{"id":60133,"date":"2020-09-11T02:13:17","date_gmt":"2020-09-11T02:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=60133"},"modified":"2020-09-12T00:57:10","modified_gmt":"2020-09-12T00:57:10","slug":"the-black-violinist-who-inspired-beethoven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=60133","title":{"rendered":"The Black Violinist Who Inspired Beethoven"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Black Violinist Who Inspired Beethoven<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2020-09-04<\/p>\n

Patricia Morrisroe<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nThe violinist George Bridgetower<\/a> has, like so many other Black artists, been largely forgotten by a history that belongs to those who control the narrative. The Trustees of the British Museum, via Art Resource, NY<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

George Bridgetower<\/a>, the original dedicatee of the \u201cKreutzer\u201d Sonata<\/a>, was a charismatic prodigy but faded into history.<\/em><\/p>\n

Six months after Beethoven<\/a> contemplated suicide, confessing his despair over his increasing deafness in the 1802 document known as the Heiligenstadt Testament<\/a>, he was carousing in taverns with a charismatic new comrade, George Polgreen Bridgetower<\/a>. This biracial violinist had recently arrived in Vienna<\/a>, and inspired one of Beethoven\u2019s most famous and passionate pieces, the \u201cKreutzer\u201d Sonata.<\/p>\n

Beethoven even dedicated the sonata to Bridgetower. But the irritable composer \u2014 who would later remove the dedication to Napoleon from his Third Symphony \u2014 eventually took it back.<\/p>\n

While Napoleon<\/a> didn\u2019t need Beethoven to secure his place in history, this snub reduced Bridgetower to near obscurity. Though his name was included in Anton Schindler\u2019s<\/a> 1840 biography of Beethoven, he was described inaccurately as \u201can American sea captain.\u201d Like so many Black artists prominent in their lifetimes, he has been largely forgotten by a history that belongs to those who control the narrative.<\/p>\n

Bridgetower was born on Aug. 13, 1778, in eastern Poland<\/a>, and christened Hieronymus Hyppolitus de Augustus. His father, Joanis Fredericus de Augustus, was of African descent; his mother, Maria Schmid, was German-Polish, making Bridgetower what was then known as a mulatto<\/a>, a person of mixed race. (The poet Rita Dove\u2019s<\/a> 2008 book \u201cSonata Mulattica<\/a>,\u201d an imagined chronicle of Bridgetower\u2019s life, has helped raise his profile a bit in recent years.)…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

George Bridgetower, the original dedicatee of the \u201cKreutzer\u201d Sonata, was a charismatic prodigy but faded into history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,1245,28,459,8],"tags":[16204,8426,8449,136,31128,31127,135,31126,1392,2640,31123,134,2327,31125],"class_list":["post-60133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-biography","category-europe","category-history","category-media-archive","tag-beethoven","tag-george-augustus-polgreen-bridgetower","tag-george-bridgetower","tag-george-polgreen-bridgetower","tag-hieronymus-hyppolitus-de-augustus","tag-joanis-fredericus-de-augustus","tag-ludwig-van-beethoven","tag-maria-schmid","tag-music","tag-new-york-times","tag-patricia-morrisroe","tag-rita-dove","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-kreutzer-sonata"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60133","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=60133"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60146,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60133\/revisions\/60146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}