Lesser-Known Composer of the Month: George Onslow

Wait, Who?

Onslow was a French composer of English ancestry, the son of an English aristocrat who settled in France in 1781 and married a local woman.  Although most of his life and career was spent in France, he studied piano in England and Germany and remained in contact with the English musical scene.

During his life he was frequently placed in company with Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn, although his fame did not long outlast his death.  Berlioz called him one of the musical glories of France and observed that, after the death of Beethoven, it was he who "held the scepter of instrumental music."  In 1842 he succeeded Cherubini as the director of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

His wealth gave him the freedom to pursue his own musical interests without the need to appease critics.  His later works, particularly after he began grappling with his complicated opinions of the late Beethoven quartets, were criticized as too erudite or intellectual to find popular success, which may be a contributing factor to the neglect his works experienced after his death.

See his Grove article for more information.

Onslow had a life-long appreciation of opera, but his few efforts in that field were not particularly successful.  His reputation rested on the strength of his instrumental music, which included four symphonies and a prodigious quantity of chamber music.

His most favored genres for most of his career were the string quartet and string quintet, of which he wrote 37 and 34 respectively.  The quartets follow the standard instrumentation, but the quintets vary; most were written for the combination of 2 violins, viola, and 2 cellos, but were published with an alternate second viola part.  After hearing the double bass virtuoso Domenico Dragonetti, Onslow scored his next several quintets with a bass in place of the second cello, and subsequent quintets were published with an alternate part for bass.