"Mishaps, Misnomers and Misconnected History: Ludwig van Beethoven, George Bridgetower and Rodolphe Kreutzer"

This paper is a “most unusual work of revisionist music history-still-in-progress”, as well as a call to further examination of the state of scholarly research with particular regard to the Sonata in A Major for Piano and Violin, Opus 47.  Its title, “Mishaps, Misnomers and Misconnected History”, with regard to Ludwig van Beethoven, George Bridgetower, and Rodolphe Kreutzer reveals itself as a complex web of incomplete and often inconclusive information about the three men, their musical careers, and the personal relationships between them.  It is quite intriguing to note that the reputations of all three men have bound them one to another in this “magnum opus” (“great work”) and its premiere performance--to the extent that the work “performed by two of them” but named for “one”—has become linked to “one” in a historically inaccurate and highly misleading sense.  The “two” who indeed performed the work would strangely part company sometime after the performance, never to meet again or have any other work commonly linking them one to another.


In all current events in American culture it is possible to locate and identify ancillary issues within the structure of the event which can be allowed to "command the center stage of our attention", while yet somehow masquerading as “main” issues. Such a topic of investigation as this is not immune to the presence or influence of such issues, which run through it like a silver lining. These issues run the gamut from questions regarding Beethoven’s ancestry and ethnicity, the uneven degree of coverage and documentation of significant events involving persons of African descent, and the historicity of the oral and written method.  Against the odds and in the face of the risks and perils of such issues, this paper will explore, attempt to pose questions, and offer answers that speak directly to at the two most important issues at the heart of this investigation: scholarly coverage and reasonable historicity.

This paper examines the history behind the personal and musical collaboration of Ludwig van Beethoven and George Bridgetower, a mulatto violinist of African and Polish descent who gave the first performance of the sonata for piano and violin that became known as the “Kreutzer” Sonata upon its commercial publication.  The musical influence and “historical anomaly” of Rodolphe Kreutzer will also be discussed, and the profound sense of “misnomer” that is bound to the Sonata, as well as its connection to Bridgetower.  The “mishap” and “misnomer” of Beethoven, Bridgetower and Kreutzer can only be revealed for discussion as the story of their collaboration unfolds, including the “misconnection of history” that followed the premiere performance, the commercial publication of the printed music, and the ensuing popularity of the work among musicians, creative artists and the general public.

The Musicians

The German pianist and composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was a native of Bonn, a city on the Rhine River.  In 1792 he left Bonn to seek his artistic fortunes in Vienna, Austria, the capital of the Hapsburg Empire.  He had indeed become the leading “young lion” on the Viennese musical landscape by the first decade of the nineteenth century, distinguishing himself on two main “fronts”—first, in live public and private performances, by “playing all of the other young-gunning Viennese pianists up under the table”, in the same way that jazz musicians often engaged in “cutting contests” at nightclubs in the first half of the twentieth century; and secondly in musical composition, by way of the commercial publication of various piano and chamber works that now serve as his “early” period of creative production.  However, during this same time, Beethoven was engrossed in a personal crisis that threatened to drive him to the brink of madness.  In a deeply personal document now known as the “Heiligenstadt Testament” of 1802, he wrote of his iron-like resolve to continue his artistic and creative struggle for triumph over the impenetrable barriers of his advancing deafness.  Out of this resolve would issue forth a virtual torrent of creative productivity now known as Beethoven’s “Heroic Period”, which lasted from that time until as late as 1813, and included: an opera, an oratorio, a Mass, six symphonies, four concerti, five string quartets, three piano trios, three string sonatas, six solo piano sonatas, four sets of piano variations, incidental music for the stage, art song settings, and several concert overtures...and those are just the commercially published works!! Nearly all of these works are mainstays of the concert repertoire today, some of which are widely recognized by the nicknames accorded them, coined either by Beethoven himself, publishers or music critics.  The following names are connected to Heroic Period works which capture the Romantic spirit in the music of that time: Spring, Tempest, Appassionata, Eroica, Pastoral, Emperor, Ghost, Harp, Serioso.  These names should provide sufficient evidence of the importance of this body of work within the broad creative continuum of the European art-music tradition.

This eleven-year period of unparalleled creativity includes the work in question, one of the laundry-listed three string sonatas written during the Heroic Period, the ninth of ten sonatas written for piano and violin.  The majority of Beethoven’s sonatas for piano and violin date from the early years in Vienna, and exhibit an astonishing degree of facile writing for both instruments in a compositional medium that traditionally favors the piano as the lead instrument.  In fact, the earliest published editions of such works appeared in print listed as “sonatas for piano” with the appended phrase “with obbligato accompaniment”.  In the final two sonatas, however, Beethoven composed in a “new way”, moving on a new path toward the creation of a shared, more “egalitarian” quality of interaction between both instruments.  One additional fact that appears parenthetically here but will return in greater significance is this: at some point during 1803 and 1804, Beethoven announced to several of his closest associates that he was planning to leave Vienna and move to Paris, France.

George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower was a mulatto violinist of African and Polish ancestry.  There has been considerable variance over the actual date of Bridgetower’s birth; some sources have listed as early as October 11, 1778 to as late as sometime in 1782.  One online source has gone so far as to list the date of his death, February 29, 1860, as his birthdate in 1780.  Notwithstanding the inconsistency of the listing of his year of birth, it is still strangely possible that such a coincidence of date could happen—of all the respective years listed for George’s birth, only 1780 was a leap year.)

The unique personality of George Bridgetower’s father and his influential role in his son’s early musical career warrants considerable attention at this point.  John Frederick Augustus Bridgetower (who often used the abbreviated French-German variant name, Friedrich de August--and for both clarifying and abbreviative purposes, I use the acronym JFAB) is reported to have been an escaped slave from the British West Indies who worked as a valet at the Esterhazy estates in Austria and present-day Hungary.  Although no year of birth or birthplace have been listed for him in any available sources, Friedrich de August’s own personal description is noted in a visitor’s book (or local registry) dated December 1796, now kept at the Saxon State Library in Dresden: “Bridgetower de Bridgetower de la barbade colonie anglaise" ("Bridgetower of Bridgetown, of the English colony of Barbados").  Documented evidence supporting Bridgetower’s presence at Esterhaza is provided by three additional sources, the first by the German actor Johann Friedel in his 1784 travel memoir, Travels to Esterhaza in Hungary (Excursions á Esterhaza en Hongrie), in which he includes a flattering compliment of Bridgetower as a man-servant of fine character and high-quality service.  


The second source is H. C. Robbins-Landon’s five-volume biography of the Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), who served as Kapellmeister, court composer and opera house director at Esterhaza for nearly thirty years under the aristocratic reign of Nikolaus von Esterhazy ("the Magnificent"). To an interesting extent, both John and George Bridgetower’s presence and musical activities can be verified as they moved in parallel motion with Haydn’s duties at court.  During his tenure at Esterhaza, Haydn was known to have had artistic and administrative responsibility for as many as seventy instrumentalists, singers and technical staff in the court orchestra, opera house and marionette theater.  Robbins-Landon makes specific mention of “a Negro” listed as a “page” among the twenty-four listed working positions variously referred to as pages, valets, or personal chamber servants-in-waiting--jobs also performed additively by the musicians in the court orchestra of the Esterhazy estate.  Although listed only as “a Negro page” who lodged with the musicians, the elder Bridgetower’s place at Esterhaza and George’s presence is specifically verified in the second of the five-volume series.  


The third source is provided by Mrs. Charlotte Papendiek, diarist and personal secretary to Queen Charlotte of England, who gave the elder Bridgetower high praise in her journals, titled Court and Private Life:  “[Bridgetower had a] fascinating manner, elegance, expertness in all languages, and beauty of person”.  Prior to his employment at Esterhaza, Friedrich de August worked in the service of Prince Hieronymus Vincentius Radziwill (1759-1786) in Biala, Poland, in 1778; George was born there, and was baptized "Hieronimo Hyppolito Augusto" in honor of Friedrich de August's employer. Although Friedrich de August’s full employment history is not recorded in any available sources, it is possible that he married, settled in Dresden and started a family (which included another son named Friedrich).  George’s birthplace is listed as Biala, Poland, so it is confirmed fact that Friedrich de August worked there prior to moving on to Esterhaza (in Austria and Hungary, with possible intervals spent in Dresden.  Friedrich de August is reported to have spoken five languages--English, French, German, Italian, and Polish, and was apparently most enterprising about his own affairs and those of his son.  He might be strongly regarded in our present day in one of two ways—either as a doting “stage parent” or as something of a charlatan, vicariously living out a personal dream through his son’s prodigious accomplishments.  


In her article “George Polgreen Bridgetower: An African Prodigy in England”, the musicologist Josephine Wright sheds considerable light on the elder Bridgetower’s background and character.  She places him in the employ of the Esterhazy estate as early as 1780.  His good “professional” reputation as a valet at Esterhaza is further verified, along with his doting opportunism as a “stage parent”.  Wright is most complimentary of his sense of vision and drive for his son’s success and notoriety in 18^th-century Europe and England, in spite of the racism that was just as prevalent in his time as it is still present in ours—as well as the peculiar institution of slavery in Britain, which was not abolished until 1833.  However, he was often described as “dressing in Turkish costumes” at his son’s concerts, identifying himself using several aliases--“the Reverend John Augustus Polygreen Bridgetower”, “Friedrich de August Bridgewater”, or as the “Lieutenant-General Mentor” to Francois-Dominique Toussaint L’ouverture, the first President of Haiti.  Haiti had won its national independence through a slave insurrection led by the real Toussaint L’ouverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 1791, and was trying to rebuild its collapsed economy at the same time young George was making a name for himself in the European music world.  //JFAB would've worked in the Radziwiłł employ for some time in the 1770s, as Biała, Poland is listed as George's birthplace in '78. Therefore, JFAB & George could have remained in Poland until c.1786, and then may have joined the Esterházy employ in or after 1786, remaining three to four years.


George was also dressed in similar Turkish fashion at his performances; it was actually quite common for males of African or Arabic descent to dress in the Turkish manner at that time, as that part of the world exuded a fashionable exoticism among the Europeans of that day, in much the same way that African and African-American culture still does today.  (At the time there were several military conflicts between Austria, Russia and the Ottoman Turks, so their conquests would've been well-known to Europeans. However, Wright’s article also contains a more revealing and disturbing account of the elder Bridgetower’s treatment of his son:  “It was about this time (c.1791) however, that domestic friction between father and son allegedly reached climactic proportions, and a purported abuse by Friedrich de August brought the father’s control over his son to an abrupt end.  Rumors were beginning to circulate and to appear in the local press of his father’s excesses in wine and women.  According to Charlotte Papendiek, Friedrich de August's apparent squandering of his son’s lucrative earnings and his constant borrowing from friends made him an unwelcome guest in many households.  Moreover, his “severity” with the boy forced the young violinist ultimately to run away from home and seek protection at Carlton House (the royal residence of the Prince of Wales).  She informs us that “the prince from that time on took him [George] entirely under his protection, and ordered the father out of the country, offering a small sum of money (£25.00) in order to support himself until he found suitable employment on the [European] Continent.”  While the elder Bridgetower apparently kept his distance from his son, the Carlton House and its circle of established musicians, it is known that he did remain in London, occasionally keeping company with Sir Charles Horn at his house, where Haydn also stayed as a regular guest during the year 1795.  (The aforementioned guestbook which bears the only autobiographical description of the elder Bridgetower also confirms that he traveled to Dresden the following year. The length of his stay in Dresden isn't clear, but an SLUB online archival address listing confirms that he was in residence there.)

  


George Bridgetower’s mother, Maria Anna Sovinski-Bridgetower, was of Silesian or Polish ancestry; she was known to have lived in the town of Budissen (now known as Bautzen) in Saxony, near Dresden.  While it is possible that Maria Anna may have worked at Esterhaza, available estate documents do not verify her presence there.  She is known to have received a yearly pension from the Prince of Wales (presumably at George’s request) from 1799 until 1807, the year of her death.  For as much as has been discovered and documented about John Frederick Augustus Bridgetower, aside from accounts of visits made by George Bridgetower to Dresden from London or Vienna--regrettably little to nothing else is known or documented about her life and family activities.  George’s brother Friedrich was an accomplished cellist, and lived in Dresden with her (from c.1786-1807).  Fortunately, more information is available about him by way of credible documented sources.  Maria Sovinki was said to be of Silesian, German, Polish, and Swabian ancestry. Precise ethnic determination of her ancestry and ethnicity is further complicated by the constant shifting and transition of ethnic groups, subgroups, extended families and communities distinguished by religious affiliation, etc., as well as changes of land borders within continental Europe. Upon careful examination of online documents, three women emerge: a. Maria Sovinki in Banska Stiavnica, Slovakia, birth date 27 January 1755; b. Maria Ceffensky in Solosnica, Malacky, Slovakia, birth date 29 June 1759; c. Maria Sovinskj, in Levoca, Slovakia, birth date 7 September 1762. The eldest woman would've been 20 years of age when her employer got married. The youngest would've been 13; the median aged woman would've been 16.  She worked in the employ of Princess Sophie Friederike von Thurn und Taxis (1758-1800), who married Hieronymus Vincentius Radziwiłł in 1775. This event brought together the two employing families together, forming a social and "familial proximation" during that time.  It is uncertain how long Maria worked in the TnT employ, but the birth year of George Bridgetower (1778) places her in considerable familial proximity. The Radziwill-Thurn und Taxis wedding took place in 1775, which further confirms the possibility of joint Radziwiłł-TnT employment in Poland. However, it remains uncertain as to when or whether Maria's tenure ended upon the death of Prince Radziwiłł: in 1786 or later. The uncertainty of details in regard to Maria's place of employment is understandably paralleled by the lack of information about her son Friedrich's musical talent and development. The areas of Eastern Poland, western Belarus, Lithuania, and eastern Saxony possessed strong musical and theatrical traditions, presumably containing opportunities for study, performance and professional development. Nevertheless, just as George quickly flourished as a violinist during his early years in Poland, Austria and England, so also did Friedrich learn and grow as a cellist in Poland, possibly in Regensburg and certainly in Dresden.  (Two colleagues have contacted me with information about Friedrich Bridgetower, Dr. William Hart (University of Ulster, Ireland) and Ms. Emma Price of Liverpool, Lancashire (UK): Friedrich did indeed live with his mother Maria Anna Sovinki Bridgetower in Dresden, but following her death in 1807 emigrated to Dublin, Ireland.  His residence there is documented until 1813, the year of his untimely death. He left a wife and three children; it is possible (even probable) that his children migrated to Liverpool and settled there.)

It is commonly reported that George Bridgetower also studied music with Franz Joseph Haydn.  Between the Robbins-Landon listing of Friedrich de August as “a Negro” as one of the pages at Esterhaza and the mention of young Bridgetower as a possible student of Haydn, it can also be conclusively verified that Bridgetower also studied with Haydn to a reasonable extent through placement of time and proximity.  Haydn led the orchestra in court and opera productions from either the harpsichord or the violin; he would yield the violin duties in later years to one or more of the principal violinists in the court orchestra, probably Luigi Tomasini or Johann Tost.  As Kapellmeister and court composer, Haydn had a “virtual coatrack of responsibilities”, with so many to wear that it is quite miraculous to imagine that he had very much undivided time and attention to devote to the young musician--for the study of the violin and composition.  Fortunately to a more realistic extent, Tomasini and Tost were both present and possibly available to fill in what gaps of time and attention to Bridgetower that Haydn could not afford to invest on a consistent basis.  Tomasini and Tost were in the Esterhaza orchestra during the years (1781-1789) during which the Bridgetowers were probably there. 


In his adolescent years, Bridgetower did study violin intermittently with well-known violinists John Jarnowick [Ivan Jarnovic] and Francois Barthélémon, and composition with Thomas Attwood, a London composer and former student of Mozart. As stated earlier, Friedrich's early years were spent in Poland-Lithuania. If Maria Sovinski remained with the TnT family after the death of Radziwiłł in 1786, then Friedrich's adolescent years would have been spent in either Regensburg or possibly in Poland within the Radziwiłł system of estates and castles. Princess Sophie Friederike von Thurn and Taxis married a Polish nobleman, Count Andrezj Kazanowski in 1795, but this marriage was short-lived. She married a third time in 1797, yet lived only three years afterward.

Franz Joseph Haydn’s tenure with the Esterhazy family and estate officially ended in 1790, following the death of Nikolaus von Esterhazy. In a swift downsizing effort, Nikolaus’s son and princely successor Anton dismissed Haydn and the entire court orchestra!! The term “disbanding” takes on a boldly ironic meaning with the new Prince’s “immediate retirement” of the musicians of his late father’s court, some of whom, like Haydn, had served at court for over two decades. Although Haydn and Tomasini were retained for limited ceremonial functions at court, all of the other musicians were given notice and their appropriate severance pensions.  Haydn accepted his retirement pension and returned to Vienna, free to accept new artistic and professional opportunities. It was also the first time in over thirty years that he didn’t have a job, “real or fake”!!


It hasn’t been verified exactly when the Bridgetowers’ left the “confining employ” of Esterhaza, but it is quite probable that they made their departure at least a year before Haydn. George Bridgetower made his debut at the Concerts spirituel in Paris in April 1789--three months before the storming of the Bastille and arrest of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, which marked the outbreak of the French Revolution. Nine months prior to Haydn’s retirement, eleven-year old George had appeared in concerts in the London area at the same time that the concert promoter Johann Peter Salomon had succeeded in persuading Haydn travel to London as a guest for the first public performances of the twelve symphonies commissioned for Salomon’s concert series (which are now known by their collective title, the “London” symphonies). In fact, Bridgetower performed a concerto and played in the orchestra at the first subscription concerts of Haydn’s symphonies on April 15, 1791.

Notwithstanding the upheaval in his personal and family life and developing relationships, from the time of his London début in 1790 until 1799 George Bridgetower was active performing as many as 50 documented concerts in different theaters and “concert rooms” around the London area, often under the auspices of the British Prince Regent, the Prince of Wales, who would become King George IV. Upon his “adoption as a Royal ward”, he joined the orchestra of the Prince of Wales, and also continued working as a freelance musician from 1795 until 1809. Franz Joseph Haydn was “old and full of years” by the time he arrived in London, in the last two decades of his life. Despite his age, he was still able to enjoy the fruits of his years of labor, having become an internationally-renowned composer possessing one of the music world’s most endearing titles...“Papa”.


Born at Versailles, France of German parents, Rodolphe Kreutzer (1766-1831) enjoyed the full advantages of his musical lineage and environment. He received his first lessons in music from his father (a violinist in the Royal Band), and manifested extraordinary musical talent at an early age with a decided preference for the violin. He studied with Anton Stamitz, and later learned much from hearing the performances of Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755-1824), and may have received direct instruction from him as well.  Kreutzer also knew Joseph Boulogne, le Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1739-1799), another well-known mulatto violinist, composer and swordsman who led and played in several orchestras in Paris. Both Viotti and Saint-Georges were one generation older than Kreutzer and Bridgetower, and it stands to reason that both younger violinists knew and learned from the two older musicians via the Parisian musicmaking scene, particularly the Concerts spirituel.  In 1782 he became first violinist in the Royal Band, with the support of the Queen, Marie Antoinette. In 1790 he was appointed as solo violinist at the Theatre Italien, and in 1796 embarked upon an extended concert tour of Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. Upon his return from this semi-continental tour, he was appointed professor of violin at Napoleon Bonaparte’s newly-founded Conservatoire de Paris. 

Leading sources reports three conflicting accounts about Beethoven and Kreutzer’s first meeting and their “levels of mutual acquaintance”. The first account, given by the leading nineteenth century Beethoven biographer Alexander Wheelock Thayer—is that Beethoven met Kreutzer at Vienna in 1789. The second is that Kreutzer toured the Netherlands, Germany and Austria, probably reaching Vienna in 1798, and met Beethoven at that time. The third is that Kreutzer and Beethoven...never met.  


The documented “evidence residing closer to the truth” is actually the following: first, Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792, during Kreutzer’s tenure at the Theatre Italien in Paris, four years prior to his European concert tour. Kreutzer is reported to have met Beethoven while on tour in Vienna during the year 1798. Kreutzer was in the company of the French Ambassador to Austria, Jean Baptiste Jules Bernadotte, during the diplomat’s brief furlough in Vienna. It seems inconceivable that these two men of nearly unsurpassed artistry and accomplishment in their day could not possibly have met in Vienna at that time. Thayer also includes a letter written by Beethoven (on 4 October 1804), in which he speaks of Kreutzer as a “dear, good fellow who during his stay here gave me much pleasure”. (This particular letter will also return as an important document in the further discussion of both issues of “mishap” and “misnomer”.) Either Thayer’s originally-stated date of 1789 is a mere typographical error—or Beethoven may have had a far rosier, much more conceited recollection of having met Kreutzer...than Kreutzer had of meeting him!! Apparently the meeting of Kreutzer and Beethoven in 1798 was neither memorable mutually nor all-too-profitable artistically, as the two men neither communicated nor collaborated any further afterward. Despite that uneventful meeting, Kreutzer entered upon a new phase of his own professional activity as one of Europe’s leading violinists and pedagogues, attracting numerous distinguished pupils from France and abroad.

Part II: The Event—(“No InterMission…”)

George Bridgetower took a leave of absence from the Prince of Wales’s Royal Band in 1802, and traveled to Europe to visit his mother and brother in Dresden. Bridgetower had to have been quite familiar with Beethoven by the time of his nine-month long visit. He gave two concerts while at Dresden (on 24 July 1802 and 18 March 1803), with additional performances at Teplitz and Carlsbad. Both towns in eastern Saxony contained famous health resorts which boasted natural mineral springs. Although the dates and venues for the "resort" concerts remain undocumented, both concerts were well-attended and warmly-received. In fact they created such a sensation that word about Bridgetower’s musical gifts preceded his arrival at Vienna in March or April of 1803. In the wake of these concert successes, he also requested and was granted an extension of leave from the Prince of Wales’s orchestra. The concert program at Dresden featured the First Symphony of Beethoven (op.21), a violin concerto of Bridgetower’s own composition, and a cello concerto performed by his brother, Friedrich. The particular information regarding the composers of the concerti, while most intriguing, has been lost; however, it is possible that the two men may have composed and performed their own compositions, which would stand as a most unique fact of music history. The second concert program possibly given at Teplitz and Carlsbad (and at Dresden) featured concerti of Mozart and Viotti, both performed by George Bridgetower. Viotti has been mentioned earlier in connection with Kreutzer; it is pleasing to note that Bridgetower was mutually well-acquainted with Viotti via the Paris Concerts spirituel and Carlton House (as he often addressed Bridgetower as “my dear George”). The second concert was conducted by Johann Philipp Christoph Schulz, who would later become Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, one of the world's oldest orchestras in operation.

As reasonable proof of Bridgetower’s advance notoriety (and Beethoven’s knowledge of Bridgetower), Beethoven wrote a letter of introduction to Baron Alexander von Wetzlar, dated 18 March 1803 on behalf of Bridgetower, and this letter reads as follows:

To Monsieur Baron Alexandre de Wezlar, at home, March 18^th:

Though we have never spoken, I take the liberty of recommending to you the bearer of this note, Mr. Brischdower, a very skilful virtuoso and master of his instrument. He plays his Concertos and Quartets excellently, and I much wish that you would procure him some acquaintances. With Lobkowitz, Fries, and all other distinguished amateurs, he has become acquainted with advantage. I think it would not be a bad plan were you to take him one evening to Theresa Schönfeld, where, I know many friends are in the habit of going, or to receive him yourself. I know that you yourself will thank me for having procured you this acquaintance.  Good bye, Herr Baron. Yours obediently, BEETHOVEN.

According to Thayer’s account, Bridgetower arrived in Vienna in late March or early April of 1803. Just as the letter of introduction from Beethoven states, “Brischdower” indeed made immediate acquaintances in Vienna, of musicians and “civilians” (i.e., non-musicians), including the physician and surgeon, Dr. Johann Theodor Held of Prague and a young Viennese nobleman, Count Prichnowsky. An account provided by Dr. Held mentions that “Bridgethauer” (note the variant spellings of the name) met Beethoven in front of the Theater-an-der-Wien on 16 April (eleven days after the first performance of the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives), and the pair was taken to the home of violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh for the rehearsal of a Beethoven quartet (probably one of the set of six quartets published as Opus 18 two years earlier). Present at the rehearsal were violinists Ignaz Krumpholz, Christian Schrieber, violist Karl Moser (of Berlin), and cellist Anton Kraft (for whom Haydn wrote the D Major cello concerto, and also knew the Bridgetowers' from Esterhaza some fifteen years earlier). Since Schuppanzigh hosted the rehearsal, he might have played violin or viola in the ensemble as well. Also present was Baron Wetzlar (to whom Beethoven had recommended Bridgetower in writing), Count Moritz Fries (a Viennese banker), and Theresa Schönfeld. No further information is given about the musicians aside from Schuppanzigh and Kraft, nor the other guests beyond the letter of introduction, but it is quite probable that any other invited guests were well-known patrons of the arts who maintained active participation in the Viennese musical life of the day.


Beethoven had been composing a sonata for Bridgetower to perform during his stay in Vienna. In his usual multi-tasking haste in sketching and composing, this sonata was actually “more assembled”, rather than “created from a complete artistic void". The final movement had already been composed two years earlier as the finale of another Sonata for piano and violin (Opus 30, no.1)--also in the key of A Major, so he composed two separate movements to precede it for the concert. Those two movements were originally titled by Beethoven in his 1803 sketchbook as a Sonata per il Pianoforte ed uno violino obligato in uno stile molto concertante come d’un concerto (“Sonata for the pianoforte and violin obbligato in the concertante style, like a concerto”). In an attempt to bestow personal distinction and amicability upon this musical tour-de-force, Beethoven also made an additional inscription on the manuscript score: Sonata mulattica composta per il mulatto Brischdauer, gran pazzo e compositore mulattico (“Mulatto sonata composed for the mulatto “Brischdauer”, great fool and mulatto composer”). Such inscribed mirthful artistic admiration speaks untold volumes on how well the two men apparently got along personally, and how much they enjoyed the experience of making music together.

The concert which included the new Sonata was a unique event in the history of live musical performance. It was held at the Augarten Theater on 24 May 1803, on a concert series managed by Ignaz Schuppanzigh.  Despite the fact that the concert took place at eight o’clock in the morning, one diarist source reports that the concert took place at 12 noon instead—which for most of us would be a much more preferable time!! It was well-attended and included several of Beethoven’s patrons in attendance as major ticket “sponsors”: Prince Karl Lichnowsky, Prince Josef Marx Lobkowitz, Count Andrei Rasumovsky, the Russian Ambassador to Austria, and Prince Josef Johann Schwarzenberg, the Austrian Ambassador to Great Britain. The account of the performance continues with even greater interest: the first two movements had just been completed in manuscript score a few days beforehand. There was apparently little time for rehearsal, since Beethoven had to awaken his copyist Ferdinand Ries at 4:30 a.m. on the day of the performance to “request” a copy of the violin part for Bridgetower. Therefore, Beethoven and Bridgetower gave a “wet-ink” première of the Sonata, much to Beethoven’s delight and satisfaction.

  


The two men were performing the opening movement, which opens with a slow Adagio introduction followed by a change to a very swift tempo (marked “Presto”). Barely two minutes into the work, Bridgetower interjected an improvised, virtuosic arpeggiated “flourish” at a pause in the melodic phrase, creating what must have been a amazingly magical “moment” for the audience. Upon hearing this, Beethoven leaped up from the piano and exclaimed to Bridgetower, “Noch einmal, mein lieber Bursch!”—which translated into standard English, means “Once again, my dear fellow!” In a postmodern vernacular transliteration, we would probably have said “YOU GO, BOY!!” We would’ve been givin’ each other “high fives” and bumpin’ chests in celebration of such a moment as if we’d just witnessed a three-point shot or a slam dunk at the buzzer in an NCAA or NBA tournament basketball game!! Bridgetower’s own account of this moment indeed included the insertion of the flourish upon its first occurrence and repetition of the Exposition in the first movement.  Obviously Bridgetower’s flourish made a remarkable and indelible impression on the composer, enough to make him stop playing the piano in the middle of a performance!! Since Beethoven’s copyist Ferdinand Ries was unable to finish copying the violin part for the second movement in time for the performance, Bridgetower had to sight-read it from the manuscript at the piano looking over Beethoven’s shoulder!! The performance of this movement so pleased the audience that it had to be repeated immediately as a mid-concert encore!! The remainder of the full concert program has never been listed; the three-movement Sonata may have been the program in its entirety. Nevertheless, the concert was both an artistic and commercial success, grossing 1,140 florins from the sale of tickets.

Part III. “The Mishap”

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when the “mishap” between Beethoven and Bridgetower occurred. It is already documented that Beethoven wrote the letter of introduction for Bridgetower to Wezlar in March 1803, and had frequent interactions with Bridgetower during April and May, a period of warm and collegial reception from Beethoven, other Viennese musicians and numerous aristocrats prior to the performance of the Sonata, and presumably as long as two months afterward in June and July. Since no extant sources make specific mention of Beethoven and Bridgetower in activities specifically involving the two men, it is easy to assume that their artistic and personal relationship continued unabated after the performance. However, the sequence of musical activities that can be verified between the two men individually and collectively does not provide enough information to pinpoint or provide any conclusive evidence about the depth of their collegial relationship following that now-legendary performance. The letter of recommendation was dated two months before the concert, and the stamped date of Bridgetower’s passport for travel back to London via Dresden was two months afterward (27 July 1803). Dr. Dominique-René De Lerma’s article on Bridgetower contains a footnote which indicates Bridgetower's visual disposition on the date of travel verified by the passport stamp.  
Bridgetower’s occupation is listed as: "musician, a native of Biala" (Poland). His features were described on his passport as "24 years of age, medium height, clean shaven, swarthy complexion, dark brown hair, brown eyes, straight and rather broad nose". Some translation of the provided information was somehow misinterpreted and listed as "melancholic and discontent". Therefore, reading onward from (and into) this description, it is quite possible to deduce that the interpersonal relations between the two men changed at some point in that fifty-day period from late May to mid-July. If the description listed in the footnote is taken seriously, then the fallout probably happened later than sooner in that two-month interval of time.  
Biographer Maynard Solomon comments that Beethoven spent a good portion of May until November 1803 in the villages of Baden and Oberdöbling, where he was mainly occupied with composition of the first drafts of his Third Symphony.  His correspondence from that year reveals little information about his personal life, but mainly matters related to his compositions--their rehearsal, performance, copying, proofreading, publication, and other business details.  There is a most helpful excerpt from the book Beethoven: the man and artist as revealed in his own words (edited by Friedrich Kerst and Henry E. Krehbiel), which provides a considerable measure of psychological and emotional insight on the composer, which would be applicable to his probable mood in c.1803.  The excerpt is titled “On His Own Disposition and Character”:

“The joyous nature which was his as a lad, and which was not at all averse to a merry prank now and then, underwent a change when he began to lose his hearing. The dread of deafness and its consequences drove him nearly to despair, so that he sometimes contemplated suicide. Increasing hardness of hearing gradually made him reserved, morose and gloomy. With the progress of the malady his disposition and character underwent a decided change, a fact that can be said to account for the contradictions in his conduct and utterances. It made him suspicious, distrustful; in his later years he imagined himself cheated and deceived in the most trifling matters by relatives, friends, publishers, and servants. Towards his publishers he often appeared covetous and grasping, seeking to rake and scrape together all the money possible; but this was only for the purpose of assuring the future of his nephew. At the same time, in a merry moment, he would load down his table with all the kitchen and cellar could provide, for the refection of his friends. Thus he oscillated continuously between two extremes; but the power which swung the pendulum was always the aural malady. He grew peevish and capricious towards his best friends, rude, even brutal at times in his treatment of them, only in the next moment to overwhelm them pathetically with attentions”.

It has already been paraphrased by historians that Beethoven had “taken Fate by the throat” in the creative battle against deafness and personal isolation on account of it. One of the well-known side-effects of his malady with his associates was the automatic entry into an unpredictable arena of interpersonal exchange that bordered on the equivalent of “walking on wall-to-wall eggshells”. Seemingly miniscule matters of interpersonal behavior became grounds for argument, the potential destruction of a relationship, followed by lasting contempt and emotional banishment. Apparently such a fate was the case for George Bridgetower; the real reason for the rift surfaced decades later in an interview that Bridgetower gave in London in 1845 to John W. Thirlwall, a violinist who conducted the interview. Thirlwall released the contents of the interview in writing to the London Musical World in 1858. 
While Beethoven and Bridgetower were together--most likely at a tavern or in another social venue, an argument erupted between them after a comment made about a woman by Bridgetower--offended Beethoven. Thirlwall described the quarrel and the comment as “silly” in the interview with Bridgetower (most likely quoting and/or reflecting Bridgetower’s tone of voice and attitude). The identity of the woman who was the recipient of Bridgetower’s comment has never been stated nor verified in any available account. Beethoven’s anger at the “offense” and his hair-trigger temper caused him to change the dedication of the Sonata, of which the two men had already given the premiere performance. Some scholars have stated that Beethoven demanded the return of the personally-autographed score from Bridgetower; however, available records clearly refute this allegation. In the interview as related by Thirlwall, Bridgetower speaks of the manuscript score still in his possession bearing Beethoven’s uniquely original inscription.

Another most intriguing issue surfaces at this point in our investigative journey. In Maynard Solomon’s "psycho-therapeutic" biography of Beethoven, an interesting timeline and “pattern of correspondence" emerges which sheds some light on this abrupt change of personal and artistic relations between the two men that otherwise would neither be immediately apparent nor possess any perceivable relevancy. While there is no mention of Bridgetower, women, the Sonata, or of any arguments made in any of Beethoven’s correspondences during the last six months of 1803, Beethoven’s planned move from Vienna to Paris is given consistent mention. In a letter to the German musician Gottlob Wiedebein on 6 July, Beethoven wrote that “I shall probably leave here next winter” (either the winter of 1804 or 1805). Bridgetower leaves Vienna for London on 27 July. Ten days afterward (on 6 August), Ferdinand Ries writes to Beethoven’s publisher Nikolaus Simrock that “Beethoven will stay here [i.e., in Vienna] at most for another year and a half. He is then going to Paris, which makes me extraordinarily sorrowful”.


This letter from Ries merely corroborates and establishes Beethoven’s written plan of relocation in the aforementioned letter. However, the letter also contains a double-entendre, expressing ambivalence about Beethoven’s plans and their anticipated fruition. The notifications and ensuing move to Paris from Vienna coincides so closely with the Bridgetower performance and the estimated time of their fallout--that it is nearly impossible to say whether or not one event served a “causative” function--and the second an “effective” purpose. By way of a second letter from Ries to Simrock that specifically mentions the dedication of the Sonata to Rodolphe Kreutzer and the pianist Adolphe Adam, it is possible to apply a moderate degree of reason against the related turn of events and conclude that it was originally Beethoven’s primary intention--or it soon became his secondarily devised intention (after the falling-out) to dedicate the commercial publication of the Sonata to Kreutzer-- whether the fallout occurred or not.  


The document that reveal Beethoven’s sense of ulterior motive in this matter is the aforementioned letter to Simrock of 4 October 1804, in which Beethoven states the following at greater length and with greater candor: “This Kreutzter is a good dear fellow who gave me much enjoyment when he was here—his modesty and his natural ways appeal to me much more than all the exterieur or inferieur of most virtuosos. Since the Sonata was written for a competent violinist, the dedication to him is all the more appropriate. Although we correspond (that is, a letter once a year from me) I hope he will know nothing about it”. That “competent violinist” to whom Beethoven had referred could be none other than George Bridgetower, and whatever “exterieur or inferieur” that Beethoven was referring to in writing Simrock could not possibly serve to dismiss the probability of such allegations of Beethoven’s “Parisian intentions” for the Sonata. Consequently, such a matter has been left to scholars and well-meaning but occasionally over-imaginative authors to weigh in upon (poet Rita Dove and myself now included!!), with a particularly heightened regard to the imagined inner dealings between the two men.

The letters from Ries to the publisher Simrock (dated 22 October 1803), and from Beethoven (4 October 1804) make specific mention of the Sonata and the composer’s “reconsidered” intention of dedicating the work to Kreutzer. An announcement from Simrock about the first release of the Sonata was made in print on 18 May 1805, but its release was fraught with disagreements between the publisher and the composer, with his brother Karl acting as an unsatisfactory intermediary. Therefore, the actual timeline of Beethoven’s impulsive actions following the fallout with Bridgetower remains complicated, running concurrent with and also coincidentally placed with announcements of Beethoven’s planned move to Paris.  


There is one additional “juicier tidbit” of discussion related to Beethoven, his activities and disposition in 1803, which may somehow involve Bridgetower: it is documented that the Italian-born Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, the dedicatee of Beethoven’s famous “Moonlight” Sonata (Opus 27, No.2), was taken in marriage by the composer Count Wenzel Robert Gallenberg in November 1803. Guicciardi had been Beethoven’s piano pupil (fourteen years his junior), and one of numerous women for whom Beethoven maintained a deep infatuation. Her marriage to Gallenberg was described as a disaster, marked by numerous extramarital affairs between the Countess and other aristocrats. While this matter has been handled moderately by Beethoven scholars, Guicciardi’s marriage emotionally affected Beethoven more than he expressed openly in his letters and conversation books. A large part of the feelings of desperation expressed in the Heiligenstadt Testament may have been the result of Beethoven’s despondency following the end of his love-affair with her due to their differences in social class. In her semi-fictionalized biography of Bridgetower, The African Prince (2003), Francee Greer Williams alleges Countess Guicciardi as the woman who was the recipient of Bridgetower’s remark, Beethoven’s resultant anger and wrathful indignation. No surviving correspondences from any sources close to Beethoven have yet been discovered to verify or refute any such identification. Therefore the absence of such important source documents necessary for serving the purposes of verification--have instead left the doors of both speculation and fiction wide open—large enough to park two forty-seven passenger touring busses!!

Part IV. “The Misnomer”

While it is normal for human beings to have disagreements, misunderstandings and reconciliations in relationships, there is no evidence that Beethoven and Bridgetower ever resolved the matter which led to the withdrawal of the Sonata dedication. Bridgetower returned to London from Europe and continued his career as a freelance musician and member of the Prince of Wales’s orchestra. The Prince sponsored a substantial public concert on Bridgetower's behalf and benefit in London at the New Rooms, Hanover Square on 23 May 1805 featuring Bridgetower, his brother Friedrich, the pianist Johann Baptist Cramer (1771-1858), the contrabassist Domenico Dragonetti (1763-1846), and other well-known London musicians. (Dragonetti was such a virtuosic musician that he performed one of the Beethoven cello sonatas!! Beethoven wrote a significant amount of his orchestral double bass passages with Dragonetti in mind, and he received a bear-hug from Beethoven for having played the composer’s music so impressively in his presence!!) The concert program listed was every bit as impressive as the concerts given by the Bridgetowers' at Dresden three years earlier, including the Overture to Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute, Beethoven’s Second Symphony (Opus 36), and his recently-published Septet in E flat Major for winds and strings (Opus 20).


Bridgetower must not have harbored sufficiently ill feelings or lingering animosity toward Beethoven; he programmed and performed two significant works of his estranged fellow artist in a public concert almost two years afterward. George and Friedrich performed concerti—Friedrich played a cello concerto (Opus 3) of Bernhard Romberg (1767-1841), and George performed his own violin concerto--which, sadly, has not survived. 
One somber footnote accompanies this concert description: this concert event contains the last specific mention of Bridgetower’s father, “Friedrich de August”. No further mention of his presence or activities is made of him in any later extant biographical accounts. However, this account does make considerable mention of George's brother, the cellist Friedrich Bridgetower, who performed a concerto by one of the best-known cellists of the day, Bernhard Romberg. His career and notoriety as a cellist in nineteenth-century Dresden and London remains yet another chapter of Afro-European music history awaiting further research, discovery, presentation and publication. George Bridgetower completed his academic studies, taking the Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Cambridge in 1811.

Beethoven had already announced his intention to abandon conservative Vienna and move to Paris, where, from his limited perspective the most visionary sociopolitical, intellectual and artistic activity was to be found. He had even begun composing a symphony, his third in the key of E-flat Major titled “Bonaparte”, in celebration of Napoleon Bonaparte’s emergence and ascendancy as a post-revolutionary heroic figure. Beethoven’s plans for relocation, however, were abruptly rerouted when the “new” dedication of the “ex-Bridgetower” Sonata was curtly dismissed by Rodolphe Kreutzer. Among most of the concert musicians and audiences of Europe and England, it took the longest for Beethoven’s music to gain appreciation in France during his lifetime. To musicians of that day the music of Beethoven sounded understandably avant-garde; Kreutzer was one of the musicians who failed to understand or appreciate the aesthetic impact and message within Beethoven’s music--despite its architectural and dynamic scope, depth of expression and technical virtuosity which would help launch the Romanticist movement in nineteenth-century European concert music.  In spite of the fact that this work has borne his name as dedicatee since its first commercial publication in 1805, Kreutzer declared the Sonata "unplayable", and never performed it. Nevertheless, in an interesting and perhaps over-handed way, the work reflects the consummate technical virtuosity that marked his playing and that of Bridgetower, Viotti, Saint-Georges, and numerous other foundational luminaries of the violin during the early nineteenth century.  Nevertheless, the irony of Beethoven’s compounded disappointment and Kreutzer’s dismissal of the work in his time as a leading performer and pedagogue can neither be sidestepped nor overlooked.  The lingering misfortune of this work’s provenance is the fact that Bridgetower’s name has lingered in shadowy obscurity, nearly cut off from direct connection with the work due to Kreutzer’s towering notoriety of name, artistic and pedagogical reputation and reinforced print documentation.

Beethoven’s Third Symphony also followed that same “new path” of composition he wrote of in the Heiligenstadt Testament. Its structural proportions and length engulfed those of the two symphonies that he’d written previously. The length of the respective opening movements for the Sonata and the Third Symphony averages over six hundred measures in length, the equivalent of twelve to fifteen minutes of live performance time. He had just completed the dedicatory inscription to Napoleon on the title page of the manuscript score of the Third Symphony when word came to him from Ferdinand Ries that Napoleon had just proclaimed himself Emperor of France. 
Beethoven flew into a raging tantrum, accusing Napoleon of “exalting himself in order to trample upon the rights of the people”. He destructively scratched out Napoleon’s name on the title page.  The hole in the page can be seen in the preserved manuscript score, and the story as related by Ries is now legendary. The dedication eventually went instead to one of his major patrons, Prince Josef Lobkowitz, and the title page was re-written bearing the subtitle “Sinfonia eroica”.  Like the Sonata, it was also commercially printed with the present title and dedication, and would revolutionize and redefine both musical genres in its own time and ours.  With his artistically-designed and politically-motivated “Parisian intentions” completely foiled, Beethoven did not move to Paris. He remained in Vienna for the rest of his life.

V. MORE Mis-Direction...

In addition to matters of “cognitive habit” within this discussion, the case and issue of “verbal habit” also comes into play. When considering the popularity of a host of sports and entertainment figures--baseball legends Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, Barry Bonds, basketball legends Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, coaches John Wooden, Dean Smith, Bobby Knight, Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler, Bobby Bowden, Joe Paterno, and so many others—their respective names as word combinations flow with such a familiarity that such popularity carries with it a sense of "heroic awe”, heightened as a result of mere verbal utterance and repetition. While the name Rodolphe Kreutzer must sound a bit stilted to the ears of our postmodern American culture, it must have had a certain verbal and rhythmic “allure” to it that remained with listeners—especially back in the days of live--and technologically unrecorded performance. Likewise, the most attractive and familiar names of other nineteenth-century virtuosi also having similar magnetism would be both unfamiliar and read quite strangely to us today. The best-known virtuosi of the first half of the nineteenth century would have been the Italian violinist Niccolo Paganini and the Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt, whose respective heydays occurred actually two to three decades after Kreutzer.

The second case of “misconnection” is the matter of the two “dedicatory phrases”: the manuscript dedication to Bridgetower and the later commercial print dedication to Rodolphe Kreutzer. The academic traditions of music and its “formal activities” of performance, pedagogy, historical documentation and formal analysis generally hold that a codified musical composition originates first in the form of a manuscript copy in the composer’s own handwriting. From the edited manuscript score a commercial plate is usually engraved for the printing of multiple copies for sale and either public or private performance. Beethoven and Bridgetower created a sizable “dedicatory anomalous hybrid” when they collaborated on this work. The dedication that appears on the manuscript of the Sonata is the main historical connective between the two men. Had that argument not occurred, the work would most likely be known as the “Bridgetower Sonata" today, notwithstanding whatever qualms or reservations the publisher Simrock may have had at the time about Bridgetower’s artistic reputation and his marketing potential in generating sales of sheet music.

The third case of misconnection reaches farthest with regard to the process of commercial publication “from the manuscript to the engraved plate”. If indeed “the pen is mightier than the sword”, then Beethoven’s “power of the pen” in the preparation of the score for publication by Simrock was certainly the victor over the strength of personal account and oral tradition. The virtuosic “flourish” that Bridgetower played so impressively that Beethoven interrupted his own performance--is nowhere to be found in any subsequent commercial editions produced over the past two hundred years. One might be led to ask, how might have this omission happened?  An answer to such a question as this is not easy to find, but such a question as this should keep “history detectives” salivating for quite some time. A copious study of the history of nineteenth-century practices in commercial printing and publication would have to be undertaken—with special attention devoted to Beethoven’s unusual process of composition. His surviving sketchbooks are some of the strangest codified specimens of artistic germination and development known in all of Western civilization!! It is quite probable that the flourish vanished from the edited manuscript in the conversion to engraving process. Simrock’s editors probably were not in attendance at the premiere, nor might they have known about the flourishes played between both instruments. It is both conceivable and even possible that Beethoven may have intentionally revised or omitted the violin flourish altogether as a further indication of his spiteful anger toward Bridgetower. Having only one virtuosic flourish visible in the score would also make it appear far more like an covert, anomalous trait of original composition--instead of an overt, musically-balanced gesture of partnership and camaraderie--that indeed developed between the two men before, during, and after the performance. The flourish that can be seen in the commercial edition does indeed occur in the piano part only. One document that has surfaced over the last thirty years was brought to light in a musical book review of the Henle edition of Beethoven’s Works for Piano and Violin, edited by Sieghard Brandenburg and published in 1974. The editor provides the following statement on one of four autograph documents in the composer’s hand:

“This autograph that contains the complete exposition of the first movement, it differs tellingly from the published work. The piano part at bar 36, for example, show a single C major triad instead of the cadenza which appears in the final version. “Here we do have evidence that at least the exposition of the first movement underwent revision between public performance and publication, for the autograph fragment fits neatly with the details of accounts by Ferdinand Ries and George Bridgetower of circumstances attending the first performance. And the fragment records Beethoven’s difficulty in finding the delicate balance at the transition from the opening Adagio to the Presto—the subject of the very last entries for Opus 47 in the “Wielhorsky Sketchbook” (the nickname of this particular set of Beethoven’s sketches). As evidence toward the establishment of an authentic text, the fragment is of little use. The engraver’s copy of the parts, annotated by Beethoven, and the first edition, published by Simrock, serve that function. But for the full history of Opus 47, it is an indispensable document that must be published”. 

With this statement I must dare to respectfully differ; the full history of a work--whether commercially published or still in unpublished manuscript form--must include a potential critique of the composer’s revision  practices, particularly in such an unusual historical case as this. The engraver’s copy would not reveal Beethoven’s decisions nor his motives for the revised decisions between the manuscript and the first edition. For once, posterity is entitled to a far more honest account of the editing process of this work; sadly, that did not happen, and the details of its revelation have been irretrievably lost.

Conclusion with Observations and Recommendations

In light of all this discussed events, there are seven recommendations in order with regard to the Sonata, opus 47, offered to listeners of varied perspectives: 1) To violinists, please re-insert those violin flourishes!! The flourishes may well be the only documented performance-practice traits that are unmistakably original and specific to Bridgetower. They have survived in large part due to J. W. Thirlwall’s faithful rendering of the arpeggio flourishes for inclusion in Frederick G. Edwards’ research for his 1908 article on Bridgetower in The Musical Times. While they are indeed technically demanding along with the rest of the work, they are worth the trouble!! 2) To researchers (everybody)--dig deeper!! Don’t just believe the sentence fragments you read; journals, memoirs and correspondence between persons in close proximity are of equal importance to the documented histories, sometimes greater. 3) The use of the name “Kreutzer” should be withdrawn in connection with the Sonata and its “incorrect” dedicatee (just as Beethoven did with Bridgetower and the pre-commercial manuscript). The “institution” of a new or different nickname might be cumbersome, but the real story will travel much farther in the cause of true and correct education. Let’s begin to tell the real story—or the “confirmed, documented account” so that the names will mean something!! The choice to leave Kreutzer’s name in place will only speak volumes about the perceived laziness of posterity and the “preferred ignorance” of the truth behind this great work—even when the composer probably engineered a large part of it himself!!  While the original dedication might have been vindictively removed from the “to-be-published-and-slightly-revised” edition of the Sonata, Bridgetower’s name is still on the manuscript score—upon which the commercial edition is supposed to, or in accordance with tradition--should have been based!! 4) Generally, revisionist history is a difficult exercise in “unlearning, relearning and keeping an open mind”. The first part is the most difficult and uncomfortable, since it involves the most investigation and acceptance of new and probably unfamiliar information. Keeping an open mind is the next part of the unlearning exercise.  Although such a matter as a nickname for this Sonata sounds like an easy one to accept and change, it can be surprising to realize how quickly our “naming” habits calcify in our minds!! 5) On a “human” level--in this and so many other appeals for the recognizance of posterity, let us allow Beethoven to be the human being that he was, and allow him ample room to occasionally screw up and paint himself into his own corner!! He did so in his lifetime; we can’t disallow him that same reasonable levity in the ensuing generations of fickle human habits formed in the meantime!! If he was once proclaimed (by Richard Wagner) as a “Titan, wrestling with the gods”, then let’s allow him full levity to get caught in his own “Full Nelson and Choke Hold” with regard to a “correct” nickname of the Sonata, Opus 47!! 6) Let’s not give in to the “tendency of natural repulsion” by the mere “image” of racism presumably present in this particular artistic situation--it isn’t always what it should seem!! 7) Lastly, to all students of musical performance: work to ultimately “super-impose” your identity onto the music that you sing and play; make it “reflect you”, and not just its original culture and time-frame.  Beethoven and Bridgetower, nonetheless, made this music “transcend”. Disagreement and uneven historical coverage notwithstanding, both men gave all of posterity a magically transcendental experience which still resonates from this work, regardless of its nickname. As is the case with much of his other work, perhaps this Sonata should have no nickname at all. To an ironic extent however, the challenge of somehow transcending the mishap, misnomer and mis-connected history surrounding this work will have to remain for the time being.