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der blaue Geiger * Internet edition
volume 1/4 * March 1998 * part 8 of 8
Obscure Musician of the Month
der (halb-) schwarze Geiger
George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower
(c.1779-1860)
O, wenn nur gar kein Weibsbild wär,
Es is ein Schand und Spott!
Auf d'Weißen - hab'n s' kein' Gusto mehr,
Jetzt kommen d' Mohren in d' Mod!
O, if there were only no females at all,
It is a shame and mockery!
For th' whites - th' have no more gusto,
Now come th' Moors in fashion!
- Ferdinand Kringsteiner, Othello, der Mohr in
Wien (1806)
This is a report on the current state of research into the life and
work of someone who should be absolutely fascinating. But he isn't. At
least not yet. Which is, in itself, very interesting.
George Bridgetower is a familiar name to musicologists, and even to
many non-professional music fans. He was the violinist to whom Beethoven
dedicated his "Sonata mulattica composta per il Mulatto Brischdauer"
in 1803. The piece now known as the Kreutzer Sonata, Op. 47.
The stories about this sonata are among the classics of Beethoven
lore. Like the one about how Beethoven was still writing the piece on
the day of the concert (24 May 1803), so at the premiere performance,
Bridgetower was sight-reading some passages from Beethoven's manuscript,
and Beethoven was filling in the piano part as he played since he hadn't
finished writing all of it. And the one, told much after the fact by
Bridgetower himself, about how he and Beethoven had a falling-out
concerning a woman, after which Beethoven decided to re-dedicate the
sonata to someone else.
The obvious question, "So who was this guy?", was first
addressed in detail by F. G. Edwards in an article published in 1908 in The
Musical Times.
Young Bridgetower had already had a rather full life by the time he
became such friends with Beethoven for a short time when he was 24. And
there was much to be said about another very curious character: his
father.
In April of 1789, a nine-year-old black boy was brought by his father
to Paris, where he displayed both his precocious violin virtuosity and
his father's flair for showmanship by giving a concert dressed in
(somebody's idea of) Turkish clothing. The two soon moved on to England,
where both father, who quickly became known as "the African
Prince", and son made quite an impression.
But who were they? Where did they come from? Where did they learn
such cultivated, almost theatrical manners, and such violin playing?
Frederick Augustus Bridgetower claimed his son had studied music with
the great Haydn. But who would believe such a flamboyant showman,
especially when it's his own kid he's bragging about?
As for the basic version of the basic facts, the African Prince was
married to a German (or Austrian or Polish) woman who is named in
English documents as Mary Ann Bridgetower. She probably didn't tag along
on this musical adventure to England, but stayed at home in Dresden, or
some such place in that part of the world. They had (at least) two sons,
who both became fine musicians. The younger brother, "F", was
a cellist. George was born in a town called Biala in Poland.
All of which may actually be true. Evidence has been found to support
most of it. But scholars haven't been able to verify that birthplace,
and I'm even more skeptical than they are. The word "bialy"
(with a line through the "l" my keyboard won't do) is Polish
for "white". Somebody's idea of an ironic joke, maybe?
After a couple of years or so, the African Prince's exploits in
London had gone too far over the line. He had indulged heavily in the
traditional wine, women, and song, using up all of the money his son's
talents brought in, and then some. But young George had become such a
court favorite that he was taken in by the English royal family. The
father was requested to leave the country, without his son. The
responsibility for educating the boy wonder violinist was, from that
point on, taken on by the Prince of Wales (the future George IV)
himself.
But as he grew up, George Bridgetower's life became more and more
normal, for a musician. He gave concerts. He wrote music. He traveled to
the continent. Once he wasn't a boy wonder, he was just one of many fine
violinists trying to earn a living. If it hadn't been for that little
side-trip to Vienna while he was visiting his mother in Dresden in
1802-3, he might have disappeared from history completely. He was
apparently quite poor, and not much remembered, when he died in London
in 1860.
< < < > > >
That was the basic story. It's a pretty good story, but it's more
remarkable for what it doesn't have in it than for what it does.
Like, why was George Bridgetower so normal? Shouldn't his life have
been much stranger than this?
What was the point of being black, we might say, if he was just going
to turn out to be another European?
For example. Professor Longhair once pointed out that, in the last
movement of his last piano sonata (#32, in C minor, Op. 111), as
Beethoven moves from one variation to the next by subdividing the rhythm
and shifting the position of the accented beats, the music begins to
take on some of the specific characteristics of the playing style of
such pianists as James P. Johnson. Which is to say, 20th-century,
American, black piano music. Stride piano, from old Vienna.
But, he hastened to add, Beethoven was really just developing the
possibilities inherent in the material he started with. And so was James
P. Johnson. There are moments when European logic and African logic
intersect. We have no evidence that Beethoven could ever have heard any
actual African music.
Now wait a minute. What about George Bridgetower?
This mulatto violinist shows up in Vienna one day in 1803, he and
Beethoven start hanging around together, and suddenly Beethoven's music
picks up a new dimension. There's a fire in the Kreutzer Sonata you
don't find in his works for strings before that. And there's the Eroica
Symphony, his great breakthrough, in passages of which (among lots of
other things) the displaced accents get pounded percussively into your
head.
In the afternoons on Sundayes, they have their Musick, which
is of kettle drums, and those of several sizes; upon the smallest the
best Musician playes, and the other come in as Chorasses: the drum all
men know, has but one tone; and therefore variety of tunes have little
to do in this musick; and yet so strangely they varie their time, as
'tis a pleasure to the most curious ears, and it was to me one of the
strangest noises that ever I heard made of one tone; and if they had
the variety of tune, which gives the greater scope in Musick, as they
have of time, they would do wonders in that Art.
- Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History of the
Island of Barbadoes (1673),quoted in Abrahams and Szwed (ed.), After
Africa
The first Bridgetower find, after Edwards, was published in 1945 in
Hans Volkmann's book Beethoven in seinen Beziehungen zu Dresden.
Among the names in the sign-in book of a library in Dresden, Volkmann
found this one, dated 7 December 1796: "Bridgtower de Bridgtower de
la barbade colonie anglaise".
So the name "Bridgetower" might be a way of saying
"from Bridgetown". Bridgetown is in fact the main city of
Barbados, an English colony ("barbade colonie anglaise"). If
this was written by the elder Bridgetower, he could be telling us where
he came from. Of course, he also might have been deliberately
perpetuating a myth about himself that he liked, or found useful . . .
If he had lived in Barbados, and was musical enough to be able to
turn out two notable musicians as sons, wouldn't we expect him to know
something about the African-derived music of the islands? Didn't he pass
any of this on to his sons?
I know something about that problem, personally. My parents were both
Polish enough that, though born and raised in America, they were fully
bi-lingual. (My mother's only language, in fact, was Polish until she
went to school.) But they wanted their children to be fully American. So
my brother and I were taught not a word of Polish.
But even so, we picked up a fair amount of Polishness. Polish music,
Polish food, Polish literature, Polish history. Even a few words, from
here and there.
So it's quite possible that Frederick Augustus Bridgetower and his
wife raised their sons to be fully European, and not African at all.
They wouldn't be Africans, they would be 'real people'.
Maybe they didn't do a perfect job of it. Maybe some African musical
influence got through to Beethoven through George Bridgetower.
But, beym Fickrement! why isn't there any real evidence? Everything
George Bridgetower did, musically, that made it into the public record
was as white-European as you can get. He played nothing but the usual
run of concertos, sonatas, and quartets, just like any white guy.
About this time [1789] an adventurer of the name Bridgetower, a
black, came to Windsor with a view of introducing his son, a most
possessing lad of ten or twelve years old, and a fine violin player.
He was commanded by their majesties to perform at the Lodge, where he
played a concerto of Viotti's and a quartett of Haydn's, whose pupil
he called himself. Both father and son pleased greatly. The one for
his talent and modest bearing, the other for his fascinating manner,
elegance, expertness in all languages, beauty of person, and taste in
dress. He seemed to win the good opinion of every one, and was courted
by all and entreated to join in society; but he held back with the
intention of giving a concert at the Town Hall.
- Court and Private Life in the Times of Queen
Charlotte,
Being the Journals of Mrs. Papendiek
These behind-the-scenes memoirs by an insider, from a whole family of
insiders, at the English court were introduced into the discussion by
Betty Matthews, in Music Review in 1968.
The story of the rise and fall of the African Prince is chronicled
quite dramatically by Charlotte Papendiek. That "good opinion of
everyone" was certainly soon lost. As Matthews sums up one of the
turning points in the story,
Mrs. Papendiek's parents lived in a part of St. James's Palace (her
father had come from Strelitz with Queen Charlotte) and in the dark
passages leading to the apartments Bridgtower came up to her and asked
to be introduced to her parents, a suggestion which apparently shocked
her very much. She managed to get away after lending him a guinea and
a half, which, in spite of her father's gloomy forebodings he paid
back. But he was told never to ask again, and from this time many
people looked askance at him.
But again, there is something we don't see. They came to dislike him,
but it seems to have been personal. Was there really so little racial
prejudice in London (and Paris and Vienna) in those days that it was no
problem for people of African descent to "join in society"?
The situation of black people in England at that time was, to say the
least, complicated. Slavery did exist in the British Empire. Even in
England, there were black people who were officially slaves. Sometimes
one of them would get his case to court, where a judge so inclined might
set him free. But other judges favored property rights over personal
rights. There were free black people in England, too. Enough of them so
that many slaves could escape into black neighborhoods in English cities
and never be caught. But, of course, a gang could come in the middle of
the night, grab a few black people, say they were runaway slaves, and
put them on a boat for the colonies which would sail before anyone could
do anything about it.
It has been argued, though, that anything like real racial prejudice
didn't become a significant factor in public life in England until
slavery was on its way out, in the 1830s. (This is well argued in the
many works of James Walvin.) One finds many remarks concerning
differences between Africans and Europeans, and in many of these the
African way is clearly seen as second-best. But it took a while before
actual observation began to be replaced by stereotyping. Racial hatred
wasn't natural and instinctive. Like a fine art, it had to be developed.
Where are all the nasty things that, we expect, people must have been
saying about the marriage of Frederick Augustus and Mary Ann Bridgetower?
Should we be finding it odd that racial issues seemed to play no part in
the life of George Bridgetower? Does this just mean we haven't been
looking hard enough, or in the right places? Or is this one case where
we really shouldn't read the problems of more 'modern' times back into
the past?
As I said, this is work in 'progress'.
< < < > > >
But at least scholars now have some hint of where all that culture
came from. The connection to Haydn turned out to be quite true. Well,
maybe we still can't prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Haydn himself
sat down with the young George and F to give them their music lessons.
But their father was, like Haydn, part of the Esterhazy household.
1780 - The personal services for the prince were provided by the
valets, two each for the prince and princess, besides one personal
page each, the moor Friedrich Augustus and the dwarf Johann Siedler
(usually called Monsieur Jean), to whom Haydn's younger brother Johann
[Michael] gave instruction on the clavier.
- Haydn Documenta, as quoted by Josephine R.
B. Wright
in her Bridgetower article, The Musical Quarterly (1980)
And the Haydn Yearbook for 1968 consists of excerpts from the
diaries of one Joseph Carl Rosenbaum, who was not only well acquainted
with the Vienna musical scene (his wife was the singer Therese Gaßmann),
but was also a regular visitor at the Esterhazy place in Eisenstadt. We
note two of his entries (as translated in the Yearbook: the English is
all I've got at the moment):
MAY 1803
Monday, 16th: . . . In the evening with Kuhnel and Tomasini to the
Wiedner Th.: Lodoiska by Cherubini . . . there I met the mulatto
Bridgtower (Brischdauer) again, first violin to the Prince of Walles
and the son of August the Moor who was in the service of Prince Niklas
as valet. I asked him to come to lunch tomorrow.
JULY 1803
Friday, 22nd: . . . At mid-day the actor Schuster, his wife and
Korntheuer lunched with us. Bridgtower came later. He has spent 8 days
in Eisenstadt.
We're starting to get somewhere with this. We still don't know how
"August the Moor" might have gotten from Barbados to the
Burgenland. Eisenstadt doesn't have a lot in common with Bridgetown.
It's a long trip. It's even a long way from the coast of Europe to the
Austrian-Hungarian borderlands. So we still aren't sure where Friedrich
Augustus (how many different ways can I name him in one article?)
learned several languages (or was it just a few choice words in each?),
but we know he must have been expected to know all about gracious living
with the Esterhazys.
And this is where the Geiger might be able to make a small
contribution of its own to this multi-sided research project. In the
second of those diary entries, we find Schuster and Korntheuer. They're
from one of our necks of the Vienna woods, the Volkstheater.
Assuming we've got the right guys here, that is. But when they're
mentioned as a pair, the odds are in our favor. They weren't a team yet
in 1803, but they would become quite a Mutt-and-Jeff pair at the
Leopoldstadt Theater.
Ignaz Schuster (1779-1835) was short and slightly hunchbacked. He was
a fine singer, who was also accomplished as a composer and choir
director. He was also the greatest comic actor in the Vienna
Volkstheater during the Napoleonic War years. He would be, playing on
his resemblance to Napoleon, the memorable Fürst Pamstig during the
Congress of Vienna. He would be the man with the beautiful bass voice
who could astonish everyone with his imitation of the great soprano
Catalani. He would be, most of all, the legendary Staberl.
J. F. Korntheuer (1779-1829) tried to be a serious actor at the
Burgtheater and an impresario before he gave in to his destiny and
became one of the finest comic character actors of the post-war years.
But the character had to be tall. He learned to use his height to his
great advantage, so much so that parts with names like "Longimanus"
and "Longinus" were written just for him.
In 1806, a young and very talented writer of "local"
comedies for the Vienna Volkstheater took a very significant step.
Ferdinand Kringsteiner (who wouldn't live long enough to get much beyond
young) started to take on the classics. He had already written a
wonderful Viennese version of the Bluebeard story called Die Braut in
der Klemme (1804), in which . . . no, I won't ruin for you the
surprise of what she finds behind the forbidden door: but this is
Vienna, so what would you expect? But now he was taking on Shakespeare
and Goethe, setting the stories of Othello and Werther among the common
people of Vienna. It started with Othello, der Mohr in Wien. It
was a very bright idea. Soon all the best local playwrights were
bringing Shakespeare, Goethe, and Schiller out into the streets.
So how did he think of it? It's an idea that really needs no
introduction. Someone could have thought of it all by himself, without
any push at all, just because it's a good idea.
But consider. Kringsteiner's Othello describes himself as a "Leibbedienter",
which sounds a lot like a "personal page" to me. When he first
appears, he is directed to act and speak "mit Livree-Anstand"
- making a point of those good manners, even though he, like
everyone else there, is quite drunk at the time. And obviously, the
whole idea of Othello is that he's married to a white woman. (The
daughter of the "Hausmeister": makes us realize how much we
don't know about "Mary Ann".)
And that one big clue these plays have a way of throwing at you. At
the beginning of the 16th Scene, the stage directions tell us exactly
what music is supposed to be played: "Man hört Bergknappen-Musik
im Wirtshaus. NB. Den Trio von Paukenschlag-Menuett."
Na jo, the bar band is playing Haydn.
Ignaz Schuster was the Hausmeister Wastl, Desdemona's father, in this
play. (Korntheuer wouldn't join this company for several years.) And I
don't know who wrote the rest of the music for this one, but the title
page of Werthers Leiden says "Musik: Ignaz Schuster".
Now I don't want to draw any conclusions. This remains a work in
progress. But maybe the Bridgetowers, both father and son, had a little
more effect on Vienna than we thought.
You may have noticed that, for a scholarly journal, we write about
sports a lot. That's not just because most of us are sports fans. It's
also because we're convinced that organized sports have taken over, in
modern European and American society, much of the territory that
formerly belonged to music and theater.
We could say much in defense of this idea. We probably will, as the
months go on. But for now, we'll just let the illustratve and
comparative value of our examples speak for itself. When we look for
modern examples of popular culture to compare to what we find in old
Vienna, sure, there's TV, and rock music, and the movies. But there's
also soccer and baseball. And the passions that used to be aroused by
the Volkstheater are now found perhaps even more in sports than in,
say, rock concerts.
Every musicologist should see - and especially hear - a European
soccer game sometime. You don't even have to know most of what's
happening on the field (although it helps a lot, as in any field, if
you know the history that makes that particular game what it is). Just
make sure you watch and listen to the crowd. What we in music tend to
call the "audience". At a soccer game, they're a big part of
the show. They even supply the music.
And it spills over its natural boundaries, into real life. Have the
"Callithumpians" evolved into the "hooligans"? If
you don't think soccer hooligans are a potent force in European
society, consult any European ministry of security.
If there's an ocean between you and all that, you can at least check
out an Atlanta Braves baseball game. It's much calmer, but you can
listen to America's great contribution to the art of the crowd: the
Tomahawk Chop. (The world is still waiting for the inevitable answer:
the New York Yank.) As Princess Pauline once said, would you have
believed a crowd of 40,000 Americans could get quarter-tones right?
Attention JK and the folks at
der blaue Geiger:
This page is no longer available
on line and I am reprinting it without your approval. If you prefer I
will remove it at your request. It is a wonderful "analysis".
The removal of der blaue
Geiger Internet Edition from the web is a loss.
David Prentice
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