Dominique-René S. de
Lerma
(From Antonio Green)
The Chevalier de Saint-Georges: Virtuoso of The Sword And The Bow
Gabriel Banat
Gabriel Banat writes:
I am deeply saddened at the news of the
death of Dominique-René de Lerma, Dom, to us his friends and admirers. Here is an excerpt from my memoirs concerning
the beginning of our meeting of minds about the Chevalier de Saint-Georges.
"My monograph about Joseph Bologne,
the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, published in 1990 by Black Music Research
Journal, still contained a number of errors.
So I was particularly pleased when Professor Dominique-René de Lerma, author
of the historical introduction to volume III of my “Masters of the Violin,” devoted
to the works of Saint-Georges, in a footnote to his article, Black Composers in Europe, wrote: “The
year of Saint-Georges’ birth, as corrected by Gabriel Banat in this issue, [of
BMRJ] is hereby acknowledged.“
I am still and will always be grateful
for that noble gesture, all too rare among academics, to publicly credit even
an amateur musicologist like myself, for correcting an error.
Some years later, referring to my
biography of the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Dom wrote:
There exists no
end of shameless fiction and manufacture [about St. Georges]. I once fell for
one of these. The only source I can
recommend is the recent and very scholarly work by Gabriel Banat, which I plan
to nominate for an award from the Music Librarian’s Association. It is one thing to
have been fooled into thinking that fiction is truth, as I have been, but it is
musicologically criminal not to repent, with apology.
This was the beginning of a
correspondence nurtured by our shared struggle for the truth.
I shall miss his cheerful spirit and
occasionally biting wit immensely.
Gabriel Banat
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