Owing to the composite character of our American civilization, in which so many different nationalities are mingled, several of which maintain as long as possible their own language and customs, there is a certain crudity in the national life and a want of ripeness which as yet has prevented the development of what properly can be called an American school of musical composition. Almost all our composers have been educated in Germany, many of them at Leipsic, and their compositions do not differ in a striking degree from those of good German composers. Minor traits of individuality and differences of imaginative scope are noticeable and afford marks of distinction; but, essentially considered, there has been very little music composed in this country which is at the same time good and so characteristically American that it could not have been produced under any other circumstances. Nevertheless, there have been at least two American composers who are characteristically American and who could not have been produced under any different circumstances; and a number of others in whom the American traits are well defined.
The two American composers of original and characteristic genius are the late Louis Moreau Gottschalk and the famous march king, John Philip Sousa. As the compositions of Mr. Sousa have shown themselves able to take care of themselves, and as his popularity needs no assistance from this quarter, I will consider his case first, and say that in this son of an Italian father and a German mother, born and raised in the city of Washington, D. C., we have a thoroughly characteristic American, in whom different heredities mingle in a curious way and give rise to a certain originality of temperament and style.
While Mr. Sousa, from his earlier career, and probably by force of his temperament, has naturally taken the position of a popular composer, he has done so almost entirely in consequence of the inherently popular character of the music he has turned out, which, for striking rhythm and melodic piquancy, has taken the ear not alone of the United States but of the whole world, his marches being widely played in all foreign countries, where they are received with the liveliest demonstrations of approval. In fact, very much the same kind of mild excitement that a chic American girl awakens in a foreign reception, the band music of Sousa affords to the travel-worn palates of European bandmasters. It stirs them up and gives them a new sensation. It is a mistake, therefore, to speak of this artist in terms implying an unwillingness to classify him among serious composers. He is entitled to a very honorable place among those who have loved their fellow-men so well that they have made them feel good.
LOUIS MOREAU GOTTSCHALK.
In the year 1829 our two first American pianists were born: Louis Moreau Gottschalk in New Orleans, and William Mason in Boston. The heredity, environment, and training of these two men were as different as it is possible to imagine. Gottschalk was the son of a German who came to New Orleans by way of England, and in this country married a French woman. New Orleans at that time was practically a French city, and the French language was very largely spoken in the family life. The boy, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, showed talent for music at the earliest possible age, and made a number of public appearances of a very interesting and creditable kind, and at the age of thirteen, when he was sent to Paris to go on with his education, he had already established quite a little reputation. In Paris he was educated under the late Charles Hallé and Stamaty, and in 1844, at the age of fifteen, he produced his first two works, called ballads, "Ossian" and "The Dance of the Shades." His concert career in Europe began in 1846, when he was seventeen years of age, and he gave a series of concerts at the Italian Opera in Paris in which he was associated with the celebrated Hector Berlioz.
He made a genuine furor as pianist, and Berlioz, in charmingly turned phrases, speaks of him as follows:
"Gottschalk is one of the very small number who possess all the different elements of a consummate pianist—all the faculties which surround him with an irresistible prestige and give him a sovereign power. He is an accomplished musician—he knows just how far fancy may be indulged in expression. He knows the limits beyond which any liberties taken with the rhythm produce only confusion and discord, and upon these limits he never encroaches. There is an exquisite grace in his manner of phrasing sweet melodies and throwing off light touches from the higher keys. The boldness and brilliancy and originality of his play at once dazzle and astonish, and the infantile naïveté of his smiling caprices, the charming simplicity with which he renders simple things, seem to belong to another individuality distinct from that which marks his thundering energy. Thus the success of M. Gottschalk before an audience of musical cultivation is immense."
His first American tour was made in 1853-54. Then ensued a time of travel in the West Indies, but in 1862 he was back in New York again, and his American tours lasted until 1869, when he went to South America, where he died at the comparatively early age of forty.
There is a disposition at the present time to undervalue the work of Gottschalk. He was a melodist pure and simple, and his distinction from an American standpoint consists in his having given a new note to his music by availing himself of the rhythms and characteristic cadences of negro, creole, and Spanish nationalities in the southern United States and Central America. At the present time of the pianistic day, when very little attracts attention unless it is very difficult, it seems incredible that works so simple in their nature as those of Gottschalk could have attracted the attention they did; but there is more in this simplicity than at first sight appears, even if we admit that from a critical standpoint the introductions and endings are entirely too long for the matter they contain. Gottschalk himself had a way of doing them which made them seem extremely significant, and when he came to the melody itself it was played with such a delicacy and such a masterly touch that it seized the attention and concentrated the interest to a remarkable degree. Harmonically considered, almost all his works are within rather narrow limits, but as compared with the French composers of the day when his works made so much furor in Paris, Gottschalk has nothing to apologize for, since his music has a charm and a distinction of originality superior to almost all of that time or the present.
Many of the things with which Gottschalk made a great effect in his concert tours would not have been composed if he had lived thirty or forty years later. I mean now his four-hand arrangements of the overtures to "William Tell" and "Oberon." These are extremely brilliant and sensational arrangements, and are well worthy the attention of boarding-schools and clubs desiring something out of the ordinary way. It was his custom, in his concerts, to play the upper part himself while the best available local performer played the other part. This gave most of the melody and all of the brilliant work to the masterly fingers of the pianist himself.