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George Onslow was born on July 27, 1784 as the son of an English-French
noble family. His father Edward had been elected member of the English
Parliament, but had to leave England one year later owing to a scandal
the circumstances of which have never been cleared. He then went to
France and settled there, buying the Chalendrat Castle near Clermont-Ferrand
in the Auvergne. In 1783 he married Marie-Rosalie de Bourdeille de Brantôme,
a descendent of a very venerable French noble family. At the Château
de Chalendrat, young George enjoyed a very sophisticated education,
supervised by his father, which also included music and piano lessons.
The French Revolution in 1789 brought despair to the young family. Edward,
jailed because of his royalist attitude and activities, was forced into
exile in 1789. His son George joined him on his journey to Hamburg,
where the famous pianist J. L. Dussek (1760 -1812) accepted him as a
student. While Edward returned to the Auvergne in 1800, George went
to London to continue his studies with J. B. Cramer (1771-1858), a pupil
of Clementi. In 1803, he also finally returned to his home country and
settled down at Chalendrat Castle. In the mean time, George had become
renowned as a pianist of "brilliant skills, artistic virtuosity, and
beautiful sound", as reports the contemporary music critic Antoine-Francois
Marmontel. Back home he found access to a group of music lovers, amateur
musicians who indulged in playing chamber music; in order to be a more
integral part of the group, Onslow learnt to play cello and began composing
his first little pieces in 1806: string quintets, a piano sonata and
piano trios. Although these pieces were published in the following two
years, Onslow must have realized his deficiencies in composing techniques,
for in 1808 he approached Anton Reicha (1770-1836), asking for lessons;
Reicha, a professor of counterpoint at the Paris Conservatoire in later
years, was one of the most influential music teachers of his time apart
from Cherubini. From then on, Onslow spent his summers at home in the
Auvergne, during wintertime he went to Paris to study or perform his
own compositions within a small circle of Parisians who loved chamber
music. We don't know how long Onslow studied with Reicha. In any case,
within the next decade, between 1808 and 1817, he wrote at least 12
string quartets, some duets for violin and piano and some smaller variations
and pieces for piano solo. In 1817 he went through a deep creative crisis,
lamenting that "my muse is dead". He also refused to follow the then
predominant fashion to "invent solos and arpeggios". Until 1823 he merely
wrote a few solo sonatas and it may have been this disconcerting experience
that during these years he turned to opera for the first time in his
life: in 1824 and 1827 he brought two comical operas on stage, 'L'Alcade
de la Véga' and 'Le Colporteur', the former with modest, the latter
with satisfactory success. His chamber music, however, had meanwhile
made him very popular across his country's borders. In 1830 he became
a member of honor of the London Philharmonic Society (an honor that
was awarded to his colleague Berlioz, who dedicated his second symphony
to Onslow, only a full twenty years later). The music press in France
praised Onslow as "our French Beethoven", while the German music critics
claimed him as a composer of the "German School". In 1837 he brought
out his third opera, Guise ou Les Etats des Blois' that persevered on
French opera stages for quite some time. After Cherubini's death he
was elected to succeed him as a member of the famous Académie des Beaux
Arts. In 1847 he was invited to preside over the music festival Niederrheinisches
Musikfest and wrote his fourth symphony for this occasion. Deaf on one
ear after a hunting accident in early years and increasingly tortured
by nervous headaches he now spent most of the year in the Auvergne,
traveling to Paris for no longer than one or two months in order to
take part in meetings at the Académie or to introduce his latest compositions.
After 1848, however, his symphonies disappeared from the repertoire
list of the orchestra Conservatoire orchestra. Onslow, deeply hurt,
blamed the new enthusiasm for Beethoven that had gained momentum in
Paris ever since the 1830ies, for the open neglect of his oeuvre. However,
his last years were clouded by severe doubts about his abilities - in
1850 he confided in a friend, telling him that the more he analyzed
his compositions, the stronger became his impression that he lacked
imagination and ideas. After completing his opus 83, a piano trio, he
gave up and never wrote down a single note anymore until he died on
October 03, 1853.
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