Louis Gottschalk - what American Classical music could have been

Gottschalk, America’s first internationally known pianist and composer and a favorite of Berlioz and Chopin wrote classical music with folk themes and melodies of the Americas, particularly the Caribbean. He was black and a favorite of Abe

Lincoln who attended his concerts.

Musical scholars say American rock and roll and jazz began in the wild and fantastic music performed by hundreds of Caribbean and African slaves on African drums and American brass musical instruments on Sundays, their day off, in Congo Square in New Orleans in the early and mid 1800’s. Less well known is that American classical music began there too because among the listeners of that music in the 1830’s was a child, Louis Gottschalk who from infancy danced to those rhythms from his porch where he could hear them.

At 13 Gottschalk he went to Europe to study piano and soon became America’s first internationally known performer who Chopin said he would be one of the greatest pianists of the century. Later he wrote classical music with Caribbean and African themes and rhythms which were remarkably popular in America and Europe. Alas, this branch of American classical music died when he did at age 40 as American culture increasingly thought proper classical music must sound like Brahms and Beethoven and American rhythms or music with American folk tunes was scorned as vulgar. But with Gottschalk we can still hear what American Classical music could have been and should have been if audiences, musicians and conductors had not been convinced that black music was vulgar and not proper for cultured white people. American critics who embraced European composers who incorporated folk themes from their countries into their music, nevertheless spurned Gottschalk and other black American classical music composers for doing the same thing.

In his worldwide tours Gottschalk produced stupendous incomprehensible spectacles called

“monster concerts” with hundreds (once 900!) performers on the stage playing his music.

Alas, even today books about classical music listing hundreds of composers often do not even mention him. But only a stone dead heart could not love Gottschalk. Like Chopin he was a one of a kind – no predecessors or successors.  Spectacularly handsome and devastatingly attractive to women he was once actually kidnapped by female admirers. He traveled and performed extensively worldwide always accompanied by two 10-foot Chickering pianos. Gottschalk performed all over the world until he died at 42 after collapsing during a concert in Brazil while conducting 600 musicians in a composition of his called “Morte”. 

Eugene list the pianist rediscovered his lost music in the late 1950’s and popularized it and fortunately was recorded by Vanguard who makes excellent recordings. 

Recommended compositions are "Grande Tarentelle for Piano and Orchestra ", a piece with relentless forward momentum, and "Night in the Tropics' 

Gottschalk’s music is growing in popularity – so interpretations/ and quality of recordings is evolving, but you can’t go wrong with reissues of the older Eugene List performances but Philip Martin on Hyperion is getting excellent reviews. An interesting video about Gottschalk's irresistibility to women is here.