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Jan. 24, 2025

The Bridgetower

from Sonata Mulattica (2009) by Rita Dove

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. Oh, if only Ludwig had been better looking, or cleaner, or a real aristocrat, von instead of the unexceptional van from some Dutch farmer; if his ears had not already begun to squeal and whistle; if he hadn’t drunk hiswine from lead cups, if he could have found True Love.Then the story would have held: In 1803 George Polgreen Bridgetower, son of Friederich Augustus the African Prince and Maria Anna Sovinki of Biala in Poland, traveled from London to Vienna where he met the Great Master who would stop work on his Third Symphony to write a sonata for his new friend to premiere triumphantly on May 24,whereupon the composer himself leapt up from the piano to embrace his “lunatic mulatto.” Who knows what would have followed? They might have palled around some, just a couple of wild and crazy guys strutting the town like rock stars, hitting the bars for a few beers, a few laughs... instead of falling out over a girl nobody remembers, nobody knows. Then this bright-skinned Papa’s boy could have sailed his fifteen-minute fame straight into the record books – where instead of a Regina Carter or Aaron Dworkin or Boyd Tinsley sprinkled here and there, we would find rafts of black kids scratching out scales on their matchbox violins – so that some day they might play the impossible: Beethoven’s Sonata no. 9 in A Major, op. 47, also known as The Bridgetower.

– The Bridgetower by Rita Dove from her book Sonata Mulattica per il Mulatto Brischdauer, gran pazzo e compositore mulattico Ludwig van Beethoven, 1803

Sweet Freedom’s Song

Fantasia on a hymn tune (‘America’)

I. (America)

My country! ‘tis of thee,
Sweet land of Liberty,
Of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims pride,
From ev’ry mountainside,
Let Freedom ring.

II. (Suffragette)

GOD save each Female’s right,
Show to her ravish’d fight
Woman is Free.
Let Freedom’s voice prevail,
And draw inside the vail, (sic)
Supreme Endulgence hail.
Sweet Liberty.

III. (Abolitionist)

My native country! Thee,
Where all men are born free,
If white their skin:
I love thy hills and dales,
Thy mounts and pleasant vales,
But hate thy negro sales,
As foulest sin.

IV. (Latin, U.K.)

O Deus optime
Salvum nunc facito
Regem nostrum
Sic laeta victoria
Comes et gloria
Salvum iam facito
Tu dominum

V. (Coda)

From ev’ry mountainside,
Tu dominum,
Foulest sin,
Sweet Liberty!
Let Freedom Ring!