It was a good idea, and a feasible one—make a recording of wonderful string quartet music written by noted Black composers.
“When the project was created, the quartet thought that it would be one album, if you can believe that,” said Abi Fayette, a violinist with the Catalyst Quartet.
Eight years and four recordings later, the Catalyst Quartet has now concluded its Uncovered recording series, devoted to string quartet works by Black composers. The most recent disc, Uncovered, Vol. 4, is a landmark recording showcasing the complete string quartets of Joseph Boulogne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745-1799).
“This is the first time that all 18 of his string quartets have been recorded to live on one album,” Fayette said.
Boulogne was a dynamic contemporary of Mozart and enjoyed a career as one of the most noted violinists, conductors and composers in Paris in his day. In a recent video interview, Fayette put Boulogne’s music, and in particular his string quartets in the distinctive French style, in perspective.
The three other recordings in the Uncovered series feature works—including some not previously recorded—by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Florence Price, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, George Walker and William Grant Still.
Now that the Uncovered project has wrapped, the Catalyst Quartet is in the early stages of a project involving music and visual art.
“We’re sort of trying to branch out to explore more of a mixed medium relationship between string quartet performance and art, and whether or not it’s an all-encompassing sensory experience, or something that sort of exists side by side,” Fayette said.
Meanwhile, the Catalyst Quartet continues to perform works by composers of color and other historically marginalized groups, and Fayette says they can always return to their Uncovered roots in the future.
“We’ve expanded beyond historical Black composers to women composers and Latin composers, which are also works that we’re heavily incorporating into our performance season, Fayette said. “So, there may be more recordings in the future, but at the moment, we’re taking a pause.”
Transcript of interview:
Jennifer Hambrick: We are here to have a conversation about the Catalyst Quartet’s recording of string quartets by Joseph Boulogne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges. So, thank you for your time today.
Abi Fayette: Thank you. It’s great to be here.
Jennifer Hambrick: Pleasure. Pleasure to have you here. This recording is the fourth and final installment in the Catalyst Quartet’s Uncovered recording series, featuring works by historically significant Black composers. So you are bringing the series to a close with this recording.
Abi Fayette: Yes, absolutely. And definitely the longest project for the Catalyst Quartet to date. This project, we started pursuing it in 2018, so we’re rounding on eight years at this point.
Jennifer Hambrick: Tell us about Joseph Boulogne and his place in history that marks him as a significant Black composer.
Abi Fayette: Absolutely. So, he was an 18th-centry French composer, and he was really kind of a jack of all trades. So not only was he a brilliant composer, he was also a brilliant violinist, brilliant marksman and military man, and just a very large personality in French aristocracy at that time. He sort of acquired the nickname “Black Mozart,” just given the high level of his musical mind. And I think we can all agree that a Black man in the 18th century sort of achieving that status in any kind of aristocracy is quite unusual. And also, his body of work for string quartet is 18 quartets, which is no small amount, either. I will say one thing that sort of makes his quartets distinct from what we think of as a string quartet form—they’re all in the French style, which is two movements. So, you have a sonata allegro form for the first movement and then a rondo for the second movement. And that was very typical in France at that time. But also, you’re seeing alongside—in other areas of Europe, you see Joseph Haydn who’s writing string quartets that are four movements. So, a little bit of a differentiation there.
Jennifer Hambrick: Okay. And the Catalyst Quartet’s recording of Joseph Boulogne’s string quartets is the only recording of Boulogne’s complete string quartets, is that correct?
Abi Fayette: You are a hundred percent correct. This is the first time that all 18 of his string quartets have been recorded to live on one album.
Jennifer Hambrick: And this is really amazing to me. We’re in the, at this point, I guess the third decade of the 21st century and this is just now happening. I just think that’s quite amazing. And obviously, I would imagine—I am assuming—that race played a role in delaying the recording of all of his quartets. But what’s your maybe more refined take on the factors involved here?
Abi Fayette: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, first and foremost, one thing that we’ve seen consistently throughout this entire Uncovered project is even just being able to get our hands on the music has been a real barrier. We sort of had to be our own archaeologists and sort of sort through library indexes and do research as to where the music itself, the scores, actually live. So, one of our colleagues actually went over the Paris and went to the library there to actually physically scan the scores so we could have the music for one of the three sets. But, you know, I think a big part of it is also maybe fear, to take a leap of faith on something that’s unknown. Especially as recording became so prominent throughout the 20th century, people started to sort of lean on pieces that they could sort of get a sample of first. And the classical canon and the direction in which it’s been going for the last 200-plus years really kind of plays into a specific kind of individual, being white men. And so, the people that have the ability to access music education but also have the ability to program and to present music has sort of followed a trend hand in hand of going, “oh, well, we always knew Beethoven was a great comspoer. He’s a genius. And we have historical evidence that this individual wrote wonderful music and we have historical evidence that performers really can bring this music to life. And so, it’s like, well, if all the markers are there saying it’s good music, why deviate from that structure? And so, you really have to kind of take a leap of faith on something that you’re like, “Uh, I really have no idea what’s going to come out when I program this piece, but let me take a chance.” And that was a big reason for us why the Uncovered project had such a heavy importance on recording, to give people the ability to sort of get a taste of these composers’ voices. And not only for this volume with Joseph Boulogen, but also our Florence Price album had two pieces on it – uh, three works that had never been recorded before. So, they’re world premiere recordings. So that was something that we were very insistent that that had to be a main feature of the project.
Jennifer Hambrick: So, really interesting. And maybe getting back maybe a couple minutes to your point about the challenges you faced getting your hands actually on the printed music, or what have you Was it just the one set of Jospeh Boulogne’s quartets that you had difficulty getting your hands on, or how many of them had actually been published and were readily available?
Abi Fayette: Yeah, so the 18 quartets are sort of divided up into three sets of six. And so, we were really lucky that one of the sets had already been—I don’t know if published is the right word, but compiled by another ensemble, the Apollo Ensemble. And I believe that they had also recorded those quartets. Adn then, you know, musicians’ favorite online destination for music, IMSLP, we were able to find the second set. And they only existed in handwritten parts. So, the notes were all there, but we definitely had to do a little bit of work to be able to read them. And then the third set we were able to find in the library in Paris through various documentation we saw, we found on the internet. But you know, beyond just getting your hands on the music, the next herculean task we faced was we had to make sure that the notes were correct. So, there’s a lot of hours spent sort of playing things slowly. And of course, you don’t have an Urtext copy that’s been gone over by several music historians, and this music has not been performed very much, so there’s no historical practice behind it. So, you try to use your best judgement about your information you know about the time period. And you sort of look at other evidence, maybe other works of Joseph Boulogne’s to try to figure out what his typical compositional voice might be. And you just try to make your best guess as to what sounds good at the end of the day.
Jennifer Hambrick: Sure, sure. And so, after all of this, in addition to the recording that you have made, are you in the position to publish a credible, I’ll say, edition of some of his works?
Abi Fayette: Yeah, I mean, that is definitely a desire that the quartet has, I mean, especially since we have put in so much work to create these parts for ourselves. And we have colleagues reaching out to us—not just or the Joseph Boulogne quartets, but also for the Florence Price quartets, especially—to be like, “Yeah, my group was playing through this, and the notes don’t really sound right. Like, did you guys figure it out?” So, it’s definitely something that we are pursuing. We just have to navigate all the nitty-gritty details before we can sort of release that. But it’s definitely something that we have on the docket.
Jennifer Hambrick: Okay, terrific. And also getting to your comment that these quartets—all of them—are in two movements, per the French style, but that at the same time, they weren’t performed all that much, as far as you know, so that there is no sort of performing tradition to refer back to in your work. Do you have a sense for whether Joseph Boulogne composed these string quartets for professional performance in public, or did he compose these for domestic musicmaking, or all of the above?
Abi Fayette: Yeah, absolutely. So, our best theory is that given the type of personality he was, somebody who was very sociable, it’s pretty easy to kind of imagine that maybe, you know, it would be like, “Oh, you know, I got invited to this soiree tonight, and my friend who’s hosting asked if I would write a little something.” Because although they are compositionally complex, they are definitely more on sort of what I would classify as easy-listening, fun music. And that’s certainly not to say that he isn’t capable of sort of very deep, emotional music writing, but it feels a little bit like perhaps they existed more for entertainment, rather than for a serious presentation for performance. But who knows?
Jennifer Hambrick: Yeah, who knows? At the end of the day there’s a question mark there. Well, in a way I’m sorry to see you stop working on Uncovered. It seems like you could almost keep working on this project forever and never run out of material.
Abi Fayette: Absolutely. I mean, actually, funnily enough, when the project was created, the quartet thought that it would be one album, if you can believe that. And we have already expanded. I mean, we’ve expanded beyond historical Black composers to women composers and Latin composers, which are also works that we’re heavily incorporating into our performance season. So, there may be more recordings in the future, but at the moment, we’re taking a pause.
Jennifer Hambrick: Sure, sure, okay. Once again, I’ve been speaking with Abi Fayette, who’s a violinist with the Catalyst Quartet. We’ve been talking about the Catalyst Quartet’s Uncovered Volume 4, a recording devoted to the complete string quartets of Joseph Boulogne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Thank you so much for your time today and for all of your tremendous work.
Abi Fayette: Oh, thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure chatting with you.
