Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829 – 1869) was an American
composer and pianist, best known as a virtuoso
performer of his own romantic piano works. He spent
most of his working career outside of the United
States. He was the eldest son of a Jewish-English New
Orleans real estate speculator and his French-descended
bride. Gottschalk may have heard the drums at Place
Congo in New Orleans, but his exposure to Creole melody
likely came through his own household; his mother had
grown up in Haiti and fl...(+)
Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829 – 1869) was an American
composer and pianist, best known as a virtuoso
performer of his own romantic piano works. He spent
most of his working career outside of the United
States. He was the eldest son of a Jewish-English New
Orleans real estate speculator and his French-descended
bride. Gottschalk may have heard the drums at Place
Congo in New Orleans, but his exposure to Creole melody
likely came through his own household; his mother had
grown up in Haiti and fled to Louisiana after that
island's slave uprising. Piano study was undertaken
with Narcisse Lettellier, and at age 11, Gottschalk was
sent to Paris. Denied entrance to the Conservatoire, he
continued with Charles Hallé and Camille Stamaty,
adding composition with Pierre Maleden. His Paris debut
at the Salle Pleyel in 1845 earned praise from Chopin.
By the end of the 1840s, Gottschalk's first works, such
as Bamboula, appeared. These syncopated pieces based on
popular Creole melodies rapidly gained popularity
worldwide. Gottschalk left Paris in 1852 to join his
father in New York, only to encounter stiff competition
from touring foreign artists. With his father's death
in late 1853, Gottschalk inherited support of his
mother and six siblings. In 1855, he signed a contract
with publisher William Hall to issue several pieces,
including The Banjo and The Last Hope. The Last Hope is
a sad and sweetly melancholy piece, and it proved
hugely popular. Gottschalk found himself obliged to
repeat it at every concert, and wrote "even my paternal
love for The Last Hope has succumbed under the terrible
necessity of meeting it at every step." With an
appearance at Dodsworth Hall in December 1855,
Gottschalk finally found his audience. For the first
time he was solvent, and at his mother's death in 1857
Gottschalk was released from his familial obligations.
He embarked on a tour of the Caribbean and didn't
return for five years. When this ended, America was in
the midst of Civil War. Gottschalk supported the north,
touring Union states until 1864. Gottschalk wearied of
the horrors surrounding him, becoming an avid proponent
of education, playing benefit concerts for public
schools and libraries. During a tour to California in
1865, Gottschalk entered into an involvement with a
young woman attending a seminary school in Oakland, and
the press excoriated him. He escaped on a steamer bound
for Panama City. Instead of returning to New York, he
pressed on to Peru, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina,
staying one step ahead of revolutions, rioting, and
cholera epidemics, but he began to break down under the
strain. Gottschalk contracted malaria in Brazil in
August 1869; still recovering, he was hit in the
abdomen by a sandbag thrown by a student in São Paolo.
In a concert at Rio de Janeiro on November 25,
Gottschalk collapsed at the keyboard. He had
appendicitis, which led to peritonitis. On December 18,
1869, Gottschalk died at the age of 40.
The impact of Gottschalk's music on the later
development of ragtime might seem obvious, yet there is
no proven link from him to the syncopated popular music
he anticipated in works like Le Mancenillier, Op. 11,
is a Creole-based composition for piano written by
American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk in
Switzerland in the fall of 1848. Dedicated to "Madame
Mennechet de Barival", it was published in Paris with
the subtitle Sérénade by his publisher 'Escudiers' in
April 1851. It is the fourth and last piece dubbed by
musicologist Gilbert Chase the Louisiana Trilogy,
written between 1844 and 46 when Gottschalk had not yet
come of age.
Based on a Saint-Domingue's eight-bar folk tune titled
Chanson de Lizette, the Creole melody Ou som souroucou
and either the Louisiana's Ma mourri or the
Martinique's Tant sirop est doux, its title refers to
the manchineel, a tree from the tropics which grows
poisonous small apple-like fruits. It can't be burned
for the smoke might cause blindness and one standing
beneath its branches during a rainfall might have the
skin blistered by its sap. It's a composition certainly
based on a poem of the same name by Charles Hubert
Millevoye.
Although Gottschalk called the piece a "serenade", it
was written as a ballad in the ABA form. With 238 bars
and a 92 bpm Andante tempo marked as malinconico, it
has a 2/2 time signature. The introductory melody is
established under a staccato accompaniment on the left
hand with the middle section marked by the contrasts of
the staccato rhythm of left hand over the melodic
phrases of the right, followed by a series of
moduations. The third motif in B-flat comes with a
fortissimo shift of the melody, followed by a long coda
with light variations in triplets in the final
bars..
Source:
AllMusic(https://www.allmusic.com/artist/louis-moreau-g
ottschalk-mn0001767715/biography).
Although originally composed for Piano, I created this
interpretation of "Le Mancenillier: Serenade" (Opus 11)
for Oboe & Piano.
SHEET MUSIC