Louis Moreau Gottschalk became the first internationally famous American piano virtuoso and composer. Given his importance and popularity, it may come as a surprise that he spent so little time in the United States. His most important American concert tour coincided with the Civil War.

All his life, Gottschalk kept a journal, in French. In 1881, his sister Clara Peterson and her husband translated it to English and had it published as Notes of a Pianist. It has proved to be one of the great musical diaries of the nineteenth century. Gottschalk recorded detailed observations with sardonic wit.

Gottschalk’s early life and musical education

Gottschalk was born in New Orleans in 1829 to businessman Edward Gottschalk and his Creole wife. The virulent racial hatreds of the Jim Crow era were long in the future at that time. New Orleans society recognized and celebrated Moreau’s musical talent as a child.

On April 21, 1841, the New Orleans paper The Picayune published a notice for a “Farewell concert for the benefit of Master Moreau Gottschalk, 11 years old [actually, a month shy of 12], a pupil of Mr. Letellier of this city, prior to his leaving for France to perfect himself under the great masters.”

Gottschalk left for in Paris the following spring and ran into a different kind of prejudice. Pierre Zimmerman, piano instructor at the Paris Conservatory, refused even to hear him audition. After all, “America is only a country of steam engines.”

Fortunately, the young man found opportunity to study with Camille Stamaty, who also taught Camille Saint-Saëns. He also became acquainted with such leading musicians as Chopin and Berlioz.

Gottschalk spent ten years in Europe. There, audiences responded with great enthusiasm to his compositions based on tunes he had grown up with. For example, Bamboula: danse des nègres (op. 2, 1844) is based on a melody that refugees from slave rebellions in the West Indies probably brought to New Orleans. It evokes slave drumming and dancing.

No other American composer followed his lead in using such tunes in serious art music until after Antonin Dvořák championed the idea.

Gottschalk’s uncomfortable return home

After successful concert tours of France, Switzerland, and Spain, Gottschalk returned to the US in 1853. His father persuaded him not to accept an offer from P.T. Barnum of $20,000 for a one-year tour. Soon after, he died, leaving the young Moreau as the family’s sole breadwinner.

If Gottschalk thought he could conquer his native country as easily as he had conquered Europe, he was soon disappointed. He gave successful concerts in New York and New Orleans. In between, he met small audiences and critical antipathy. In New England, not even news of his father’s death on the eve of a concert in Boston drew any sympathy. He lost about $1,600 in a few months.

During all this time, he seems to have assumed that American audiences wouldn’t be interested in his own compositions, which had taken European capitals by storm. But he happened to play some of them for the music publisher William Hall, who persuaded him to start putting them on his concerts.

That decision changed his fortunes. He played a series of weekly concerts in Dodsworth’s Rooms in New York that continued without interruption for five months. Hall became his American publisher and lifelong friend.

But his health started to fail. Advised to seek a warmer climate, he went to Cuba in 1854 and also toured the West Indies. At this time, he began to compose orchestral music, as well as some of his best piano music.

Gottschalk’s Civil War tour

Although he was born and raised in the American South, Gottschalk opposed slavery and favored the Union cause in the Civil War. Cuba very much sympathized with the Confederacy. By the time the war broke out, he was also broke. So when Max Strakosch invited him to return to the US in December 1861, he accepted.

When he got to New York in 1862, he must have thought it was relatively untouched by the Civil War. He also must not have known that impresarios presented much more populist fare than before the war started. Only by opening the season with a magician could one of them afford to present serious music. Over the next two years, he played 95 concerts there.

Strakosch persuaded Gottschalk to undertake a tour of the Union states. It began in New England, which meant Gottschalk could still easily perform in New York.

Gottschalk knew very well that as a touring professional under management, he was a commodity. His managers contrived to have his first New York concert in 1862 take place on the same date as his first concert there in 1853. He wrote

A question by many of my friends: “Why do you say such things in your advertisements? Why don’t you strike out such ambitious epithets in your placards?” Alas! Are you ignorant that the artist is merchandise that the impresario has purchased, the value of which he enhances as he chooses? You might as well reproach certain pseudo gold-mine companies for announcing dividends that they never will pay as to render an artist responsible for the lures of his contractor.

That might explain the poster at the head of this article, billing the tour as farewell concerts in America.

Overview of the tour

Gottschalk’s tour took him to such major centers as St. Louis and Chicago but also to smaller towns such as Rutland, Vermont and Adrian, Michigan. Audiences ranged from urban dwellers to farmers and frontiersmen.

Touring entertainers got from one place to another by train. And train schedules were at best inconvenient. Trains might depart or arrive in the middle of the night—either by design or as the result of a delay. The military sometimes commandeered a train Gottschalk had intended to take. Sometimes, these scheduling difficulties resulted in delaying or canceling a scheduled concert.

Very often, Gottschalk had to compete with other attractions, such as circuses, minstrel shows, magicians, the Booth family of actors, and P.T. Barnum’s Tom Thumb.

So Gottschalk shared the bill with a changing cast of other acts. Sometimes, he included the famous soprano Carlotta Patti and her brother Carlo, a violinist. Other times, he featured local performers, including a seven-year-old trumpeter.

He also toured with Jacob Grau’s Italian Opera Company. Gottschalk presented a piano recital between the acts. That practice might seem strange now, but at the time, instrumental performances between operatic acts had long been popular. Some members of the audience would enjoy both. Others would endure the one for the sake of being able to hear the other.

By the end of the tour, Gottschalk estimated that he had traveled 95,000 miles by rail. He had given more than 1,000 concerts throughout Union states and Canada.

The taste of the American public during the Civil War

As the war progressed, the public started to lose interest in more artistic music. As American operatic soprano Clara Louise Kellogg observed, “Martial songs of all kinds were the order of the day and all more classic music was relegated to the background for the time being.”

After a performance in St. Louis in April 1862, a member of the audience told Gottschalk, “that I was deficient in charm, that my music was too learned. . . that I ought to play more national airs.” And this to a performer usually criticized for superficiality!

Perhaps his more patriotic compositions, which followed, came not only from his desire to communicate his pro-Union sympathies but also from a desire to connect with an audience no longer willing to listen to more sophisticated music.

Gottschalk saw and commented on the American public at its best and worst.

The United States presents to strangers this remarkable condition of things, that it is impossible for them to conjecture from appearances the rank or position of those they meet on their travels. If they meet some who sparkle with diamonds and blow their noses on their fingers, they will meet, just as well, superior and cultivated minds concealed under the fur-skin greatcoat of the pioneer of the Far West.

Gottschalk’s compositions and repertoire

Gottschalk had little use for popular wartime songs until he heard “Battle Cry of Freedom” by George F. Root.

He considered it the “obscure flower I have discovered on the heap of dirt that the poetasters and the musicasters have raised at the foot of their country’s altar since the war began.” He thought it worthy of becoming the national anthem and made a concert transcription of it in 1863.

He had already composed a Lizstian display piece titled “The Union.” It is little more than a virtuosic medley of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “Yankee Doodle,” and “Hail, Columbia.”

 Gottschalk’s other compositions of this time, including “The Dying Poet” and “The Last Hope,” are considered musically weaker than his earlier pieces. He was well aware of their deficiencies and tried to publish them under a pseudonym. But publishers, eager to take advantage of his popularity, published them under his own name instead.

Besides his own compositions, Gottschalk’s programs always included patriotic medleys and operatic transcriptions. And recall that operatic excerpts were part of the popular music of the time and generally appealed to unsophisticated audiences. The programs often included dance music and popular songs. He also improvised on tunes suggested by the audience.

Gottschalk’s published compositions have little in common with how he actually performed. He prepared them in haste and, of course, they had to be playable by the amateurs who bought them.

Here are some details of parts of the tour:

1862—New England

Dwight’s Journal of Music had published a scathing review of Gottschalk’s performances in 1853, complaining of superficial music and empty technique. Returning to New England in 1862, Gottschalk avoided Boston for a while. He found new fans everywhere. Using the pseudonym Jem Baggs, he submitted positive reviews of his concerts in other New England towns to Dwight’s.

His new admirers likewise talked him up. By the time he actually appeared in Boston, the concert was sold out and ended, in the words of the Boston Daily Courier, “a perfect storm of applause.”

1863—Harrisburg

One ill-fated concert was supposed to take place in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in June 1863, just about the time Confederate commander Robert E. Lee had decided to invade the North. Confederate General Albert Jenkins captured Mechanicsburg, about ten miles from Harrisburg, on June 28. He got within about five miles of Harrisburg by June 30 but then withdrew to join Lee in Gettysburg.

Given the military situation, it was a mistake to attempt a concert, but Strakosch insisted. As Gottschalk described it,

All along the road we see farmers under arms, in battle array and doing military drill. They all seem to want to obey the command of the governor, who orders all able-bodied men to the field to meet the enemy, and to take the Susquehanna as the line for battle.

A traveler we picked up at the last station assures us that the Confederate Army is not more than thirty miles from Harrisburg. Everybody is frightened. Strakosch begins to see his mistake.

It is ten o’clock in the morning. The train continues to advance at full speed towards Harrisburg—that is to say, toward Jenkins, for the city must be attacked tonight, if it is not taken already. What shall we do? As for the concert, it is out of the question; but ourselves, our trunks—my pianos—what is to become of us in all this confusion?

The train stopped on a bridge over the Susquehanna River. A few hours later, Gottschalk, Strakosch, and Amalia Patti, another performer on the tour, made their way into Harrisburg on foot to find a mountain of trunks blocking the way to the station. “What luck! I have just caught a glimpse of my two pianos—the cowardly mastodons (Chickering forgive me!) snugly lying in a corner and in perfect health.”

Readers can easily tell from his description of these two beloved traveling companions what really mattered to Gottschalk. At the hotel, he recognized New York reporters sent in haste to Harrisburg “in the hope of furnishing readers with sensational news. Sensational news is a new synonym for ‘a canard.’”

After further comment on how news accounts had been so full of lies no one believed them anymore and more scenes of chaos, his account concludes:

A train being announced for Philadelphia in an hour, we run to the station. Strakosch will remain behind to search for our trunks, which have been missing these two hours. My tuner has lost his head; the two mastodons of Chickering’s have disappeared, and the express company declines to be responsible for them. Too obstinate Strakosch, why in the world did he make us come to Harrisburg?

1864—Washington, DC

Gottschalk performed at least three times in Washington, DC during March 1864. The concert on March 24 also included soprano Charlotte Varian, tenor Theodore Habelmann, and violinist Carlo Patti. They performed music by Beethoven, Rossini, and Verdi among others. Abraham Lincoln was in the audience for it.

Lincoln is remarkably ugly, but has an intelligent air, and his eyes have a remarkable expression of goodness and mildness. . .

After an encore, I played my fantasia, “The Union,” in the midst of great enthusiasm. I played very badly and was furious with myself, which, however, did not prevent many of my friends from coming to congratulate me on my success. One of them who was present at the [March 22] concert (at which, by the way, I played very well) said to me, “Well and good, you are in the vein tonight, for at the first concert one saw that you were badly prepared.”

1864—Illinois

Gottschalk noted that the audience in Peoria on December 14, 1864, was numerous and enthusiastic, but he found a lot to complain about what he called a very ugly place.

The concert hall offers one peculiarity; the platform, which is like a theatre, is so high that it gives me the vertigo to look down upon the audience; we all fear to approach the edge lest we should be drawn into the abyss. It slopes so much that it gives one a sensation analogous to that of an inexperienced person upon a roof.

The following week, on December 20, he performed in Springfield. Again, he complained bitterly.

Concert this evening. This time the audience listens to us. Last time private conversation completely masked the music. The audience disposed to enjoy what we give them, but it is too late! The impression which, after two visits, Springfield leaves upon me is very disagreeable . . .

Dohler plays “Yankee Doodle” and “Carnaval de Venise,” two pieces which never fail in exciting the enthusiasm of the audience, but which invariably next day bring out a severe lecture from the newspapers. Fortunately we know what to think of it. It is only to save appearances that these gentlemen protest. They like this trivial music secretly, but, like all those who are conscious of their inferiority, they wish to conceal it by openly affecting to despise what secretly they love. O hypocrisy and vanity! . . .

To make a victorious tour of concerts in the West is for an artist to gain his chevrons. Bad hotels, snow, mud, railroad accidents, delays, setting out at three o’clock in the morning, etc. It requires an iron constitution and a flinty will to succeed at it.

1865—San Francisco

By 1865 Gottschalk had made an arrangement of the March from Wagner’s Tannhäuser for fourteen pianos and decided to try it out in San Francisco. Unfortunately, the day before the concert where the piece had been announced, one of the pianists dropped out.

San Francisco, although filled with all the corruption and with all the plagues arising from civilization, did not then possess but thirteen first-class pianoforte players.

It had plenty of amateurs, however. The proprietor of the concert hall suggested his son as a substitute. Gottschalk quickly realized that he was unsuitable and saw was no option but to postpone the concert. His piano tuner, however, had a better idea: it wouldn’t hurt to have him on stage so long as no one could hear him! He removed the entire interior mechanism from one piano, leaving only a dummy keyboard.

The audience loved the piece and demanded an encore. At the time, the word “encore” did not mean, “play something else,” as it does today. It had its original meaning of “play it again.” Gottschalk decided to repeat the piece.

He had reminded all the performers that they must not improvise a prelude. Unfortunately, the young substitute had forgotten. He played a little chromatic scale, but no sound came from his piano. He tried again, with the same result and tried to get Gottschalk’s attention. Gottschalk quickly signaled the start of the piece.

My young man, to save appearances before the audience, made the pantomime of the passage, but his countenance, which I saw from below, was worth painting. It was a mixture of discouragement and spite. The fury with which he struck the poor instrument, which could do nothing, was very funny.

Gottschalk’s tour ended abruptly in September 1865. He might have been involved with a young woman in Oakland. Or he might have been set up. To flee scandal, he quickly departed for South America and never returned to the US. He collapsed at the piano at a concert in Rio de Janeiro in 1869 and died two weeks later.

Sources:

• American composer and piano virtuoso Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1869) / Juliette Appold, Library of Congress. January 3, 2019
• Battle hymns: the power and popularity of music in the Civil War / Christian McWhirter (University of North Carolina Press, 2012)
• The book of musical anecdotes / Norman Lebrecht (Free Press: 1985)
• From the journals of Louis Moreau Gottschalk / in Music in the USA: a documentary companion, edited by Judith Tick (Oxford University Press, 2008): 195-201
• Gottschalk: nationalist composer, native virtuoso / John G. Doyle, Music Educators Journal 4 (1969): 25-73
• Music of the Civil War era / Steven H. Cornelius (Greenwood Press, 2004)
• Trials of a concert pianist / Louis Moreau Gottschalk, from Notes of a Pianist (Philadelphia, 1881) in Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 38 (1945): 253