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Born
1784
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1853
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André George Louis Onslow (pronounced onzlo) is a French composer, born in Clermont-Ferrand on July 27, 1784 and died in that same city on October 3, 1853.
George Onslow is a singular figure in the history of music: widely and unanimously recognized in his lifetime, he is today almost forgotten, and his work, mainly devoted to chamber music for strings, is almost absent repertoire for more than a century in modern edition.
Born into an old family of the English aristocracy, many of whose members played an important role in British politics (three of them were speakers in the House of Commons), his father, Édouard, came to live in Clermont-Ferrand in 1781 following a family scandal that forced him to leave his native soil. Quickly integrated into Clermont's notability, the Onslow led a peaceful life until 1789, when the Revolution compromised their security. Imprisoned in 1793 because of his nationality, and despite his connivance with Couthon, of which he was a brother in masonry, he was forced into exile in 1797. His eldest son, George, accompanied him in what would become for him a study trip.
Between 1798 and 1806, he studied piano with several masters, including Johann Baptist Cramer, Jan Ladislav Dussek and Nicolas-Joseph Hüllmandel who teach in London; stays in Germany and Austria allow him to complete his training as an instrumentalist. He is not yet destined for the artistic career, and still less for that of composer: the study of the piano is only one aspect of his education, just like mathematics, History, fencing riding, drawing (two of his brothers devoted themselves to painting), etc. From the point of view of his parents, it is more a salon talent than a professional skill: moreover, it never occurred in recital as a pianist, and it is only in Clermont that he accepted from time to time to applaud his improviser's gifts. He also practices the cello amateur to complete a quartet of friends with whom he practiced the repertoire of masters (Mozart, Haydn, the young Beethoven). It is by hearing the opening of Stratonice, an opera of Mehul, that he discovers his vocation as a composer: he is then 22 years old. His first essay, a collection of three quintets, was so successful that his friends, his interpreters and Camille Pleyel, his publisher, encouraged him to persevere. Quartets and trios immediately followed, but he quickly measured his shortcomings and decided to complete his theoretical knowledge by recovering to the good care of Anton Reicha who was his only master composition. His influence was to be decisive, both from an aesthetic and stylistic point of view.
He began a brilliant career that quickly made him an essential composer of the musical life of the first half of the nineteenth century: the greatest performers put him in their repertoire and his name rubs those of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven which is estimated that he is the worthy and unique successor. Nicknamed the French Beethoven, he is the only one, at least in France, to devote himself to chamber music: with 36 quartets and 34 quintets, he leaves an exceptional production that feeds for over five decades the main European concert companies, while making the beautiful days of publishers to the United States (Schirmer).
It is especially in Germany that he meets the greatest favor: enrolled in the pantheon of German glories, he enjoys an exceptional favor among musicians and the public, of which Mendelssohn and Schumann were the living witnesses. Not content to gather the votes of his contemporaries, and to benefit from an unusual editorial diffusion, he also enjoys a broad institutional recognition: member of most philharmonic societies of Europe, he was elected in 1842 to the Academy of Fine Arts, Berlioz in particular.
At a time when, especially in Paris, the taste of vaudeville and comic opera was cultivated, he embodies the continuity of the classical grande école and serves as an alibi for the decadence of music in a context. marked by the "privatization" of musical life. The quartets from Baillot to Paris, from Lindley to London, and from Zimmermann to Berlin were considered the last refuges of true music, and he became the herald of the defenders of tradition and instrumental excellence against the drifts represented by in their eyes, romances, quadrilles and other entertainment music. He composed no less than three operas, driven at the same time by his curiosity and the desire to establish his fame (L'Alcade de la Vega, 1824, Le Colporteur, 1827, and Le Duc de Guise, 1837): en despite their programming at the room.
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