George Saint-George (1841 – 5 January 1924) was a British musical instrument maker and composer.
Biography
He was born in
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
, Germany to English parents, and studied violin, piano and theory in Prague and Dresden.
[Born in Dresden according to ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music''; in Leipzig according to MusicWeb International.] He settled in London in the 1860s.
["A 290th Garland of British Light Music Composers"]
MusicWeb International. Retrieved 5 March 2020.
Saint-George was a maker of
viol
The viol (), viola da gamba (), or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitc ...
s and
lute
A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted.
More specifically, the term "lute" can ref ...
s; he was interested in the
viola d'amore
The viola d'amore (; Italian for "viol of love") is a 7- or 6- stringed musical instrument with sympathetic strings used chiefly in the baroque period. It is played under the chin in the same manner as the violin.
Structure and sound
The viol ...
, and played the instrument in concerts. He composed a suite for strings ''L'Ancien Régime'', based on 18th-century dance music, and other works.
["Saint-George, George". Percy A. Scholes, ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music''. OUP, 1964.]
He died in London on 5 January 1924.[
His son Henry Saint-George (1866–1917) was a violinist and academic at the ]Trinity College of Music
Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance is a music and dance conservatoire based in London, England. It was formed in 2005 as a merger of two older institutions – Trinity College of Music and Laban Dance Centre. The conservatoire has ...
; he published two monographs, ''The Bow: Its History, Manufacture, And Use'' (1896) and ''Fiddles: Their Selection, Preservation and Betterment'' (1910), and was editor of ''The Strad
''The Strad'' is a UK-based monthly classical music magazine about string instrumentsprincipally the violin, viola, cello and double bassfor amateur and professional musicians. Founded in 1889, the magazine provides information, photographs and re ...
''[ magazine.
]
See also
* Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges
Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (25 December 1745 – 10 June 1799), was a French Creole (people), Creole virtuoso violinist and composer, who was conductor of the leading symphony orchestra in Paris.
Saint-Georges was born in the ...
- an occasionally confused (but apparently unrelated) French violinist and composer
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint-George, George
1841 births
1924 deaths
Bowed string instrument makers
19th-century British composers
20th-century British composers