[Rita Dove; George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower (1780-1860), Copyright: The British Museum]
The Little Review
Poem for Tuesday
The Bridgetower
By Rita Dove
“per il Mulatto Brischdauer
gran pazzo e compositore mulattico
––Ludwig van Beethoven, 1803.
“If was at the Beginning. If
he had been older, if he hadn't been
dark, brown eyes ablaze
in that remarkable face;
if he had not been so gifted, so young
a genius with no time to grow up;
if he hadn't grown up, undistinguished,
to an obscure old age.
If the piece had actually been,
as Kreutzer exclaimed, unplayable––even after
our man had played it, and for years,
no one else was able to follow––
so that the composer's fury would have raged
for naught, and wagging tongues
could keep alive the original dedication
from the title page he shredded.” [Full Post]
The Beethoven Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 9 in A Minor, Op. 47, now called the Kreutzer Sonata, was originally dedicated to the Black violin virtuoso
George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower (1780-1860). Beethoven accompanied him on piano at the work's premiere in Vienna in 1803. Before the sonata could be published, a personal disagreement with Bridgetower led Beethoven to substitute the name of another violinist, Rodolphe Kreutzer. Kreutzer called the work unplayable, and never performed it.
Dr. Dominique-René de Lerma gives a detailed account at the George Bridgetower page of AfriClassical.com
"Rita Dove served as Poet Laureate of the United States and Consultant to the Library of Congress from 1993 to 1995 and as Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. She has received numerous literary and academic honors, among them the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and, more recently, the 2003 Emily Couric Leadership Award, the 2001 Duke Ellington Lifetime Achievement Award, the 1997 Sara Lee Frontrunner Award, the 1997 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, the 1996 Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities and the 1996 National Humanities Medal. In 2006 she received the coveted Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service (together with Anderson Cooper, John Glenn, Mike Nichols and Queen Noor of Jordan — see the press release, newspaper coverage and photos), and in 2008 she was honored with the Library of Virginia's Lifetime Achievement Award."
Rita Dove
Poet Laureate
George Bridgetower
Beethoven's Black Violinist
Kreutzer Sonata
The Bridgetower
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