A musical journey to foreign worlds: rediscovered music by Sebastian George, a German composer who rose to become a style-defining figure in Moscow and St Petersburg at the end of the 18th century

In the second half of the 18th century musical life in Moscow was flourishing. Attracted by high wages, foreign musicians undertook long and complex journeys to Russia aiming to assimilate, perhaps even to settle there permanently.

These musical travellers found that working in a foreign country presented copious new perspectives giving them inspiring outlets for composition. Originally from Mainz, Sebastian George was one such kapellmeister/composer who first travelled to Moscow in about 1766. In the early 1770s, as kapellmeister he started to form connections with Moscow University and the courts of the Sheremetevs and Razumovskys and, on settling in Russia, soon established himself as an entrepreneur, running a music shop in St Petersburg from 1776-79 that sold scores, various musical instruments and, perhaps less predictably... wine!