This is the first Gottschalk album that I’ve been exposed to, very fun music đ It feels like modern reworks of popular songs more than something that would be found in the classical genre. I would have liked it if some of this was in the ABRSM C class so I could learn this instead of the modern pieces therein, but anyway. I came across it because I was looking for albums by Pennario; David Dubal gave Pennario a slightly off review in his “Art of the Piano” book, so I was curious.
I’m mentioning “reworks of popular songs”, aka pop music, because one would swear this guy composed like in the 50s, like 1950s. He actually wrote this stuff in the 1850s! Perhaps I have too limited an insight into how old pop music is đ Or better said, jazz-like interpretations of popular tunes. It’s absolutely lovely though, anyone would be humming along quite nicely to these tunes.
Gottschalk was born in New Orleans and he was apparently1 a piano prodigy. Being a prodigy and having a French mom, he moved to Paris to study at the conservatory but was refused on account of being American. This does sound like something the French would do, but were they still upset at the Americans for not helping during the revolution… not sure. Plus Gottschalk could probably speak French… by the way, Jewish dad with British citizenship, French mom from Haiti – daughter of a diplomat, German surname, and born in a slave-keeping household in the American South, what a mix!
Anyway, back to Louis. The French establishment don’t like him so what’s a pretty boy who can play the piano going to do in mid-19th-century Paris – find the first piano at the first bar on the first corner in sight, sit down and play! Which is exactly what he did and like Chopin, he did it well. But unlike Chopin, Gottschalk actually enjoyed playing for big audiences, and so he became the first American internationally celebrated pianist-composer. He toured Europe, the Caribbean, South America and the US. He ended up having to leave the US because a rather young lady was found in his chambers, or he in hers, or they were just found together. It’s all a very murky story that perhaps angered the public, being framed as an abuse of power. What I find odd is for one to have to leave a country the size of the US during the 1850s because of something that happened in a single city. Did newspapers and the telegraph have such an impact? And no marketing wizard in team Gottschalk; change your surname to … “Goodson” ??? He left and went back to South America and died in Brazil at the age of just 40.
- Apparently because I find prodigy is a word that has a definition which is difficult for us to all agree on, so perhaps it is what you think of when you hear it or it is what I think of when I hear it. âŠī¸