This week’s theme is…Get Your Exercise! If you want to get stronger, you’ll go to a gym and work out. But musicians can get stronger too, and to get their exercise, they practice might practice an etude, which is a French word for a piece of music written to strengthen a particular skill. Etudes run the gamut from dry technique builders to stunning, complete musical statements that are worth hearing beyond their use to improve musicians’ aptitude. This week look at some such examples.
Get Your Exercise, Day 1 – Tremolo by Louis Moreau Gottschalk
If you ever watch the television show House, then you are somewhat familiar with the art and science of the medical investigator, a sort of combination of medicine and detective work focused on difficult pathological puzzles in order to get to the bottom of what is going on. One of history’s most significant medical investigators is the American Walter Reed. If you ever hear stories about medicine in the American armed forces, chances are you that you have heard his name before.
The reason for this is that he is the namesake of a major hospital in Washington D.C., and also of a huge army hospital. The first one was in Washington D.C. and operated between 1977 and its closing in 2011 when it was reopened in a different form in Bethesda, Maryland. Today, the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center combines the medical wings of both the United States Army and Navy into one extensive program inhabiting an enormous campus, offering treatment to military personnel, American presidents, and members of congress:
Walter Reed’s most important contribution to the history of pathology was his discovery of how yellow fever is transmitted. In 1896 he investigated an outbreak among US army officers in Washington D.C. It was thought by some that the disease was contracted by drinking the water of the Potomac River, but Reed’s investigation pointed to transmission by mosquitoes found along the swampy trails that many of the infected officers frequented at night. (House could have totally done a period episode where he dreams that he is Walter Reed – wouldn’t that have been fun?! I think it would have…) This discovery largely secured Reed’s reputation and continued success; he continued to research yellow fever and other diseases until his death, less than 10 years later. Reed’s discovery was a critical part of successfully preventing and eradicating yellow fever in the civilized world. Germ theory was just starting to be taken seriously at this time and the medical industry was on the brink of a golden age of epidemiology. Without Reed’s work, it is quite probable that the Panama Canal (see this post) would have remained unfinished as many workers in the tropical climate succumbed to the ravages of the disease.
Had Reed lived and worked half a century earlier we may very well speak differently of a certain American pianist and composer who succumbed to yellow fever, or whose death was at least certainly hastened from his contracting it. The pianist is the New Orleans born Louis Moreau Gottschalk. He spent a considerable part of his career in tropical climates like Brazil and Puerto Rico, so it should not be altogether surprising that he would have contracted tropical diseases like yellow fever, among others. Gottschalk’s death cut his life and career short – he died at 40 – and it would be interesting to know what he would have accomplished had he had an additional 20 or 30 years. He had such a promising start, but quickly faded into insignificance due to the shallowness of his output. Would he have found a more substantial voice over the coming decades? It’s hard to say.
And make no mistake – his music is charming and rambunctious. Gottschalk was a rare bird, and his influences are as checkered as his heritage, truly a musical creole, and the music that resulted from this is just a little bit unlike anything else in the Western classical canon. Born to a Jewish father and a “mulatto” mother – that’s not so politically correct anymore, even “creole” is probably a stretch – in New Orleans. A prodigious talent (he made his public debut as a pianist at age 11), Gottschalk fought against the prejudices of the musical establishment of Paris, then a mecca for virtuoso pianists, to gain admission into their world. The powers that were looked down upon the infant nation, skeptical of the possibility that a country occupied as it was with exploration and expansion could have the resources and patience to raise artists worthy of their hallowed tradition. But eventually Gottschalk was able to massage his connections and gain admission to the piano studios of Charles Halle and then Camille Stamaty. A fellow pupil in Gottschalk’s class under Stamaty was an even younger prodigy named Camille Saint-Saens (see this post and this one).
Once Gottschalk got his foothold into the world of Parisian virtuosity and began to play his original works, he found his champions, including Chopin (see this post) and Berlioz (see this post, this one, and this one). Critics compared him to Liszt (see this post) and predicted a rosy future for the young virtuoso. European audiences were fascinated by Gottschalk’s flashy concert works, the only ones to come out of Paris infused with the exotic plantation songs of New Orleans and the infectious, pre-jazz polyrhythms of the Caribbean. One of his enduring works from around this time is a most entertaining keyboard original called The Banjo. Over the course of its brief 4 minutes, the pianist imitates banjo strumming patterns deployed by African American pickers, and also quotes Stephen Foster, America’s beloved minstrel! The Banjo is immediately irresistible and evocative of Southern American culture:
After his time in Europe, Gottschalk would not sit still. It is difficult to get a sense of whether he had any kind of personal mission; he essentially became itinerant. He toured extensively throughout the United States and the West Indies, including a visit to the rich musical culture emerging in the newly founded San Francisco (see this post). A San Francisco newspaper credited him with having traveled 95,000 miles by rail and giving 1,000 concerts. His touring pace was grueling during these years. Eventually he succumbed to the steamy climate and relaxed lifestyle of the tropics, living in Cuba and then Brazil.
Given the such climates, it is natural that Gottschalk would have contracted tropical diseases, like yellow fever. The story of his death is often told, and probably romanticized a bit. In December of 1869, at the age of 40, he contracted a bout of yellow fever. The disease is not inevitably fatal, but it seems to have heralded the beginning of the end for Gottschalk. During his final recital he collapsed during one of his original works, called Morte!! Actually, this is not entirely true – he collapsed during the next one, a ferociously challenging concert etude called Tremolo:
But Morte!! Makes a better story 🙂 It was not the yellow fever that ultimately killed Gottschalk. The general consensus is an infection like peritonitis, often the result of a burst appendix, and the same thing that Walter Reed succumbed to.
Had Walter Reed pulled his Gregory House a few decades prior, perhaps Gottschalk would enjoy a more substantial legacy, possibly becoming America’s first true creative genius. Toward the end of his life he was starting to move in that direction, promising to deepen beyond the glittery but superficial manner of his virtuoso piano output. As such, America would have to wait a bit longer for its first great composers, in spite of efforts by others to stimulate a golden age (see this post). Sometimes circumstances play out as they do and it’s just not meant to be. Still, Gottschalk is a fascinating story, a true original in the histories of both Europe and the Americas.
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