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- Category: Campus News
Professor of Music Charles Pettaway’s lecture The Black Mozart, Joseph Boulogna Chavalier de Saint-Georges was aired on PCN-TV (Pennsylvania Cable Network) as an episode of the award-winning arts and culture program Humanities on the Road on August 23.
Saint-Georges was an African French musician whose music and life have within the last decade come to the fore of music history. Credited as an innovator, Saint- Georges was an important musician in France from 1765 to 1789. According to Professor Pettaway, recent scholarship indicates that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart may have borrowed a musical theme from St. Georges for one of his large scale orchestral works. “The French called him The Black Mozart because his music was so similar,” said Pettaway.
Professor Pettaway’s Music Literature and Styles class was the setting for this lecture which is designed to illustrate his verbal explanation of sonata-allegro, a standard classical music form. An excerpt of Professor Pettaway performing Saint-Georges’ work can be viewed at http://www.humanitiesontheroad.org/saint-georges-the-black-mozart/
PCN-TV distributes educational programming from the state’s higher education institutions and is recognized as a preeminent state public affairs network in the United States.