Born in New Orleans, May 8, 1829
Died in Tijuca, Brazil, Dec 18, 1869
- Born in New Orleans to a mother of French-Haitian ancestry and a father of German-Jewish ancestry, Gottschalk was a virtuoso pianist and one of the first American composers lauded in Europe.
- Gottschalk’s music draws on the rhythms of Haitian and Cuban, music which he learned from his grandmother’s enslaved maid Sally. Sally was brought from Haiti along with Gottschalk’s mother’s family in the wake of the Haitian Revolution. The “creole” syncopations in Gottschalk’s music were new and appealing to his European audiences. For the same reason, his music is also considered a precursor of ragtime.1
Biography from the Library of Congress
Sources
- Irving Lowens and S. Frederick Starr, “Gottschalk, Louis Moreau,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed August 19, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000011530.