“Sonata Mulattica brims with passion for the music, the era and its major and minor characters, resulting in a complete portrait of Beethoven, Bridgetower, and their milieu. But more important, Dove's masterful collection illuminates the life of a musical genius who might have been lost forever in the braying cacophony of our celebrity-driven times.” — The Los Angeles Times
This twelfth collection from the former U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize recipient is her third book-length narrative poem: it follows the real career of the violin prodigy George Polgreen Bridgetower (1780–1860), a former pupil of Haydn, as well as the grandson of an African prince, or so his promoters and teachers in England claimed. Moving to Vienna during the Napoleonic Wars, the violinist met and befriended Beethoven, who was prepared to dedicate his difficult Kreutzer Sonata to Bridgetower until a rivalry for the same woman drove them apart. Dove tells Bridgetower's story, and some of Beethoven's and Haydn's, in a heterogeneous profusion of short poems, some almost prosy, some glittering in their technique. From this crucial encounter evolves a grandiose yet melancholy poetic tale.
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