Sonata Mulattica Sonata Mulattica Sonata Mulattica : A Life in Five Movements and a Short Play is a collection of poems by U.S. poet laureate Rita Dove, published in 2009, about the life of George Bridgetower. Bridgetower was a biracial (Afro-Caribbean, Polish, German) musician who was friends with Beethoven. Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata was originally dedicated to Bridgetower, and was originally entitled "Sonata mulattica composta per il mulatto Brischdauer [Bridgetower], gran pazzo e compositore mulattico" (Mulatto Sonata composed for the mulatto Brischdauer, big wild mulatto composer) Dove said that she relied on documents such as the diary of Charlotte Papendiek, lady-in-waiting to the
Sonata for Clarinet (Cage) California workshop in San Francisco. When Cage arrived, it turned out the clarinetist couldn't play the piece, and Cage had to play it himself, on piano (Nicholls 1990, 176). Cage also tried to get a Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra clarinetist to play the sonata, but the clarinetist refused on aesthetic grounds (Kostelanetz 2003, 103). Later in life, Cage made some revisions and the sonata was finally published by Edition Peters, Cage's principal publisher, in 1963. Although he disliked some of his early works, he considered the Sonata, according to a late interview, "very interesting" (Duckworth 1999, 8). The Sonata is