<< Continued from page 2
'The King of Pianists'
In Paris, besides Saint-Saëns, then all of seven, Moreau befriended
Bizet, Meyerbeer and Offenbach (who arranged his beguiling, best-selling
La bananier, chanson nègre for cello), and drew the attention
of Chopin and Liszt. The Sephardic Alkan, too, perhaps? On April 2nd 1845
Stamaty presented him privately at the Salle Pleyel playing operatic fantasies
by Liszt and Thalberg together with Chopin's E minor Concerto. Fryderyk
C, legend has it, at once took the boy in his arms (either that or went
backstage to take his hand), predicting him to become 'the king of pianists'
- the sort of Romantic blessing from genius essential to make anyone someone,
even if it had to be invented (Gottschalk's future publisher, the critic
Léon Escudier [Mes souvenirs, 1863], could only corroborate
the embrace part). Also in the audience was the superior Kalkbrenner (in
Chopin's opinion 'as much hated here as his talent is respected') - the
following morning putting the success of the occasion, so the story goes,
entirely down to his Hand-Guide. 'I don't like the music you played
- Chopin, Liszt, Thalberg. They're not classical. You and Stamaty should
have chosen my music. It's classical, and, besides, everybody
likes it'(Vernon Loggins, Where the World Ends, 1958).
During the 1846-47 season, concerts followed with Berlioz at the Théâtre
italien. Then came a formal solo début on April 17th 1849, again
in Pleyel's rooms, this time with his mother and her six other children
present (she having left his father in 1847). The slight, dreamy, melancholic
'pianiste-compositeur louisianais' had arrived. His piano playing
glittered with charisma. His foreign, far-away/another-time allure left
the bejewelled ladies of the metropolis faint with desire. His piano pieces
were all the rage - 'wild, languishing, indescribable, [bearing] no resemblance
to any other European music' (La France musicale) - the delirious,
ritualistic, virtuoso-stretching Bamboula, Danse des nègres
, Op 2 (1844-45), proving the ultimate calling-card: a D flat spectacular
of deep-thoated, time-keeping bass, hypnotic rhythms, percussive note repetitions,
thunder-burst fireworks, scintillating swoonings, velocity lacework, sighing
rests, and jangling fff climax. It's a spectacular statement
still. To a public used to nothing more exotic than places east of Vienna,
prepared for Slavs rather than slaves, it must have seemed like the naked
danger of a caged animal suddenly let loose. Even the ageing Zimmermann,
forgetting the boy he'd turned down a few years previously, succumbed to
its alien spell, in 1849 selecting it as the piano test-piece of the Conservatoire
with its young composer invited to join the jury. Sweet satisfaction.
'Louisiana Trilogy' or 'Scenes from My Childhood'
Dedicated to the Queen of Spain, Bamboula (based on a Creole tune,
'When that 'tater's cooked don't you eat it up!') and La savane, Ballade
creole, Op 3 (1845-46, using another plantation song remembered from
childhood, 'Pov piti Lolotte') were first played in Paris in November 1848.
With the 'shower of pearls' of the instantly popular Le Bananier,
Op 5 (1845-46, derived from a Creole song colloquially known as 'En avan'
Grenadie'), they comprise what Gilbert Chase has called Gottschalk's 'Louisiana
Trilogy' (America's Music, 1966). Add the malinconico Louisiana/Caribbean
inflected serenade Le mancenillier Op 11 (1848-49), Richard Jackson
proposes, and you have an autobiographical quartet, 'Scenes from My Childhood.'
Rhythmic flight, knife-edge muscularity, unleashed festivity; ancestral
yearning. The steps and strains, the body language and spirit-voices of
the Confederate South, as generically unmistakeable as the Bohemian polka,
Hapsburg waltz, Polish mazurka or Ottoman march, as removed from the high
Western art of its day - Chopin's Fourth Ballade, the Alkan studies, Liszt's
B minor Sonata - as can possibly be imagined. Hothouse souvenirs of an entertainment
and imagery, a light and scent, not to be heard again till Joplin ragtime,
Debussy music-hall, the Iberian moodscapes of Albéniz.
'Mr Gottschalk was born in America,
whence he has brought a host of curious chants from the Creoles and Negroes;
he has made from them the themes of his most delicious compositions. Everybody
in Europe now knows Bamboula, La bananier, Le mancenillier,
La Savane, and twenty [?] other ingenious fantasias in which the
nonchalant graces of tropical melody assuage so agreeably our restless and
insatiable passion for novelty'
Berlioz, Feuilleton du Journal des Débats,
April 13th 1851
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Copyright © 14 January 2000, Ates Orga, Suffolk, UK
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