Baker's Student Encyclopedia of Music | Gottschalk, Louis Moreau

celebrated American pianist and composer; b. New Orleans, May 8, 1829; d. Tijuca, near Rio de Janeiro, Dec. 18, 1869. Gottschalk's father, an English businessman, emigrated to New Orleans. His mother was of Creole descent, the granddaughter of a governor of a Haitian province.

Gottschalk's talent for music was developed early. At the age of four, he began studying violin with FELIX MIOLAN, concertmaster of the New Orleans' opera orchestra, and piano with FRANÇOIS LETELLIER, organist at the St. Louis Cathedral. At seven he substituted for Letellier at the organ during High Mass, and the next year played violin at a benefit for Miolan. In 1841 he was sent to Paris, where he studied piano and harmony. He also later studied composition with the famous composer and teacher HECTOR BERLIOZ.

In 1845, Gottschalk gave a concert at Paris's Salle Pleyel, which attracted the attention of FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN. His piano compositions of the period, including Bamboula, Le Bananier, and La Savane, were influenced by FRANZ LISZT and Chopin, but also inspired by childhood recollections of Creole and African-American dances and songs.

In 1846 — 47 he appeared in a series of concerts with Berlioz at the Italian Opera, and in 1850 concertized throughout France and Switzerland, playing his own compositions. In 1851 he appeared in Madrid at the invitation of the Queen and was given the Order of Isabella. During his stay there, he developed the "monster concerts," for which he wrote a symphony for ten pianos, El sitio de Zaragosa, later transformed into Bunker's Hill by replacing the Spanish tunes with American ones.

In 1853, Gottschalk returned to the U.S. and gave a highly praised concert in N.Y., followed by many concerts throughout the U.S., Cuba, and Canada over the next three years. During the winter of 1855-56, he gave 80 concerts in N.Y. alone. His compositions from this period, including La Scintilla, The Dying Poet, and The Last Hope, written to display his talents as pianist, used many novel techniques.

After playing Adolf Henselt's Piano Concerto with the N.Y. Philharmonic in 1857, he went to Cuba with the then-teenaged singer ADELINA PATTI. He then lived in the West Indies, writing works influenced by its indigenous music. In Havana, on Feb. 17, 1861, he introduced his most famous orchestral work, La Nuit des tropiques (The night of the tropics; Symphony No. 1). He also produced several grand "monster concerts" modeled after those of Jullien.

Although he was born in the South, Gottschalk's sympathies were with the North during the American Civil War. He had freed the slaves he inherited after his father's death in 1853. He resumed his U.S. concert career with a performance in N.Y. in 1862, and until 1865 toured the North and the West, playing (by his estimation) over a thousand concerts.

After becoming involved in a scandal with a teenage girl in San Francisco, Gottschalk was forced to flee to South America in 1865, where he appeared in concert and composed new works based on local melodies and rhythms. During a festival of his music in Rio de Janeiro in 1869, he collapsed on stage after playing the appropriately titled Morte!! (Death!!), dying within a month. His remains were exhumed and reburied with great ceremony in Brooklyn in 1870.

Gottschalk was a prolific composer of showy, pianistic works that enjoyed great popularity for some time even after his death. Ultimately, however, they slipped into oblivion. As a pianist he was one of the most adulated virtuosos of his era. His concerts, featuring his own compositions, emphasized his incredible technique but were criticized by some as being all-show with no substance.

Two catalogs of his music have been published, although neither is definitive. Gottschalk published some of his works using the pseudonyms Steven Octaves, Oscar Litti, A.B.C., and Paul Ernest.