Celebrating great classical musicians past and present for Black Music Appreciation Month

Classical music goes back centuries, and many musicians helped pave the way for the music we hear today. Some of the earliest composers were Black and are now finally getting well-deserved recognition. In celebration of Black Music Appreciation Month, we pay tribute to a few classical pioneers and modern luminaries. 

Joseph Bologne

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745-99), is the most interesting of them all because he was the most accomplished man in Europe of his time and inspired many other musicians, including Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Saint-Georges was the child of Nanon and her married slave master, Georges Bologne de Saint-Georges. Saint-Georges’ father claimed him as his son, which was unusual for the time, and sent him to fencing school in France at 7. He became the best fencer in the school and then trained in violin under François-Joseph Gossec in the Concert des Amateurs orchestra. He became a concertmaster, then the conductor and started working on his own compositions. Saint-Georges made waves as a Black man in Europe and is remembered today for his contributions to classical music.

Here is his First Violin Concerto, published in 1773: 

Learn more in this crash Crash Course on Saint-Georges:

A new movie, Chevalier, celebrates his legacy: 

Florence Price

Florence Price (1887-1953) was born to a family of three in Arkansas. Her father was a dentist, and her mother was a music teacher. She performed her first piano concert at 4 and composed her first piece of music at 11. If her signs of brilliance didn’t stop there, she would go on to graduate high school at the 14 and start studying at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. She graduated from college in 1906 with honors, a teacher’s certificate and a diploma in organ performance. 

In a world dominated by white male composers, she broke the stigma in 1933, when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered her Symphony No. 1, making her the first Black woman to have a piece performed by a major orchestra. She went on to compose three other symphonies and won the Wanamaker Prize in 1932.

Price is widely appreciated today and inspired many women composers of the time. 

Here’s the Chicago Symphony Orchestra playing Price’s Andante Moderato in 2021: 

And here’s another crash course on the composer: 

David Baker

David Baker (1931-2016) was a jazz composer, conductor, cellist and trombone virtuoso credited with more than 65 recordings and 2,000 compositions.

He was born in Indianapolis, where he graduated high school and attended college at Indiana University, earning bachelor’s and master's degrees in music education. His career as a trombonist was cut short because of a car accident that inhibited him from playing. That’s when he switched his focus to cello, composing and teaching.

Baker is widely known for his career as a music teacher at the Jacobs School of Music of Indiana University, where he wrote the curriculum and established in 1968 a jazz studies program, which was not a popular study area in American universities then. His compositions are referred to as the genre Third Stream Jazz, which is a fusion of jazz and classical music. His many honors include an Emmy, the National Association of Jazz Educators Hall of Fame and the Arts Midwest Jazz Masters Award.

Listen to Baker’s Screamin’ Meemies:

Jessie Montgomery

Jessie Montgomery is a violin virtuoso and great contemporary composer. She was born and raised in New York and studied violin at the Third Street Music School Settlement. She continued her education at Juilliard, where she earned a degree in violin performance and then moved to New York University to get her master’s in composition for film and multimedia.

Her compositions pull inspiration from genres such as folk music, R&B and soul and seek to bring social awareness to anyone who listens. At 41, she has achieved so much classically and serves as an inspiration to women in music. She is the composer-in-residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation and holds the Sphinx Medal of Excellence.

Here is her work Strum, performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra: