Beethoven\u2019s Sonata in A major op. 47 took its household nickname from its dedication to famous French violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer. Yet Kreutzer never performed it public \u2013 in fact, Beethoven wrote this excellent piece for the court violinist of the Prince of Wales, the mulatto George Polgreen Bridgetower, who arrived in Vienna in 1803 and became a focus of great interest for his exotic appearance and rumours as to being a descendant of princes of Abyssinia. Bridgetower\u2019s origins are indeed out of the ordinary, since latest research suggest that he was born in Bia\u0142a, Poland, from a black father (a page of Prince Esterhazy), and a Polish or German mother. Beethoven met Bridgetower at a soir\u00e9e at Prince Lichnowski\u2019s and he liked his performance \u2013 quite eccentric yet vividly temperamental \u2013 so much that the composer was dead set on a joint public concert. Since the date for the concert had already been given, Beethoven wrote two movements of the new sonata for violin with piano and appended an already-extant finale, originally planned for an earlier Sonata, op. 30\/1. The performance of the new work proved a success for the composer as well as for the violinist. Beethoven, fully gratified, jokingly annotated the manuscript: \u201dSonata mulattica,\u201d composed \u201cper il Mulatto Brischdauer (sic!), garn pazzo e compositore mulattico.\u201d However, when it came to publishing the work, Beethoven disposed of the original dedication and replaced it with one to Kreutzer, who showed himself an ingrate. The origins of Sonata explain its style of virtuosic display and the untypical tonal layout of the whole. Although the original introduction with a solo violin part in polyphonic texture happens in A major, Movement One is maintained in A minor, and the second, Andante con Variazioni with its beautiful theme, in F major, it is only the final Presto \u2013 tempestuous and dazzlingly bright \u2013 that reverts to the main key. \u201cKreutzer\u201d occupies a special place among Beethoven\u2019s ten violin sonatas not only due to its virtuosic character, but also as to the wealth of its musical ideas and their highly sophisticated development into great form. It is a form that surprises with its logic and coherence \u2013 if one considers the circumstances of its creation.
\nAdam Walaci\u0144ski<\/b><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Beethoven\u2019s Sonata in A major op. 47 took its household nickname from its dedication to famous French violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer. Yet Kreutzer never performed it public \u2013 in fact, Beethoven wrote this excellent piece for the court violinist of the Prince of Wales, the mulatto George Polgreen Bridgetower, who arrived in Vienna in 1803 and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-b"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beethoven.org.pl\/encyklopedia\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beethoven.org.pl\/encyklopedia\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beethoven.org.pl\/encyklopedia\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beethoven.org.pl\/encyklopedia\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beethoven.org.pl\/encyklopedia\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/beethoven.org.pl\/encyklopedia\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":366,"href":"https:\/\/beethoven.org.pl\/encyklopedia\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions\/366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beethoven.org.pl\/encyklopedia\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beethoven.org.pl\/encyklopedia\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beethoven.org.pl\/encyklopedia\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}