INan era of such celebrated French polymaths as Voltaire and Beaumarchais, Joseph Bologne certainly stood in their company, as many contemporary reports indicated. In 1779, John Adams, later the second American president, described him as “The most accomplished Man in Europe in Riding, Shooting, Fencing, Dancing, and Music.”

While most of Bologne’s musical education remains a mystery, we know he studied fencing with France’s most acclaimed swordsman, Tessier de La Boëssière, who later wrote, “At 15 his progress was so rapid that he was already beating the best swordsmen, and at 17 he developed the greatest speed imaginable.”

Bologne is reputed to have lost just one fencing match during his long career. Not surprisingly, he was also an expert and elegant dancer, which, combined with his conversational skill and good looks, made Bologne a highly sought-after figure in upper-class and noble salons.

In 1772, Bologne made his public debut as a violin soloist, performing two of his early concertos with Le Concert des Amateurs. (“Amateurs” here means lovers of music.) The Mercure de France said that his concertos “received the most rapturous applause, both for its [sic] excellent execution and for the composition itself.” A year later he was appointed conductor of the group.

Bologne was an early pioneer in the string quartet genre, writing 18 of them, as well as 14 violin concertos, eight sinfonia concertantes (a form midway between a symphony and a concerto, with one or more soloists plus orchestra), six operas, and at least two symphonies.

His conducting skills led to a 1781 appointment leading the Concert de la Loge Olympique, the largest and most skillful orchestra in Europe at the time. On behalf of the group and its patron, Bologne commissioned the six “Paris” symphonies from Franz Joseph Haydn and conducted their highly successful premieres during 1786.

Military matters dominated much of the rest of his life. When the French Revolution began in 1789, Bologne, who was of mixed race, not surprisingly endorsed “The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen” and joined the revolutionaries’ just-formed national guard, continuing to conduct concerts when not engaged in active duty. Two years later he became colonel of the Légion Franche de Cavalerie des Américains (Free Legion of Cavalry from the Americas), a new volunteer corps of Black Europeans which repelled an Austrian attack supporting the Ancien Régime.

Bologne is also believed to have served in the mid-1790s with the troops sent to Saint-domingue (present-day Haiti) to support a revolution by the island’s enslaved population. He founded and led one more orchestra on his return to Paris, where he died in 1799.

After being virtually erased from the annals of music history, Bologne’s legacy is about to get a major boost with a feature film titled Chevalier to be released on April 7. This somewhat fictionalized biography stars Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Waves, The Trial of the Chicago 7, and Elvis) in the title role, with Lucy Boynton (Murder on the Orient Express and Bohemian Rhapsody) as Marie Antoinette. View the trailer youtu.be/-ltcimfsck — M.T.