Musical Assumptions: 'Mostly Kreutzer, Much of the Time (the other Beethoven's Ninth)'

[George Bridgetower (Copyright: The British Museum)]

Elaine Fine's blog, “Musical Assumptions,” has long been on the Favorite Blogs list of AfriClassical. Today Elaine devotes her blog to George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower (1780-1860), a violinist of African descent and the original dedicatee of the Beethoven work we now know as the “Kreutzer Sonata.”

Musical Assumptions

Elaine Fine

Thursday, July 08, 2010

“'Music forces me to forget myself and my true state; it transports me to some other state which is not mine. Under its influence I fancy I experience what I really do not feel, that I understand what I do not comprehend, that I am able to do what is completely beyond my power.'

“When writing this little morsel from 'The Kreutzer Sonata,' Leo Tolstoy, who was not a violinist, might not have realized how much he was describing what it feels like to practice this piece. Learning it well enough to make it from the state of 'me' to the desirable state of 'it' surpasses even the most enjoyable of earthly experiences. The narrator's wife In Tolstoy's 1891 story must have been quite a pianist. The piano part of this piece is as difficult as the violin part, and they work together in the most intimate ways.”

“Beethoven actually wrote his Ninth Violin Sonata for George Bridgetower, the English violinist (of West Indian and Polish parentage) who came to Vienna in 1803... Unfortunately Bridgetower insulted a woman Beethoven knew, so Beethoven took back the music, and he withdrew his dedication of the Sonata to his former friend. He then sent the music to Rudolphe Kreutzer in Paris, who deemed it impossible to play.” [Prof. Dominique-René de Lerma's scholarly article on the life and music of George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower (1780-1860) is found at AfriClassical.com]