Notes on the Program

Benjamin Franklin was one of the most extraordinary men of his age, but perhaps his most underrated gift was his uncanny instinct for being exactly where the most interesting things were happening. When he took up his post as America’s minister to France, he made his home in the village of Passy, right next door to Paris’ hottest musical and intellectual gathering, Madame Brillon’s salon. Franklin was immediately captivated, visiting twice every week. “She kindly entertains me and my Grandson,” he wrote, “with little Concerts, a Dish of Tea and a Game of Chess. I call this my Opera…”

The Hostess with the Most

Before we meet our composers, we must meet the woman at the center of the Parisian musical scene. Anne-Louise Brillon de Jouy was herself a composer with nearly 90 works to her credit. None of this music was published during her lifetime, not because she lacked ambition, but because for a woman of her standing it was simply considered dishonorable to make one’s music public. Her salon therefore became the only stage available to her. Brillon’s heart was firmly with the American cause: Her celebrated composition, the Marche des Insurgés, was written to honor the American victory over the British at Saratoga in 1777, making it one of the first songs ever composed in support of the new American nation. In July of 1785, at seventy-nine years old and preparing to leave France for the last time, Franklin received a letter from her noting that she would never again find a friend like him. As a loving gesture, he packed her manuscripts and carried them all the way to Philadelphia, giving her works a future it could never have had in France. They are preserved to this day at the American Philosophical Society.

Luigi Boccherini (1743–1805)

The Franklin Quartet has always had a soft spot for Boccherini—Karen even confessed recently that he just might be her favorite composer! Boccherini arrived in Paris in 1767 and found himself utterly undone by Madame Brillon’s playing. He wrote to her: “Madame, I have never before composed for the keyboard; I heard you play on that instrument, and then I wrote these sonatas...” Paris was meant to be a layover on the way to London, but then a Roman soprano, Signorina Pelliccia, swept through the city with an Italian opera company, and suddenly London ceased to exist. Boccherini followed her to Spain, married her, and never left, spending the rest of his life near Madrid composing prolifically and becoming one of the era’s great originals.

François-Joseph Gossec (1734–1829)

Gossec is the great architect of this story. He shaped the Parisian concert world that Franklin inhabited, mentored Saint-Georges, and championed the music of Haydn, perhaps not anticipating that it would eventually upstage his own in Parisian favor. He also lived to the astonishing age of 95! His name may not ring many bells today, but in Franklin’s Paris, Gossec was a titan. The Franklin Quartet is completely captivated by today’s rarely heard gem, and we hope you will be too. Bear in mind that the French have never needed much of an excuse to poke fun at the English. We will leave it to you to decide whether the second movement, cheekily labeled “Englese,” is an homage to the rivals across the Channel, or a very good laugh at their expense.

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745–1799)

Here is a man who deserves his own miniseries—and in a sense, he got one! Born in Guadeloupe to an enslaved woman and a French plantation owner, Saint-Georges was brought to Paris as a child by a devoted father who ensured his mother’s freedom and spared no expense on his education. By his twenties he was a champion fencer; by his thirties the most celebrated violinist and conductor in Paris, a music teacher to Marie Antoinette herself, an active abolitionist, and the future colonel of the first all-black regiment in Europe. He was also, it must be said, famously good looking, which certainly did not hinder his legendary status. As a Black man in 18th-century France, the odds were formidably stacked against him, yet history could not diminish him and his music is at long last finding its way back to concert stages. In 1779, John Adams called him “the most talented man in Europe.” Franklin was still in Paris and certainly must have crossed paths with him!

Henri-Joseph Rigel (1741–1799)

Rigel might very well be the best kept secret of this program, yet he was among the most respected musicians in Franklin’s Paris. He arrived from Germany in 1767 and never left, moving through the same Parisian circles as our other composers, including at Madame Brillon’s salon where his music was loved and performed. His oratorio La Sortie d’Égypte was performed at the Concert Spirituel twenty-seven times, and even Gluck, the most celebrated opera composer of the age, was moved to sing his praises. Rigel’s son Henri-Jean later sailed to Egypt with Napoleon and became music director of the French Theater in Cairo. For a father who wrote a popular oratorio about leaving Egypt, his son’s career taking him to Egypt is quite a twist!

Ignaz Pleyel (1757–1831)

Pleyel closes our program, and what a story he brings with him. A man of humble beginnings, he became Haydn’s most celebrated pupil and then did something almost unthinkable: He arguably outshone his master in fame! In his twenties, he became music director at the cathedral in Strasbourg, where he composed as if his life depended on it, as the French Revolution effectively silenced church music. London came next, where the press gleefully attempted to pit him against Haydn himself. In response, the two ‘rival’ composers promptly sat down to dinner, attended each other’s concerts, and let London society puzzle over their intentions while they counted their earnings.

Back in France, things turned far more dangerous. A foreign-born man who had just purchased a château was exactly the wrong profile for revolutionary France. Pleyel was hauled before the Committee of Public Safety seven times, each time potentially fatal. Ever resourceful, he threw himself into writing several lavish revolutionary choral works and, lo and behold, composed his way out of trouble! Then he moved to Paris, where the Pleyel name would grace both a publishing empire and one of the most celebrated piano firms of the age. By the 1790s, his music appeared on Philadelphia concert programs more than that of any other composer, and critics called it a full-blown “Pleyel craze” on both sides of the Atlantic.

Welcome Home, Franklin!

Franklin arrived home in Philadelphia in September 1785 to a hero’s welcome, and the city was already buzzing with new energy. Today, we invite you to step into that world. Pull up a chair in Franklin’s parlor, raise a glass of his favorite Madeira, and let these five remarkable composers impress you! The young United States was just beginning to find its own cultural voice, distinct from yet deeply connected to Europe. Franklin knew, perhaps better than anyone, how much the two worlds had to offer each other. We think he would have approved of today’s program, and we suspect Madame Brillon would have too.

~ Marika Holmqvist