Biography
American composer and virtuoso pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk became the first from the United States to win acclaim abroad. He rose to prominence with nationally inflected pieces such as Bamboula, written in 1845. Within his native country, Le Banjo of 1855 and The Dying Poet of 1853 enjoyed exceptional success. Although his rhythmic language appears to foreshadow ragtime, no documented connection exists between Gottschalk and the later syncopated idiom; nevertheless, traces of his melodic contour and rhythmic drive surface in the music of Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton. Nickelodeon pianists, through excessive fondness, turned works such as The Dying Poet and Morte!! into stock dramatic cues for silent-film accompaniment, causing audiences to regard those themes as threadbare clichés. By the 1940s critics dismissed him as irretrievably dated, and only prolonged scholarly advocacy gradually restored his standing. At his finest, Gottschalk proved an American original whose masterworks—Souvenir de Porto Rico, L'Union, and O Ma Charmant, Épargnez-Moi!—endure through their emotional force, technical command, boldness, wit, and grace.
The eldest child of a Jewish-English real-estate speculator from New Orleans and his French-Creole wife, Gottschalk may have encountered drumming at Place Congo, yet his acquaintance with Creole melody most likely arose inside the family home. He studied piano with Narcisse Lettellier, who later also instructed Jelly Roll Morton, and at eleven was dispatched to Paris. Barred from the Conservatoire, he trained instead with Charles Hallé and Camille Stamaty while receiving composition lessons from Pierre Maleden. His 1845 debut at the Salle Pleyel drew favorable notice from Chopin. Toward the close of the 1840s his earliest publications, among them Bamboula, appeared; these syncopated settings of popular Creole tunes swiftly circulated around the globe. In 1852 he departed Paris to rejoin his father in New York, where he faced intense rivalry from visiting European performers. Following his father’s death late in 1853, Gottschalk assumed financial responsibility for his mother and six siblings. A 1855 agreement with publisher William Hall resulted in the issuance of several works, including The Banjo and The Last Hope. The latter, a plaintive and sweetly melancholy composition, achieved immense popularity, obliging the composer to encore it at every recital; he later remarked, “even my paternal love for The Last Hope has succumbed under the terrible necessity of meeting it at every step.” An appearance at Dodsworth Hall in December 1855 finally secured a receptive public, rendering him solvent for the first time. After his mother’s death in 1857 he was freed from family obligations and embarked on a five-year Caribbean tour. Upon returning he found the United States engulfed in the Civil War. He backed the Union cause, performing in northern states through 1864, yet grew weary of surrounding violence and began championing education by giving benefit concerts for public schools and libraries. During a California journey in 1865 he became entangled with a student at a seminary in Oakland, prompting harsh press condemnation; he fled aboard a steamer for Panama City. Rather than heading to New York, he continued to Peru, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina, repeatedly evading revolutions, civil unrest, and cholera outbreaks while his health deteriorated under the pressure. In August 1869 he contracted malaria in Brazil; still convalescing, he was struck in the abdomen by a sandbag hurled by a student in São Paolo. On 25 November, during a Rio de Janeiro recital, he collapsed at the keyboard. The cause proved to be appendicitis that progressed to peritonitis, and on 18 December 1869, at the age of forty, Gottschalk died.
The eldest child of a Jewish-English real-estate speculator from New Orleans and his French-Creole wife, Gottschalk may have encountered drumming at Place Congo, yet his acquaintance with Creole melody most likely arose inside the family home. He studied piano with Narcisse Lettellier, who later also instructed Jelly Roll Morton, and at eleven was dispatched to Paris. Barred from the Conservatoire, he trained instead with Charles Hallé and Camille Stamaty while receiving composition lessons from Pierre Maleden. His 1845 debut at the Salle Pleyel drew favorable notice from Chopin. Toward the close of the 1840s his earliest publications, among them Bamboula, appeared; these syncopated settings of popular Creole tunes swiftly circulated around the globe. In 1852 he departed Paris to rejoin his father in New York, where he faced intense rivalry from visiting European performers. Following his father’s death late in 1853, Gottschalk assumed financial responsibility for his mother and six siblings. A 1855 agreement with publisher William Hall resulted in the issuance of several works, including The Banjo and The Last Hope. The latter, a plaintive and sweetly melancholy composition, achieved immense popularity, obliging the composer to encore it at every recital; he later remarked, “even my paternal love for The Last Hope has succumbed under the terrible necessity of meeting it at every step.” An appearance at Dodsworth Hall in December 1855 finally secured a receptive public, rendering him solvent for the first time. After his mother’s death in 1857 he was freed from family obligations and embarked on a five-year Caribbean tour. Upon returning he found the United States engulfed in the Civil War. He backed the Union cause, performing in northern states through 1864, yet grew weary of surrounding violence and began championing education by giving benefit concerts for public schools and libraries. During a California journey in 1865 he became entangled with a student at a seminary in Oakland, prompting harsh press condemnation; he fled aboard a steamer for Panama City. Rather than heading to New York, he continued to Peru, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina, repeatedly evading revolutions, civil unrest, and cholera outbreaks while his health deteriorated under the pressure. In August 1869 he contracted malaria in Brazil; still convalescing, he was struck in the abdomen by a sandbag hurled by a student in São Paolo. On 25 November, during a Rio de Janeiro recital, he collapsed at the keyboard. The cause proved to be appendicitis that progressed to peritonitis, and on 18 December 1869, at the age of forty, Gottschalk died.