Center for Black Music Research to locate the music and learn more about it, Ms. Pine became keenly aware of the relative obscurity of this repertoire and how little is known about it by students and performers."

A decade after its release, the CD is still in print and is still an important part of the repertoire of recordings of the works of composers of African descent. I continue to give copies of the CD as gifts. One thing which has changed is the historical data on the Chevalier J.J.O. de Meude-Monpas. When Gabriel Banat wrote the biography, “The Chevalier de Saint-Georges: Virtuoso of the Sword and the Bow”, published by Pendragon Press (2006), he found no evidence that Meude-Monpas was of African descent. Historical references had named him a “Black Musketeer”, but Banat's research disclosed that “Black” referred to the color of the horses used by the members of his unit, not to the composer's race.

Dr. Dominique-René de Lerma posted a comment at Amazon.com on June 17, 2007 to clarify the situation: “Quite true, this is an excellent collection of perfectly fine works, offered beautifully by an enormously gifted technician and real musician. No reservations on that point. In very recent times, however, we have determined that Meude-Monpas had no African ancestry. I was responsible for that error about twenty years ago, being misled by everything except for the composer's biography. I wondered at that time why a minority citizen would have been a royalist.”