Gottschalk, Louis Moreau (EN)

Gottschalk Louis Moreau, *8 May 1829 New Orleans, †18 December 1869 Tijuca (near Rio de Janeiro), American pianist and composer. At the age of four, he studied violin with F. Miolan and piano with F. Lettelier. In 1842, he left for Paris, where he studied with Ch. Hallé, C. Stamaty (piano) and P. Maleden (composition). After a concert in 1845 at the Salle Pleyel, Chopin predicted that he would become “the king of pianists”. Gottschalk performed almost exclusively his own works and enjoyed great success from the outset, especially with his Louisiana trilogy (Bamboula, La savane, Le bananier). He was recognised in France as the first composer from the “New World”. From 1850 onward he undertook concert tours in Switzerland, the French provinces, and subsequently in Spain, where he gained wide recognition and was awarded the Royal Order of Isabella the Catholic. Thanks to works composed especially for Spanish audiences, such as El sitio de Zaragoza for ten pianos (1851), he achieved near-celebrity status. In 1853, he returned to America and toured the United States; from 1857, he travelled and performed in Cuba, the Antilles, South America, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Venezuela, Guyana, Brazil, Martinique, and Guadeloupe. He was an abolitionist. After his father’s death in 1853, he freed the slaves on the estate he had inherited. 

In 1860 and 1861, he took part in festivals in Havana and in 1862 began touring the United States again. He boasted of having given a total of 1,100 concerts in America and travelled 95,000 miles. From 1865, he gave concerts in Lima, Chile, Uruguay, and Montevideo; in 1869, he arrived in Rio de Janeiro, where he organised huge concerts, for example with 650 performers. In November 1869, he fainted during a performance and died shortly afterwards.

Based on the composer’s place of residence, Gottschalk’s output can be divided into six periods: I. 1844–50 in Paris (the Louisiana trilogy, Le mencenillier), II. 1850–52 in Switzerland and Spain (Souvenirs d’Andalousie, La jota aragonesa), III. 1853–56 in the United States (The Last Hope, Le banjo), IV. 1857–61 in the Antilles (his most prolific period: Souvenir de Porto-Rico, Ojos criollos, Symphony No. 1, the opera Escenas campestres), V. 1862–65 in the United States (Dying Poet, La gallina), VI. 1865–69 in South America (Pasquinade, Grande tarantelle). Gottschalk composed in nearly all the genres characteristic of the nineteenth-century piano miniature: dance pieces (polkas, mazurkas, tarantellas) and character pieces (caprices, ballads, scherzos, marches, serenades), often bearing performance-related or programmatic specifications, for example concert études such as Tremolo, Bataille, and Hercule, as well as fantasies on various themes. Gottschalk composed over 300 works. They exemplify a sentimental salon style (“celestial” melodies, conventional, somewhat pompous harmonic phrases, tremolas and harp arpeggios) combined with the exploitation of virtuoso effects, but not without certain individual features — exoticism, Spanish and Creole colour, syncopated rhythms, and jagged melodic lines, which heralded the advent of ragtime and jazz. These elements determined the enormous success of Gottschalk’s works, especially in his own performances, which were full of bravura and sentimentality at the same time. His most popular compositions: The Dying Poet and The Last Hope (28 different editions at the Library of Congress in Washington). Gottschalk’s works have been performed by Eugen List and Jeanne Behrend, among others.

The Bamboula syncopations were based on Creole melodies (Le Banjo 1855), which the composer had learned at home. He was the son of an Englishman (of Jewish descent) from New Orleans and a French Creole woman, and he listened to drumming in Congo Square in New Orleans. Later performances of Bamboula in popular music include a recording by trumpeter A. Beauregard with a dance band in 1934, while performances of Gottschalk’s piano music as classical music date back to 1956 (including Eugene List and Philip Martin recording for Hyperion Records), while recordings of both symphonies and other orchestral works, for piano and orchestra, and operas were conducted by I. Buketoff and S. Adler. Many works have been lost or destroyed. In January 1982, the ballet Great Galloping Gotschalk (choreography by L. Taylor-Corbelt to music by L.M. Gottschalk) was staged at the Miami Beach Theatre of the Performing Arts.

Literature: Louis Moreau Gottschalk. Notes of a Pianist, ed. C. Gottschalk Peterson, Philadelphia 1881, new edition J. Behrend, New York 1964; R. Offergeld The Centennial Catalogue of Published and Unpublished Compositions of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, New York 1970; P. Arpin Biographie de Louis Moreau Gottschalk, pianiste americain, New York 1853 (also in English); H. D[idimus] Biography of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, the American Pianist and Composer, Philadelphia 1853; O. Hensel Life and Letters of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Boston (Massachusetts) 1870; L. R. Fors Gottschalk, Havana 1880; F. C. Lange Vida e muerte de Louis Moreau Gottschalk en Rio de Janeiro 1869, Mendoza (Argentina) 1951; J. Behrend Louis Moreau Gottschalk. First American Concert Pianist, “The Etude” No. 75, 1957; V. Loggins Where the Word Ends. The Life of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Baton Rouge (Louisiana) 1958; J. G. Doyle The Piano Music of Louis Moreau Gottschalk 1829–1869, thesis at New York University, 1960; W. T. Marrocco America’s First Nationalist Composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–1869), in: commemorative book for L. Rong, Milan 1973; L. Rubin Gottschalk in Cuba, New York 1974; F. Curt Lange Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–1869). Correspondencia recientemente descubierta sobre su personalidad y obra realizada en el Uruguay y el Brasil, in: Die Musikkulturen Lateinamerikas im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. R. Günther, «Studien zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts» vol. 57, Regensburg 1982; S. Frederick Starr Bamboula. The Life and Times of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Oxford 1995; The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music, Cambridge 1996; Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, vol. 2 New York 2001; N. Butterworth Dictionary of American Classical Composers, New York 2005; R. Hamel Louis Moreau Gottschalk et son temps, Guérin, Canada 2005.