Gottshalk - The Banjo

In many ways American music has its roots in the rhythms and practices of black folk musicians.  The blacks who were sold into slavery from their native Africa brought their rhythmic folk music style along. From the Caribbean sugar plantations to the plantations of early America, the rhythms, tunes and (in the case of the Banjo) the instruments of the transplanted Africans influenced local music. The ragtime phenomenon of the late 19th century came from African American piano players that plied their trade in the only places they were allowed; black bars, saloons and houses of ill-repute. Eventually their music made its way to Europe where it influenced Debussy and other composers. In The United States, Antonín Dvořák was exposed to African music and wrote a string quartet and symphony that were inspired by it.

But the influence of African music began much earlier and is reflected in the music of Louis Moreau Gottschalk who was born in New Orleans to a Jewish father and creole mother, in 1829. He heard black musicians while a child, and as an adult traveled extensively as a virtuoso pianist in the United States, South America and the Caribbean countries. He observed and absorbed the local music wherever he traveled, and incorporated much of it in the music he composed and played on his tours. He composed The Banjo, A Grotesque Fantasy (the full title of the piece) around 1853 and it is arguably his most well-known piece.

Gottshalk may have based the work on a banjo player he heard in person. Some scholars have argued that Gottshalk's duplication of pre-Civil War banjo playing is an authentic representation of actual banjo technique, a point author Paul Ely Smith makes in his essay Gottshalk's 'The Banjo' op. 15, and the Banjo in the Nineteenth Century.

The piece begins with a short introduction that is actually a snippet taken from the tune at the very end of the piece. After this introduction, a short phrase is repeated in variation, the short introduction reappears in octaves and the section is repeated. After the repeat, the finale is played which consist of variations on the chorus of Stephen Foster's song Camptown Races, the tune that the introduction of the piece is taken from.

The Banjo is a short and quite serious in its difficulty, but its influence on American music is immense. Gottshalk's music in general and The Banjo in particular, was the forerunner of the quintessentially American musical idioms of jazz and ragtime.

Gottschalk - Souvenir de Porto Rico 'Marche de Gibaros'

Louis Moreau Gottschalk was born in New Orleans in 1829 and began playing the piano very early.  By 1840 he had given his first public performance as a child prodigy. At the age of thirteen he left with his father for Europe to get classical training, but he was denied entry into the Paris Conservatory because he was an American.

Despite the prejudice against Americans, Gottshalk managed to make his way into the European musical establishment through family connections and was exposed to classical technique in piano playing and composition and he learned from the examples.  His piano playing and  compositions were a sensation in Europe, and after his return to America in 1853, he began touring extensively. He toured all over The United States, Cuba, Central America and South America.

Gottshalk toured Puerto Rico in 1857, and while there took a short vacation and stayed at a sugar plantation owned by an English fan of his music. He was so taken with the scenery and local music he extended his to relax and compose. One of the pieces he wrote while there was Souvenir de Porto Rico for piano solo.  It is a march built upon two Puerto Rican folk songs. The piece is actually a set of double variations as the themes follow each other in succession and are varied upon each repetition. The subtitle  Marche de Gibaros comes from Gottshalk watching the peasant farmers, the Gibaros, work the fields. Gottshalk loved the sights and sounds of the Caribbean so much he stayed almost five years, absorbing and composing.

Gottshalk wrote about his inspiration for the piece:

"[I was] perched upon the edge of a crater, [and] my cabin overlooked the whole country. Every evening I moved my piano out upon the terrace, and played for myself alone, everything that the scene opened up before me inspired. It was there that I composed 'Marche des Gibaros.' "

Gottshalk's mother was creole, his grandmother and his nurse were both born in Haiti, so he was exposed to many different musical traditions from the beginning. He continued to absorb different musical traditions and styles for all of his short life.  Souvenir de Porto Rico is a fine example of the way Gottshalk combined Caribbean and African rhythms and folk song with classical form and virtuosity. He was using rhythms that became associated with Ragtime and Jazz long before they became popular.  All of this makes for very good music to listen to, and music that takes a virtuoso technique to do full justice.

Gottshalk was involved in a scandal with a student in Oakland, California in 1865 and left the U.S. never to return. He ended up in South America and died, age 40, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1869 from complications of malaria.