Montagne Ste-Geneviève

Montagne Sainte-Geneviève is an instrumental waltz attributed to Django Reinhardt and believed to belong to the very early period of his musical life, before the creation of the Quintette du Hot Club de France. Its exact date of composition is uncertain, but the piece has become one of the most fascinating surviving examples of Django's connection with the Parisian musette and Gypsy waltz tradition.

What makes Montagne Sainte-Geneviève particularly unusual is that no recording of Django himself performing the piece is known to survive. The composition was preserved through musicians from his circle and finally documented on record by guitarist Jean “Matelo” Ferret in 1960, several years after Django's death. Matelo's recording became the reference version through which later generations learned the piece.

Musical character:
The piece is a fast and highly virtuosic three-beat waltz. Its lyrical opening contrasts with an exceptionally demanding second section filled with rapid melodic movement and triplet figures. Rather than the later four-beat swing most strongly associated with Django, the music belongs to the older world of Parisian bals, musette and guitar waltzes.

Connection to Manouche Jazz:
The connection could hardly be more direct, yet it represents a very different side of Django Reinhardt. Montagne Sainte-Geneviève predates the familiar Hot Club sound and reflects the musical environment in which Django developed as a young banjo-guitar and guitar virtuoso. It forms an important link between the Parisian musette tradition and the guitar style that would eventually develop into Jazz Manouche.

Interesting facts:

• Montagne Sainte-Geneviève is credited to Django Reinhardt, but no surviving recording of Django performing it is known.
• The exact date of composition is uncertain. Tradition places it among Django's youthful works, and some accounts claim he composed his early waltzes when he was only thirteen, although this dating is not securely documented.
• The title refers to Montagne Sainte-Geneviève in Paris, an area around the historic hill and street in the Latin Quarter.
• Biographer Michael Dregni suggests that Django may have performed the piece in the Parisian bal-musette world during his youth, but there is no surviving recording with which to confirm exactly how Django himself played it.
• Matelo Ferret recorded the piece in Paris in 1960 for the Vogue EP Jean “Matelot” Ferret et sa guitare joue les inédits de Django Reinhardt.
• The same EP included three other waltzes credited to Django: Chez Jacquet, Gagoug and Choti.
• Matelo was accompanied by guitarists Jacques Montagne and Sarane Ferret.
• The rapid triplet passages of the second section have given the piece a reputation as one of the technically demanding classics of the Gypsy-waltz guitar repertoire.

Montagne Sainte-Geneviève is therefore a remarkable piece of musical history: a Django Reinhardt composition for which Django left us no recording. What survives is a melody transmitted through the musicians around him and preserved by Matelo Ferret. More than three decades after Django's early Paris years, that oral tradition finally became a record — allowing later generations to hear a piece of Django's musical world that he himself never recorded.