CHAPTER 5 | LOUIS MOREAU GOTTSCHALK: A NEW ORLEANS ORIGINAL 125
and around the city. He began playing piano at three and was
soon taking lessons from a member of a local opera company. He
also learned to play violin. Gottschalk sailed for France just after
turning thirteen, ready for further musical education in Europe.
His father had hoped that he would study at the Paris Conserva-
tory, but the director rejected Gottschalk without an audition on
the grounds that “America is only a land of steam engines.” Soon,
however, the boy was accepted as a piano pupil by a respected
teacher. As the center where the world’s leading pianists displayed
their art, Paris proved the ideal place for Gottschalk to prepare
for a virtuoso’s career. W hen he made his own debut as a pianist
in Paris shortly before his sixteenth birthday, the great composer
and pianist Frédéric Chopin was in the audience.
Gottschalk’s playing won approval, and he had also begun to
compose. Starting with dance-based pieces, he paid homage to Cho-
pin in a series of mazurkas and waltzes. Then in 1849 he based four
new compositions on melodies he had learned in A merica: Bamboula,
a description of the music and dancing in Congo Square; La savane
(the Tropica l Pa lm); Le bananier (The Banana Tree); and Le marcenillier
(The Manchineel Tree)—all published in Paris under the name “Gottschalk of Loui-
siana.” These pieces, which anticipate the efforts of later generations of composers
to forge a distinctively American style of classical music, established Gottschalk as a
musical representative of the New World in the Old. And they provide a glimpse of a
young American artist discovering an approach suited to his talents as a composer
who played his own works in public. Throughout his career, Gottschalk wrote
music that was diffi cult for the player but easy on the listener.
By the end of 1852 Gottschalk was ready to return to the United States. The
fi rst concert he played after landing in New York took place in February 1853.
Together with works by Liszt, Verdi, and others, plenty of Gottschalk’s own
music appeared on this program, including Le bananier and a “Grand Caprice
and Variations” for two pianos on a popular tune of the day, The Carnival of
Venice. As with other pianists of the time, Gottschalk’s concerts seldom took the
form of solo piano recitals, except where other skilled musicians were unavail-
able. He was joined in his American debut by a fl ute soloist, several singers, a
pianist, and an orchestra.
One of Gottschalk’s most appealing compositions is The Banjo: An Ameri-
can Sketch (LG 5.2), published in New York City in 1855. Seeking material with
immediate impact, he chose two attention-grabbing elements: the sound of the
banjo and a folklike pentatonic melody that strongly resembles Stephen Foster’s
well-known song “De Camptown Races,” published fi ve years earlier. (Either
Gottschalk is borrowing Foster’s tune or both composers are borrowing from a
common folk source; see chapter 6.)
Formally speak ing, The Banjo is an unbalanced piece. Its brief introduction,
a fragment of the pentatonic tune (8 bars), is followed by a long section that imi-
tates the banjo’s sound (162 bars), then a shorter section presenting the complete
melody and ending in a noisy burst of pianistic bravura (54 bars). If Gottschalk
had wanted balance, he could have brought back the banjo imitation in a ternary
form (ABA) or expanded the second section of his lopsided binary form. But nei-
ther would have churned up so much sheer excitement.LG 5.2K Seven banjos, a
tambourine, several pairs of
bones, and a free-fl owing
pennant spell out the title
of Gottschalk’s “grotesque
fantasie” The Banjo: An
American Sketch in its fi rst
edition (New York, 1855).172028_05_106-131_r3_ko.indd 125 23/01/13 8:21 PM