George Onslow (1784 – 1853): String Quintet in E Flat Major op 57
History has dealt a rather unkind hand to George Onslow. Largely unknown today, he was ranked as a first-rate composer in his day and many of Europe’s finest talked about him in the same breath as Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. His music was published widely and internationally, and he was showered with almost every possible public honour during his lifetime.
Aside from being talented, he was a tall, handsome and charming man, making a good impression almost everywhere he went. According to a friend, his “independent and unbiased judgement; his character and conversation being serio-humoristic, no doubt enhanced his popularity.”
The only thing about George Onslow that occasionally confused people was his nationality. But it was all quite simple really: hailing from an English clan of noblemen and Parliamentarians, Onslow was a proud Frenchman who would evolve a musical language steeped in the traditions of Germany and Austria.
As few seemed more comfortable in their chosen profession, it was all the more surprising that Onslow was never originally intended to be a composer. Growing up in the grand Château de Chalendrat in the Auvergne region of France, George’s education (which included mathematics, history, fencing, horse riding, drawing and tree-planting) was very much one intended for a nineteenth century gentleman of leisure. Although he learned piano to a high standard, his parents only regarded it as a “drawing-room” pursuit and George would never perform professionally. In a later autobiographical note, he would admit that “music studies formed but a secondary part of [my] education”. As for composition, it was not even discussed.
Politics, rather than music, ran through his family. Both his father Edward and grandfather (also called George) had been members of the British Parliament while his great grandfather Arthur had been the speaker in the House of Commons*
*At a time when Britain still governed America, Arthur Onslow even had an American shire named after him in 1734 – Onslow County in Virginia, a name it bears to this day.
Despite his own distinguished background, George’s father was something of a colourful character with a knack of getting himself into trouble. After being elected MP for the Yorkshire constituency of Aldborough in 1780, he became embroiled in a sexual scandal a year later, one which necessitated him hurriedly resigning his Parliamentary seat before fleeing the country in disgrace.
Arriving in Clermont-Ferrand, he married a rich noblewoman grandly named Marie Rosalie de Bourdeilles de Brantôme (George’s future mother), whose dowry enabled him to retire to the country in some comfort. But a man of Edward’s social class might still have chosen a better place than 1780s France to rebuild his life. After the 1789 Revolution, he inevitably fell foul of the new authorities and even spent some time in prison (thankfully avoiding the guillotine) before being forced into temporary exile in the Netherlands and then Germany.
While Edward stoically saw out his time abroad, his now teenage son would join him for extended visits, taking full opportunity of his father’s changing locations to study with several famous piano virtuosos, such as Jan Ladislav Dussek (in Hamburg) and Johann Baptist Cramer (London). According to one of his friends, George would evolve into an excellent pianist, with a “brilliant technique, skilful virtuosity, and beautiful sound.”
But it was only when he got back to France that George finally realised his true calling, after hearing an electrifying performance of Étienne Méhul’s Overture to his opera Stratonice in 1806. As he later noted of this life-changing moment:
On hearing this piece, I experienced so lively an emotion in the depths of my soul that I sensed myself at once penetrated by feelings previously unknown to me; even today this moment is present in my thought. After this, I saw music with other eyes; the veil which had hidden its beauties from me was rent; it became the source of my most intimate joy, and the faithful companion of my life.
Although twenty-two years old is a relatively late age to start writing music, George already appeared to possess the necessary patience and clear-headedness to do whatever was necessary to succeed. His punning family motto, “Go On Slow”, called for a sound and methodical approach to all things, a general attitude the young man was happy to embrace.
Having decided upon his vocation, George’s first priority was to find himself a wife (in his case a French heiress named Charlotte Françoise Delphine de Fontanges, with whom he would have three children). Then he got down to applying himself seriously to the art of composition. Partial to the idea of writing chamber music, he took up the ‘cello so that he could perform in small instrumental ensembles and thus gain first-hand insight into instrumental balance and texture. For the more theoretical stuff, he engaged one of the Paris Conservatoire professors as his teacher, the ever versatile Anton Reicha, an arrangement that would last for many years.
Onslow wrote incessantly over the next decade, turning out a dozen or so string quartets, alongside piano works and duos for violin and piano. With regular help and advice from Reicha, he would gradually improve and widen his technical range.
Yet from quite early on, he showed little inclination to partake in the French fashions for the day – either for grand opera or virtuosic salon music. Part of the reason was that as a self-supporting amateur, Onslow had no economic need to pack out the concert halls. But it was also an aesthetic choice. He much preferred to lay down his roots in the old classical Austro-Germanic tradition, and in the music of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, studying their counterpoint and harmonic architecture, and learning their methods so thoroughly that within a few years he had acquired a real mastery of his craft.
Aside from going on to compose four Beethovenian symphonies, alongside various trios and sonatas and the odd operatic venture, Onslow’s best music is probably to be found in his thirty-six string quartets and thirty-four string quintets, which he wrote over a forty-five year period starting from 1806.
If you like the chamber works of Haydn, Schubert, Hummel and Beethoven, then you will almost certainly like those by George Onslow too. Technically assured and continually inventive, occasionally dramatic and always imbued with a rich harmonic palate, his works for string ensemble serve as another bridge between the chamber music of the early and later nineteenth century, both evoking the spirit of Beethoven while looking ahead to Brahms.
But Onslow’s music also had a particular importance to his fellow countrymen. As the only composer of his kind in France, he would come to be seen as a vanguard for the old classical tradition, with its insistence on good craftsmanship and architectural balance – in sharp contrast to the supposedly frivolous glamour and glitter of the contemporary Parisian scene. To certain critics like François-Joseph Fétis, Onslow’s music filled an important niche, its creation only possible because “his social position renders him independent.”
Onslow’s career was somewhere near its peak when he came to write his String Quintet in E Flat Major in 1835*. He was then in a particularly intense period of composition, having turned out no less than sixteen major string ensemble works over the previous three years. But the E Flat Major Quintet is a particularly exquisite work and would certainly be far better known today had its author enjoyed better luck with his posthumous legacy.
*Its exact, slightly unusual scoring is for two violins, viola, ‘cello and double bass – more about that later.
Although the first movement follows a conventional sonata form structure, it is really shaped by three recurring features – rising pizzicato figures, ambiguous, chromatic melodies and energetic triplet passages. Despite its cheerful enough major key setting, the constant, sometimes disconcerting tonal excursions create a mood that is often wistful and subdued.
The slow second movement, a lament in G Minor, is full of searching introversion. Built upon a seemingly endless flow of aching melody, its impressive emotional gravitas (recalling not only the music Beethoven but also of Cherubini) is scarcely allowed to falter throughout. By sharp contrast, the manic third movement suggests the more gregarious side to its composer, its impudent wit only matched by the skillful interchange of various fleeting motifs between the five instruments.
The superb final movement (entitled Pastorale) is a tour de force of lyrical beauty, dazzling counterpoint and delicious harmonic colours. It opens with a haunting violin melody, accompanied by “squeeze-box” style broken chords on the other instruments, a theme that will be heard twice more over the course of the movement. In between its appearances is some of the most brilliantly inventive music that Onslow ever wrote, full of bold textural and harmonic experimentation, before the movement races towards its conclusion in the sunniest of moods.
Onslow’s chamber music sold far and wide across Europe, as well as being performed by some of the finest ensembles of the day. Almost everyone got to hear of him, and his admirers among the musical elite were numerous and genuine. Both Mendelssohn and Schumann considered Onslow a kind of nineteenth century Haydn, while Schubert would model the scoring for his famous String Quintet in C Major on those written by Onslow, rather than by Mozart or Beethoven*. Even Berlioz, a composer who could hardly have been more different to Onslow, had little but glowing praise, describing him as one of the “greatest harmonists of the period”, having inherited “the sceptre of instrumental music” from Beethoven. Recognizing the market potential of such comparisons, Onslow’s French publishers began to sell their prize composer as “notre Beethoven Français”, something then eagerly echoed by the Parisian press.
*While Beethoven and Mozart scored their quintets for two violins, two violas and one ‘cello, both Schubert and Onslow (in his earlier works) opted for a warmer bass tone by replacing one of the violas with a ‘cello. As we have seen from his op 57 Quintet, Onslow would eventually take things a step further by replacing one of his ‘cellos with a double bass.
The rest of the world thought much the same and for a time, it seemed, George Onslow was being made an honorary member of just about every prestigious organisation in Europe, from London’s Philharmonic Society (Onslow was elected at the same time as Mendelssohn), to the Parisian Académie des Beaux-Arts, to societies and institutions based in Rotterdam, Vienna, Rome, Florence, Cologne, Strasbourg and Stockholm. He also became only the second composer (after Luigi Cherubini) to be awarded France’s prestigious Legion d’Honneur.
Having for many years divided his time equally between Paris and his home in the Auvergne, Onslow began to scale back his visits to the French capital from the 1830s onwards. Always a civic-minded musician, he became much more involved in his local community, working hard to energize Clermont-Ferrand’s musical life, organizing charity concerts and helping to found a local Philharmonic Society.
Despite his great career success, Onslow’s later years were tinged with increasing melancholy and uncertainty over his place in the musical world. After his country’s 1848 Revolution had seen the final collapse of the old French monarchy, Onslow found much of his music, and not least his symphonies, suddenly disappearing from the Parisian repertoire, as if already swallowed up by the tide of history.
The aches and pains of old age did little help his sombre outlook, even if some of his ailments had their origins in a near-fatal hunting accident from a few years earlier. One of his fellow huntsman had accidentally fired his weapon towards Onslow’s face, leaving the composer deaf in one ear and with constant headaches for the rest of his life*.
*Onslow had nonetheless taken some musical inspiration from his “long and tedious” recovery, during which time he had worked on a String Quintet in C Minor (op 38). He called the work “The Bullet”, while subtitling its last three movements “Fever”, “Convalescence” and “Recovery”.
Even as he could occasionally be harshly self-critical about his music, Onslow’s simple love of composing remained his biggest consolation. He continued to turn out high-quality chamber music, completing his final work in 1851, a Piano Trio in F Minor, two years before his death.
His reputation would initially endure for much of the later nineteenth century, if mainly among academic-minded musicians, who admired his technique and sound classical principles (at a time when such things were becoming ever scarcer in music).
But as the twentieth century dawned and the musical world exploded into a startling new era of harmonic and rhythmic experimentation, Onslow looked an increasingly irrelevant figure. His music was no longer printed and allowed to fall into obscurity – as indeed it (quite undeservedly) remains today, even if there have been stirrings of a revival since the bicentenary of his birth in 1984.