BEETHOVEN AND FRIEND

Radio Record, 29 July 1938, Page 19

BEETHOVEN AND FRIEND

-------- KREUTZER SONATA FIRST DEDICATED -' TO "ABYSSINIAN PRINCE" -SSaaaaaa

BOUT 8 o'clock on a May morning, in 1803, in Vienna, a mulatto violinist named George Au--gustus Polgreen Bridgetower (son of an African father and a German or Polish mother), played a sonata with Beethoven. Jt was the first performance of the master’s "Sonata in A Major, Opus 47, for Piano and Violin," composed expressly for the dusky fiddler. But not long afterward Beethoven and Bridgetower quarrelled, about a girl it is said, and when the Sonata was published in 1805, it bore a dedication to another violinist, Rudolph Kreutzer. Bence it has always been known as the "Kreutzer" Sonata. The mulatto, Bridgetower (whom Beethoven used to call Brischdower) was under the patronage of the Prince of Wales, and became the lion of the London season. He received his first rmausical instruction in Hngland, and was always addressed as the "Young Abyssinian Prince." There was considerable delay in the publication of the Sonata, and we find Beethoven writing about it to his publisher, Simrock of Bonn, in October, 1804, asking "Whether you have taken it from me merely to give it as food to the moths?" The work was destined to figure in fiction. Tolstoi, who did not understand musie at all, and had the weirdest ideas about it, wrote a novel of domestic intrigue which he calied

"The Kreutzer Sonata’ © In it he has made Beethoven’s work stand a-~ @ symbol of the erotic and hypnotis ing power of the tone art. As on matter of- fact, Beethoven was as in-

capable as Bach of writing, erotic music. ; Beethoven's Sonata No. 9,. A Major, Op, 47 .(Kreuizer), will be . played at LYA on Wednesday, August 3, by Haydn Murray, Violinist. * and Ryan, pianist. mo