THE BRIDGETOWER

						
per il Mulatto Brischdauer 
gran pazzo e compositore mulattico
–– Ludwig van Beethoven, 1803					
			

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 his wine 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.