A detailed historical essay is found on the George Bridgetower page at AfriClassical.com. Its author is our principal adviser, Prof. Dominique-René de Lerma, http://www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com
Joshua Coyne, www.musicmanjosh.com
(Wikipedia)
Dominique-René de Lerma:
One
might not need wait much longer before a documentary film on George
Bridgetower may be shown on Public Television and subsequently available
for viewing on university campuses, libraries, and at other venues --
not just in the United States, but certainly in England and Austria. As
we know, Bridgetower was that Afro-Polish prodigy-violinist from the
end of the nineteenth-century who gave the first performance of
Beethoven's ninth violin sonata with the composer at the piano. But we
know that Beethoven was notoriously mercurial in his friendships and,
had he not taken offence at a comment Bridgetower later made, the sonata
would still bear its dedication to the violinist and be known today as
the Bridgetower Sonata, not by its subsequent dedication to Rodolphe
Kreutzer. What becomes more ironic is that Kreutzer did not like
Beethoven's music and never considered playing the work.
The
documentary came about because of the attention Rita Dove gave to
Bridgetower and the "Sonata Mulattica," which is what she titled her
expansive treatment on Bridgetower in a collection published by W. W.
Norton in 2009 (ISBN 978-0-393-07008-8). United States Poet Laureate
from 1993 to 1995, she has been on the faculty of the University of
Virginia since 1989, where she is now Commonwealth Professor of English.
But she is not just one of the leading contemporary poets -- her
treatment of Bridgetower, though it may be filled with evocative
imagery, does not permit poetic license to modify a single historical
fact. Her references are as accurate and specific as the work of any
musicologist who has researched the topic.
The
documentary was undertaken by the assemblage of professionals at Spark
Media in Washington DC, dedicated since its founding in 1989 to social
and institutional change through the documentation of its subjects, with
more than 40 major awards for its work thus far. An excellent forecast
of the Bridgetower project appears at
http://sparksmedia.org/about/who-we-are and includes a splendid a
nine-and-a-half minute video that suggests what we may anticipate.
Therein we meet Prof. Dove, President Obama, and Joshua Coyne.
At
the last moment before summer began in Appleton, Wisconsin, I had four
visitors, knowing in advance they wished to film a conclusion to the
post-production elements of the Bridgetower story. With professional
acumen and warm-hearted spirits, photographer Oliver Lukas and producer
Lloyd "Raki" Jones set up the locations for the discussions that
followed. Raki posed provocative questions that immediately exhibited
his firm grasp of the subject, but also his faculty position with the
University of the District of Columbia. I had already met Jane Coyne and
her son, Joshua, when they visited me two years earlier, and previously
had become aware Josh through web sites of his earlier ventures as
violinist and composer. And I knew of Jane's work, not only as a
musician, but as an activist-administrator in the more significant music
organizations, originally in Iowa, and then in "the District" where
she later moved.
When I had met with the Coynes previously, I had good reason to think Josh might emerge from the Wunderkind
status in which so many in the past have been stuck (and I suspect that
Bridgetower suffered from a fickle audience that was charmed only as
long as he was an exotic youngster, same as Mozart). But Josh had now
finished his third year on scholarship at the Manhattan School of Music,
where he had so impressively benefited from his composition studies
with Richard Danielpour, but had so penetratingly immersed himself in
score study, concert going, aesthetics, and philosophy that I knew I was
conversing with an important intellect, quickly emerging from the
embryonic stage. If he elects to continue his formal studies, he will
endow the graduate school of his choice and his classmates with enriched
dimensions. Although confident in conclusions he has reached thus far,
he is not arrogantly rooted in dogma and has overtly left room for any
modification of his stances. Nor is he an egotist. Somewhat with
humbleness, he has attracted the attention with justification of seniors
who seem ready to serve as mentors and, at the same time, develop a
genuine devotion for this young man.
We
need have no reservation. Let us keep alert to what is becoming a
brilliant future for one who will be a major figure in music, a golden
voice.
------------------------------------
Dominique-René de Lerma
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