Gottschalk and Friends

During his short and tumultuous life, Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1869) was widely recognized as a consummate virtuoso. As the first American musician to achieve international fame, he exerted a tremendous influence on American musical life. Gottschalk was no stranger to controversy. At 14 he was rejected by the Paris Conservatory, without an audition, on account of being an American. The director declared that “America is a land of steam engines”. Yet two years later Chopin would proclaim him the future “king of the piano”, while upon his return to America, a New York reviewer compared him to Beethoven. On the other hand, because of his excessive reliance on pianistic pyrotechnics, Dwight in his Journal of Music described Gottschalk’s music as weak and superficial: “Could a more trivial and insulting string of musical rigmarole have been offered to an audience of earnest music lovers…?”

The musical influences of Gottschalk extended to…