On September 7, 1726, François-André Danican Philidor was born. His somewhat senior contemporary Carlo Goldoni could very well have described him as a “servant of two masters”. Or perhaps to be more accurate – a servant of two muses: Polyhymnia (the muse of sacred poetry, sacred hymn and eloquence) and Caïssa (contemporarily and less officially known as the goddess of chess).

And what would drive this man to seek perfection in a second profession? After all, he came from a storied and talented family of composers, and all of Paris if not all of Europe was lauding his comic operas. However, as he grew older, Philidor drifted away from his familiar haunts in the theaters of Paris and increasingly spent his waking hours at the chess Mecca of France, the Café de la Régence.

Many of today’s chess masters divided the history of chess into “before” and “after” Philidor. For example, prior to Philidor, one style of chess playing dominated – an attack based game in which pawns were considered cannon fodder. “The pawn is the soul of chess,” said Philidor, who is considered the first grandmaster of chess (although no such title existed in his time). In the early 20th century grandmaster Aron Nimzowitsch, one of the founding theorists of position play, discovered to his dismay that his main discoveries had been made a century and a half before his time by Philidor. 

The essence of this great Frenchman’s talent was perhaps best recognized by Alexander Alekhin, who was not known for compliments: “Philidor was in the complete sense of the phrase a ‘child of the sun’, but not in his external life but rather in his internal essence. He was one of those rare people that not only are gifted with two major talents but that also able to fully develop these talents in life. Music satisfied his striving to achieve something beautiful, while the game of chess fulfilled the ‘mathematical’ side of his being. Here he was an artist and there he was a scientist. And he applied the same devoted energy and love to both of them – music and chess.”

Unfortunately, there are very few records of games played by Philidor. However, the story of how he taught King Louis XV how to play chess is legend. Following a few lessons, the monarch invited a member of the royal court to play against him and (who would have guessed) won. After this, the king of France asked Philidor, “So, how about that.” Philidor replied in a most dignified manner that the His Highness had just moved from the category of a no-nothing chess player to that of a very bad chess player.

To little surprise, he had no success in the French royal court. And such was life. Interestingly, in 1792, when planning to return from London to France, Philidor discovered that he was not welcome in France after the revolution.