{"id":42573,"date":"2015-09-07T00:54:15","date_gmt":"2015-09-07T00:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=42573"},"modified":"2015-09-07T00:54:15","modified_gmt":"2015-09-07T00:54:15","slug":"poets-muse-a-footnote-to-beethoven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=42573","title":{"rendered":"Poet\u2019s Muse: A Footnote to Beethoven"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/04\/03\/books\/03dove.html\" target=\"_blank\">Poet\u2019s Muse: A Footnote to Beethoven<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\" target=\"_blank\">The New York Times<\/a><br \/>\n2009-04-02<\/p>\n<p><strong>Felicia R. Lee<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Joseph_Haydn\" target=\"_blank\">Haydn<\/a> almost certainly encountered him as a child in a Hungarian castle, where the boy\u2019s father was a servant and Haydn was the director of music, and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thomas_Jefferson\" target=\"_blank\">Thomas Jefferson<\/a> saw him performing in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Paris\" target=\"_blank\">Paris<\/a> in 1789: a 9-year-old biracial violin prodigy with a cascade of dark curls. While the boy would go on to inspire <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ludwig_van_Beethoven\" target=\"_blank\">Beethoven<\/a> and help shape the development of classical music, he ended up relegated to a footnote in Beethoven\u2019s life.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.engl.virginia.edu\/people\/rfd4b\" target=\"_blank\">Rita Dove<\/a>, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former United States poet laureate, has now breathed life into the story of that virtuoso, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/George_Bridgetower\" target=\"_blank\">George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower<\/a>, in her new book, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=623\" target=\"_blank\">Sonata Mulattica<\/a>\u201d (W. W. Norton). The narrative, a collection of poems subtitled \u201cA Life in Five Movements and a Short Play,\u201d intertwines fact and fiction to flesh out Bridgetower, the son of a Polish-German mother and an Afro-Caribbean father.<\/p>\n<p>When he died in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/South_London\" target=\"_blank\">South London<\/a> in 1860, his death certificate simply noted that he was a \u201cgentleman.\u201d Ms. Dove imagines, as she writes in her poem \u201cThe Bridgetower,\u201d that \u201cthis bright-skinned papa\u2019s boy\/could have sailed his fifteen-minute fame\/straight into the record books.\u201d&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire review <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/04\/03\/books\/03dove.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Poet\u2019s Muse: A Footnote to Beethoven The New York Times 2009-04-02 Felicia R. Lee Haydn almost certainly encountered him as a child in a Hungarian castle, where the boy\u2019s father was a servant and Haydn was the director of music, and Thomas Jefferson saw him performing in Paris in 1789: a 9-year-old biracial violin prodigy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,5,459,10],"tags":[4913,4912,8426,8449,135,1392,2640,134,2327],"class_list":["post-42573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-book-reviews","category-history","category-uk","tag-felicia-lee","tag-felicia-r-lee","tag-george-augustus-polgreen-bridgetower","tag-george-bridgetower","tag-ludwig-van-beethoven","tag-music","tag-new-york-times","tag-rita-dove","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42574,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42573\/revisions\/42574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}