The Concert des Amateurs was the largest orchestra of its kind. Gossec extended an invitation to Saint-Georges immediately and, in 1769, he took the Paris stage in the first violin section. String quartets were a relatively new genre in the mid-1760s, and it was in this new genre that Saint-Georges first excelled. He made his debut in the 1772-1773 season. He advanced into concertos and, according to Gabriel Banat, initiated the modern French violin school, the technical aspects of which influenced, among others, Ludwig van Beethoven. As an upwardly mobile newcomer who, in making his way up the ranks of Parisian music circles, was helped by similarly positioned upwardly mobile newcomers who had preceded him, it is not surprising that Gossec mentored Saint-Georges. In 1773, he named Saint-Georges his successor. As its director, Saint-Georges transformed the Concert des Amateurs into the leading orchestra in France and, arguably, Europe. It comprised some 80 musicians, and many of the period's leading musicians debuted at the Hôtel de Soubise with Saint-Georges. Indeed, it would be difficult to overstate his influence on the development of classical music. By the mid-1770s, his orchestra was recognized as the finest in Europe, and he was an intimate of the entourage of musicians of the French queen, Marie-Antoinette (1755-1793), along with Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck (born in Erasbach, 1714-1787) and André Grétry (born in Liège, 17411813). When the position of music director at the Paris Opera opened up in 1776, Saint-Georges was seen by many as the best candidate to fill what was the most prestigious music post in Europe. An anti-mulatto backlash thwarted his appointment, but the fact remains that the iconic musical innovation of the classical period (1750-1820), prized as the emblem of European high culture, was heavily influenced, in both technique and style, by an upwardly mobile, half-Fulbe, Creole newcomer.