Mr. Gottschalk and I

This is the final installment of the Gottschalk series I wrote in June while preparing for a recital. The series was interrupted while I was on summer break.

Life moves pretty fast, says the prevailing wisdom. You say it. I say it.

Which moves faster, the change or the monotony?

For me last spring it was principally the rapid pace at which I had to adapt to new material. There was new music to learn and play every week. There were rehearsals, concerts, church services (four a weekend), weddings, gigs, people with various projects. There was email to keep up with, blogging and recording, composing, reading and learning, domestic chores---getting tired yet just reading about it?

And then, after a semester of all that, just when things were supposed to simmer down a little bit for the summer (but never did), I decided to throw in a piano recital for the heck of it.


Actually, there was a little more than devil-may-care involved. It had been on my so-called "bucket list" for several years,  and last summer seemed like time to do it. Mr. Gottschalk had nearly gotten himself involved in the Battle of Gettysburg, and that Battle was turning 150 on July 1st. So his music seemed to fit the occasion. And, while I wasn't under contract to anybody and could have pushed the recital back a month to give me time to practice, I really wanted to eventually have everything finished up so I could relax a bit before the fall semester started things up again (no such luck, as it turned out).

In a way, that gave me some insight into Mr. Gottschalk's world. He also had to turn it up a notch a lot of times when he was pretty worn out. In fact, the man gave at least one, if not two or three, concerts every day when he was touring, which was most of the time. During his stint in the United States between 1862 and 1865 he gave hundreds of concerts and traveled thousands of miles by train, often barely getting to the next town in time to start the next concert. Forget actually getting to practice.

But that's where our two worlds diverge. And frankly, I've taken the more obscure path, and it's made all the difference.

It can be stressful learning new music all the time, but routine may be the worse tyrant. And Gottschalk was nothing if not the machine on the road. Always playing the same pieces, night after night, able to predict, as he notes in his diary, at what time he would play The Banjo, when the audience would encore Aelian Murmers, when they would be charmed by Cradle Song, when he would receive thunderous applause for his Union, followed by a light supper (he often didn't get to eat until after the concert it seems!) and a few hours of sleep before that @#$% hotel gong would wake everybody up at 6 a.m. and it was time to catch a train to the next town.

Gottschalk could be fiercely proud of his torrential work schedule. He was once mortally insulted by someone who claimed he had traveled 80 miles by rail in the last year. It was 800! he says, indignantly. Any fool could have done 80. He was forever crabbing about the boredom of the road and of concert life. It sounds a bit like melodrama, perhaps: oh, woe is me, I'm a famous concert pianist whom everyone adores and look how hard it is to be this in demand; :sigh:--but I'll take him at least partially at face value. It wasn't as glamorous a life as it looked to outsiders. I've had enough experience with touring to know. By the third city you can't even remember which way to turn the key to get into your hotel room or how to get the water running because you keep having to learn different procedures for the most basic operations. And you never know about breakfast. Gottschalk complained about hotel food plenty as well.

The truth is, at some point we're all going to get pretty fed up with the life we've chosen and any glamour is going to wear thin at least some of the time. And you can pick your poison: I get more control, and more time to learn and grow, think and play, and do a variety of things, for which I pay by having to constantly juggle and balance, adapt and learn on the fly, and get paid less and acheive less notoriety. Gottschalk got to be famous, see the world, and make a niche in musical history, for which the price was boredom, fatigue, and probably wondering whether it was worth it. Then again, he might not have had such a choice. He had a large family to support, his father having died, and several siblings who depended on as big a paycheck as he could muster. This seemed to be the way to get it.

I've found Gottschalk a fascinating travelling companion this summer as I worked on the concert. His "Notes of a Pianist" is back in print and I highly recommend it. It is an interesting read. And his music, though not of the vintage of Chopin and Mozart is, as one writer put it, "frankly appealing." It is easy to get the ears around, and repetitive, but still has some very original things to say. You can hear some of that music here where it rests in the pianonoise archive. In the meantime, it is time to play "The Banjo!" and you can listen to it right here.

The Banjo by Louis Moreau Gottschalk.

I've outlived the man by over two years now. It must have been an exhausting life on the road. I've enjoyed journeying a little with him, but I don't mind that I am someone else. Maybe he wouldn't want my life either. You never know, though.

Sabbath

I'm not a big fan of a lot of our Sabbath rhetoric in the church. It isn't that we don't need a rest every seven days, it's mostly that we don't take one, and then we complain about it. In a culture as obsessed as we are with being on the go 24/7, we long for rest, pine for rest, yearn for rest, but don't actually do anything about it. Instead, we like to hear preachers and theologians tell us about the importance of slowing down and letting things be. Which ends up making peace and quiet the top story far too much of the time when there are a whole lot of other things that are more important, like the idea that maybe being part of the kingdom of God actually involves work on our part. Instead, we are so worn out from our day jobs that we collapse into the pew on Sunday for a moment of rest. Religion and rest, both items on the bottom of our lists, wind up in the "someday I'll get around to this category." But we don't, and Sabbath rest keeps on being big rhetoric. It's such a first-world problem, anyhow. If that's the biggest problem in your life, that you are stressed out and worn out, thank God right now you aren't starving or getting shot at. And then figure out how to carpool or tell your kid he can only be on 3 soccer teams this fall, not four. Do something about it.

All whining aside, rest is important. I've got more empathy for the worn out than I ever have had. Back in June, after weeks of wondering, as a first-year blogger, whether I ought to take a break this summer, or just cut back, or keep going, (would my readership suffer?) I decided I would take some time off, write a blog called "Sabbath" to explain my absence, and then knock off for a while. I had just made it through a grueling spring, full of new musical adventures and accomplishments, capped off by a piano concert I threw together in only a few weeks, and I needed to rest from something, particularly as the summer didn't promise the sort of rest it normally does. And then my computer had the equivalent of a massive stroke and died on the 4th of July, and by the time I got a new one we were off to Pittsburgh to attend a conference at a very pricey hotel where they charged extra for going online, so I was effectively blocked from the internet for a couple of weeks, which meant a forced vacation from blogging only days before I planned to take one anyway, and you know what? It was kind of nice not worrying about pumping out a blog three times a week and hoping I would have something useful to say and time to say it in. Suddenly, after publishing every Monday Wednesday and Friday without fail from January through June (even if some of the entries got published very late at night!) it all just....stopped.

And peace reigned. And maybe a few questions. Another dead blog? What happened? Has he given up blogging? Just on vacation. Hmmm.

Actually I imagined very few would notice. I also noted that the spambots stopped reading my blog. And that my blog traffic predictably took a big hit. But I am reasonably confident that the viewers I have left are actual humans (most of them) which is kind of nice. There aren't a lot of you, but it's nice to see you are reading. I hope it's worth your while. There are also just under 100 entries if you need something to do until Monday.

I'm ready to get back at it for another year. I've already begun a new season at my church, programming music new and old, sharing my investigations with my congregation, and hoping to be a resource to my local community and anybody who stumbles into my little corner of cyberspace.

I'm also ready to pick up where I left off. Monday's article will be the last in the series on my adventure with Mr. Gottschalk from June, and then it's back to another year of sharing music and listening tips on Monday, things from the teaching studio on Wednesday, and church music on Fridays. Onward...

Michael

Speaking of rhetoric....
At children's choir on Wednesday, while assigning each child a "fruit of the spirit" to sing each in turn:

Bridgette: I want to sing "self control"
Madeline: (her sister) but you don't have any self control.
Bridgette: That's why I want to sing it.

Me: [trying not to bust up, much as their mother did when I told her about it later!]

Union

At 2 p.m. on the afternoon of July 3, 1863, nine infantry brigades under the command of General Longstreet made a desperate charge on the union lines. It became known as "Pickett's Charge," named for one of the three Generals who led the charge under Longstreet, and it has gone down in Civil War annals as perhaps the turning point in the war.

On Sunday I played a concert devoted to the works of Civil War pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a fascinating fellow who toured the United States throughout the war, and wrote about it in twelve notebooks he kept with him which were eventually published. At the concert I read from them between numbers. They were often very funny, as in his takes on his audiences and his frustrations with Sabbath prohibitions. But in the middle of June 1863, as the Battle of Gettysburg neared, Gottschalk became a sort of embedded reporter, and produced a very curious bit of source material for historians. It was an eyewitness account of the evacuation of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and preparations to meet the Rebel army by those called to fight. After reading a greatly condensed account, reproduced here, I concluded the concert with "Union," a piece which Gottschalk wrote in 1862, which recalls "Yankee Doodle," "Hail, Columbia," and "The Star Spangled Banner." This last is marked "Melancholy" and is played slowly and quietly. It was a great question at the time whether the Union would survive--Gottschalk gives voice to that thought in his journal in 1862. A year later, Abraham Lincoln would enshrine that question in the opening of his Gettysburg Address. Even Yankee Doodle shows up at first in a minor key. It is only at the end, after the marching soldiers, the trumpets, the drums, the dramatic silence, that Yankee Doodle and Hail Columbia are heard together in what sounds a bit like the 1812 Overture composed for the piano. To our modern sensibilities it may be a bit over the top, but imagine hearing it in 1863!

I'm going to post the portions of Gottschalk's account that I read at the concert, and then invite you to listen to "Union" at the end. My audience found it riveting; certainly this is a man who can give you a good sense of the chaos unfolding around him, the fear, the drama--even a few humorous asides. Here it is:

Williamsport, Pa., Monday, June 15, 1863

4 P.M. The town is all in commotion.  A dispatch has been received announcing the invasion of the state by three columns of Rebels marching on the capital. The dispatch is placarded on all the street corners. You can easily imagine the agitation caused by the news.

5 P.M. Another dispatch from the Governor of Pennsylvania, calling all able-bodied citizens to arms.  The Confederates, says the dispatch, have seized Martinsburg and are making forced marches on Hagerstown. This last town is only forty-five miles from the state capital.

I go out into the streets.  The crowds multiply and increase every moment.  I pass again before the shop of the fruit milliner: her hats full of strawberries and her beribboned baskets still are there, but the poor woman appears terribly frightened.

[I love how, even in the midst of the panic unfolding around him and surely in his own heart, Gottschalk is able to stop for a moment and make fun of a pick-up band:]

A voluntary military band (the only one in Williamsport) draws up in battle array on the principal square; is it necessary for me to say that it is composed of Germans (all the musicians in the United States are Germans)? There are five of them.  A cornet a piston with a broken-down constitution (I speak of the instrument), a cavernous trombone, an ophicleide too low, a clarinet too high, a sour-looking fifer—all of an independent and irascible temper, but united for the moment by their hatred of keeping time and their vigorous desire to cast off its yoke.  I must confess that they succeeded to such an extent that I am doubtful whether they played in a major or minor key.

[but he digresses:]

Fresh dispatches received excite the greatest consternation. The confederates are marching on Harrisburg. The crowd is stirred up; patriotic meetings are organized. An old gentleman in black clothes, with a large officer’s scarf around his waist, harangues many of his friends from the porch of the hotel.  The band strikes up and marches through the streets, filling the people with military spirit, thanks to the strains, more noisy than harmonious, of this performing cohort.

With all this, the chances for the concert this evening are rather dubious.  The receipts, which promised famously this morning, suddenly are paralyzed.

11 P.M. I played this evening, after all, and before a very respectable audience, which listened with marked interest and a more sustained attention than I always meet with in the audiences of small towns. My little piece entitled The Union, was much applauded; it suited the moment.

Williamsport, Midnight, June 15, 1863

I suggested to Strakosch that the concert announced for tomorrow at Harrisburg had better be given up. It is evident that people who expect every moment to be bombarded are not in the state of mind to hear Cradle Songs, Aelian Murmurs, etc., to say nothing of the risk we might run by rushing into the lion’s den. But the prospect of a good house and the possibility that the rumors of invasion were exaggerated made him turn a deaf ear to me.

[that man is an agent!]

I leave tomorrow morning for Harrisburg.

Making all allowance for exaggeration, there is no longer any doubt that the Rebels are advancing on the capital, and I begin to think that, unless it be part of the plan of Strakosch to make me play before General Jenkins and his staff, our concert tomorrow will hardly come off.

[Don't forget, Gottshalk is a Southerner who has taken a loyalty oath to the North. If the Rebels captured him, I don't think they'd give him four-star treatment, exactly.]

In the [train] cars on the road to Harrisburg.

Hagerstown is definitely in possession of the Confederates. The governor asked the people to put before their doors all empty barrels that they may have to dispose of; they will use them on the fortifications to be thrown up at Harrisburg.  All along the road we see farmers under arms, in battle array and doing military drill. They all seem to want to obey the command of the governor, who orders all able-bodied men to the field to meet the enemy, and to take the Susquehanna as the line for battle.

A traveler we picked up at the last station assures us that the Confederate army is not more than thirty miles from Harrisburg.  Everybody is frightened. Strakosch begins to see his mistake.

It is ten o’clock in the morning. The train continues to advance at full speed toward Harrisburg—that is to say, toward Jenkins, for the city must be attacked tonight, if it is not taken already. What shall we do? As for the concert, it is out of the question; but ourselves, our trunks—my pianos—what is to become of us in all this confusion?

1 P.M. A mile this side of Harrisburg the road is completely obstructed by freight trains, wagons of all sorts, and in fine by all the immense mass of merchandise, etc., which for the last twelve hours has been concentrated near the town to avoid its capture or burning by the rebels. The train stops at the middle of the bridge over the Susquehanna—why? The anxiety increases. Can you conceive of anything more terrible than the expectation of some vague, unknown danger? Some passengers have sat upon the floor so as to be sheltered from bullets in case the train should be fired upon.

One hour of anxiety, during which all the women, while pretending to be dead with fright, do not cease talking and making the most absurd conjectures.  I myself am only slightly comforted, and the idea of a journey to the South at this time is not at all attractive. But the train standing in the middle of the bridge, the silence, the unknown, the solitude that surrounds us, the river whose deep and tremulous waves murmur beneath our feet, and, above all, our ignorance of what is taking place in front and what awaits us at the station—is not all this enough to worry us?

Tired of this suspense, I decide to get out of the car. Strakosch, Madame Amalia Patti, and I go toward the station, which we are assured is only a walk of twenty minutes.  We find at the entrance to the depot piles, no mountains, of trunks blocking the way. One of the mountains has been tunneled by a frightened locomotive. Disemboweled trunks disgorge their contents, which charitable souls gather up with a zeal more or less disinterested.  The conductor points out to me a pickpocket, an elegantly dressed young man moving quietly around with his hands behind his back.

What luck! I have just caught a glimpse of my two pianos—the cowardly mastodons—(Chickering forgive me!) snugly lying in a corner and in perfect health. These two mastodons, which Chickering made expressly for me, follow me in all my peregrinations.  The tails of these monster pianos measure three feet in width. Their length is ten feet; they have seven and a half octaves, and despite all this formidable appearance possess a charming and obedient docility to the least movement of my fingers.

I acknowledge that my heart beat at the idea of leaving these two brave companions of my life exposed to the chances of a bombardment or an attack by assault. Poor pianos! Perhaps tomorrow you will have lived! You will probably serve to feed the fine bivouac fire of some obscure Confederate soldier, who will see your harmonious bowels consumed with an indifferent eye, having no regard for the three hundred concerts that you have survived and the fidelity with which you have followed me in my Western campaigns.

[I moved to the piano as I spoke the last two paragraphs. Only a pianist can understand the angst in Gottschalk's "voice"--on the other hand, it is a bit funny, particular when the other possibilities include getting killed or captured.]

2 P.M. A battery of artillery passes at full gallop. We are crushed in the midst of the crowd…. The rebels, the dispatches announce, are 18 miles away. All the shops are closed, and most of the houses from garret to cellar.

“Decidedly our concert is done for!” exclaims in a piteous voice my poor Strakosch, who has just returned from a voyage of discovery.  The reflection is a rather late one and proves that my excellent friend and agent is a hopeful youth and trusts to the last… that something will “turn up.”

Old men, women, and children are leaving the city.  A train left this morning carrying off many thousand refugees. In a few hours our position has become very critical. We cannot advance, and I fear that our retreat will be cut off.  A militia regiment passes at quickstep; it is going to the front. They are, for the most part, young men from 14 to 18 years old.  They murmur greatly against Philadelphia, which, being the principal city in the state (numbering six hundred thousand inhabitants) has not yet sent one regiment of its National Guard to defend the seat of government, while the distant states of New Jersey, New York, and even Rhode Island already have fifteen or twenty thousand men on the road to Harrisburg and the valley of the Cumberland.

A train being announced to leave for Philadelphia in an hour, we run to the station. Strakosch will remain behind to search for our trunks, which have been missing these two hours. My tuner has lost his head; the two mastodons of Chickering’s have disappeared, and the express company declines to be responsible for them. Too obstinate Strakosch, why in the world did he make us come to Harrisburg?

Union: Concert Paraphrase on National Airs

Gottschalk spent the next two weeks touring New England, and fortunately managed to sit out the actual Battle of Gettysburg!

100 years ago today

We interrupt our regularly scheduled series on composer and pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk and pass up the opportunity to reflect on the 150th anniversary of the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg to offer up an anniversary of a different sort today. We'll get to Gettysburg on Wednesday. By the way, thank you to all of you who were at my concert yesterday.

It isn't often that a composer puts a date on their manuscript. Most don't--some, more recent, are pretty consistent about doing this, which will save future musicologists a lot of work, and torpedo their chances of constructing interesting theories about their chronology, for which I'd like to say on their behalf yeah, thanks a lot, guys!  

But some time ago, I happened to notice that a peculiar little set of three piano pieces by composer Erik Satie sports such dates. The first is dated June 30th. I was busy giving a completely unrelated concert yesterday. The second of the set proclaims its birth on "July 1, 1913," which happens to be a Monday, and thus conveniently lines up with our regular blog date, and the third took its good old time and appeared on July 4th. So I thought as an anniversary nod to these strange but fun pieces (one audience member after a concert of mine opined that the composer "must have been drunk when he wrote them!") I'd post the set for your listening edification. (By the way, I remember sight reading another piece in college and discovering at the end that it was dated a hundred years ago that very day! What a curious sensation that caused! I've forgotten know what piece is was. I think it was Russian.)

They are called Embryons Desseches, or "Dried Embryos" which is possibly Satie's way of poking fun at the question of compositional technique in music (it's a long story, but it usually has to do with his friend Debussy). The poetry which precedes each movement is also a bit absurd; each movement is titled after a different Crustacean (you read me right; this might be the only set of piano pieces in existence who movements are titled after Crustaceans.)

I have had some fun in the past asking people to draw pictures of said Crustaceans based on the way the music inspires them (without looking at the animals). Here is one my wife drew many years ago:

It is certainly more fun than the drawings I just saw on Wikipedia. There is an entire article there if you'd like more information on these pieces, though it is short on whimsy.

Satie certainly wasn't. Here is his poetry and the music that is attached to it:

Satie: Dried Embryos

I. The Holothurian
Ignorant people call it "sea cucumber."
The Holothurian usually climbs up rocks or blocks of stone.
Like the cat, this sea animal purrs; moreover, it spins dripping threads of silk.
The action of light seems to disturb it.
I observed a Holothurian in the Gulf of Saint-Malo.


II. The Edriopthalma
Shellfish with sessile eyes.
Very sad by nature, these sea-creatures live,
withdrawn from the world,
in holes drilled through cliffs.


III. The Podopthalma
Crustaceans with eyes placed on moveable stalks.
They are skillful and tireless hunters
They are found in all the oceans
The flesh of the Podopthalma is tasty food.


Happy listening. And happy birthday, you silly old pieces!

Who cares if you listen?

I've borrowed the title of Milton Babitt's controversial 1959 article to continue my discourse on the listening to organ music in church. Last week I attempted to mount a defense for why not talking over the music of the organist in a worship service can actually be a good thing, despite the prevailing rhetoric about organists with big egos simply trying to show off and wreck the whole spirit of the service if any attention is given to them for a few minutes.

But the issue gets complicated. Last week I stumbled across a remark made by a fellow organist with regard to a colleague of his who had played a Mendelssohn organ sonata in church that morning and wondered on Facebook if anyone had noticed. The organist commented on his blog something like "dude! They're not there to hear you."

I would like to suggest to organists like him, and pastors with similar attitudes that that is not a particularly effective way to support a colleague. Particularly as I think that the organist had probably done quite a bit of work (a Mendelssohn organ sonata is not easy) and was probably having a sort of crises wherein one wonders, after all of that, whether one's efforts have made any difference to anyone. There is a good chance, for example, that the organist (who may not be listed either in the church bulletin or on their website) is unable to list his or her musical selections anyplace that an interested congregant could know what the piece was, and was required to play to a room filled with people talking and moving about. When the music grew quiet it is quite possible (having had this experience myself) that the organist couldn't even hear the music themselves, never mind anyone else hearing it.

Human beings in general tend to have pretty large empathy deficiencies so it never hurts to explain how a thoughtless comment can be hurtful. In this case, the organist who made the comment was simply parroting rhetoric that he received from his superiors, rhetoric that, as is typical in such cases, is technically true, but is used in practice to put people "in their place." That is, it is true that the organist is not the point of the church service but not true that actually hearing their contributions to the service can have no use in worship.

But the organist who made the remark would also not have been capable of playing such a sonata (some Youtube postings made this clear) and it is worth noting that organists of lesser abilities often don't want to be listened to because it makes them nervous and they'd rather not deal with those nerves. In such cases the organist and a church which takes such an attitude of non-listening are well matched. Organists of the able-to-play-Mendelssohn type tend to prefer to deal with nerves. It isn't that we don't have them.

I in fact get nervous whenever I know I am being listened to. I have always assumed that was the price one paid for the privilege of sharing music with other people. It is not a fun experience quite often; nevertheless it is essential. For me, musical wallpaper can't engage you. Besides, it is such a privilege to hear and to play wonderful music like that--or it should be. Too bad many of us stumble through life like spiritual zombies. Part of the artist's job is to wake people up to the world around them. Which is easier to do when they pay attention. Have you seen Monty Python's "Life of Brian?" It's a bit like all those prophets shouting their messages in the city gates: nobody is listening. Seems a little defeating.

I would suggest to pastors and priests that they not treat their organists like the faucet in their kitchen which pours forth water when they turn it on but is otherwise not thought about much (except when it doesn't work) and instead support their organist by listening to the music, asking them to talk about the music, or put explanatory notes in the bulletin (:gasp:!) and take the opportunity to learn from a colleague who has specialized knowledge in a different area. Respect flows both ways, and it is more likely to come from those you treat as if they had important work to do on Sunday. Obviously this will also include playing for hymns and liturgy. But if your organist is talented it need not be limited to that. You won't want them to play a concert every week in church but you can certainly encourage them to use their gifts in the service of God. I think he created music as well as words.

Of course, pastors tend to be divided over the issue as well. Sometimes it is because those who are less gifted tend to be threatened by an organist who is getting attention of any kind; particularly if the congregation loved their musical selection that morning. I would suggest to an organist that they sometimes forego the opportunity to play something flashy exactly so things don't start to look like a popularity contest. There are plenty of wonderful musics that your congregation won't like all that well, but that are good for their musical (and spiritual) development. Keep that in mind as you strive for a balanced menu each week. And make a point of listening to your pastor's sermon as well!








*apparently my spell-checker needs to be educated in the importance of noticing organists as human beings as well. It thinks the term "organists" ought to be spelled "organisms." I tell you, we do exist! We are real creatures! With personalities (some of the time). And lives on the side, even.

"Getting" Gottschalk

In order to play any composer's music well, you have to have some understanding about what makes them tick musically. Any clues you have to their artistic personality are of help. I say this, well aware that some people are under the impression that all the appropriate marks are on the page and all you need to do is to follow them. I have no problem with the marks on the page, but they are incomplete. This is often because a composer just assumed people would follow the standard practice of their time and place and thus constantly reminding people to do something they were going to do anyhow seemed unnecessary. But marks can also lead you down the wrong path. I remember preparing to play a Sonata by William Albright back in graduate school. There were so many instructions in English--almost every note had some kind of adjective under it in some spots--that I assumed he was going to be really detail-oriented and a perfectionist, and maybe even somewhat of a control freak. Then I met him and he coached me on how to play his piece. Basically, he told me to just go for it. This was the complete opposite of what I had been expecting.

Pianists should have this kind of problem every day. If the attack on Mozart's instrument was much cleaner and decayed much faster than our modern Steinway, is a detached articulation appropriate for any place in the piece that doesn't say otherwise? And just what did Schubert mean when he used a wedge instead of a dot. Or was he even sure himself?

The reason I bring this up is because I'm giving a concert on Sunday of the works of Louis Moreau Gottschalk and I've been dealing with this sort of thing all month. Now, let's be honest, Mr. Gottschalk's compositions aren't on the level with Mozart and Schubert, but they are quite original, and rather interesting. They are not quite as difficult to play as they sound, but they do give you quite a workout. And, although Gottschalk himself was rather anxious about making sure people played his works the way he thought of them, some understanding of what he was going for--some imagination--is required to bring them about.

For instance, Gottschalk is often striving for effect. What sort of effects? Well, try this one on for size. It is a spot from "Union: Paraphrase on National Airs." Now, the score looks like this:

And if somebody didn't understand that he was trying to imitate the sound of marching soldiers on the piano they might play it like this:

[listen]

When in fact, the passage, played correctly, goes something like this:

[listen]

How do I know this? The score has the instruction "pianissimo"--good, we know to play it soft. But how cleanly should I articulate the notes? There isn't anything to indicate that. No staccato, no legato, no slur, nothing.

In fact, the score does indicate "drums" but what kind? Snares? Extremely articulate. What about muffled bass type drums? just the opposite. Choose the wrong kind and you spoil the effect.

I've always thought that the effect was really one of a regiment of soldiers marching. The minute you think of that, you realize that you should not have a precise, clean sound, but an indefinite cluster. The notes should cease to sound like notes and become more of a noise. Get it right and the effect makes your hair stand up. Oddly, the way the notes look in the score puts us off the trail in this case. But then, how else could a 19th century composer notate such an effect?

Gottschalk's music is full of things of this nature. Those of the trumpet call, or the plucking of the banjo, or some kind of whistling sound up on the high end of the piano (Gottschalk's favorite register) are just a few. And he clearly loves the ticklish sound of rapid, delicate passagework. I mean, what else is the following passage doing sandwiched between variations on one of the tunes from his piece "Bamboula" where the action just stops dead for a few moments and we get this little pianistic figure that goes nowhere?

[listen]

He just repeats the gesture a few times, enchanted with the sound, and then afterward dives right back in where we left off! Compositionally it is of no use whatever--I'm sure Brahms would have chopped it right out. But it is pretty--if you want it to be. If you dispatch it like the structural waste of time it is, that is exactly what it will sound like. We have here a paradox--and an opportunity to stop and smell the pianistic roses.

One of the comments that Gottschalk often got was that the piano didn't sound like a piano when Gottschalk played it. Instead, it seemed to transcend its limitations as a percussive box with levers. It didn't just sing like the European Romantics--it gave rise to a variety of interesting effects. That has to be clear. Someone who is just there to play the notes and follow the instructions would never get all the "poesy" as he called it; the inspiration, the rhapsodic fantasy would be gone.

Still, Gottschalk did worry about his instructions being ignored. One of the pieces I'm playing on Sunday, the shortest and simplest, comes with a prologue from the author in which he warns about "substituting [one's] own thoughts for those of the composer." These, he warns, will "inevitably interfere with the general effect." He must insist, therefore, that the rhythms on the page be followed precisely.

And that is really the point. Not to substitute ideas in place of instructions given, but to understand what is behind them, and then to be able to really make the piece sound like intended, following the spirit, not just the letter, of the musical law.

In conclusion...

Some "Notes" for the concert

In preparing for this Sunday's concert (3 P.M. at Faith UMC in Champaign, Illinois, if you are interested) here are some more materials I've been finding in my "research:"

Louis Moreau Gottschalk was one interesting fellow. Perhaps I've mentioned that already. According to the likes of Chopin, Liszt, and Berlioz, he was quite a composer and pianist in his teens, well before he found employment as a concert pianist in the middle of the American Civil war. By this time he had also achieved success touring South America. North America was his third continent, and he was still in his early thirties. Nevertheless, touring here was not a simple matter. There was that small matter of a war. In addition:

 "Adrian, Michigan. Infamous concert! [I made only] Seventy-eight dollars! The people say that they prefer "a good Negro show." They are furious at the price of admission--one dollar. A singular American characteristic! They insult us as if we forced them to pay....One dollar admission! It is the universal theme."

And of course, things got pretty monotonous.

"Everything is foreseen, everything is marked out, in my peregrinations. Thanks to the experience of my agent, I know in advance, within a few dollars, the amount of the receipts in a town of a given number of inhabitants. I know, with my eyes shut, every one of the inextricable cross-threads that form the network of railroads with which New England is covered....In my black suit at eight o'clock I salute my audience....at a quarter to nine they encore the Murmures eoliens. At half past nine they call again for the Berceuse,...at ten I carry off my patriotic audience to the belligerent accents of the Union fantasia; and at half-past ten I throw myself, exhausted and depoetized, into the prosaic arms of the blessed Morpheus...."

Of course, he could be pretty dramatic about it:

"Solitude, for me, is repose--is the absence of the thousand distractions of this unquiet, giddy existence to which my career of nomad artist condemns me. In solitude, in reveries, and in contemplation I find fertile sources of inspiration....Only then am I myself....For myself, who, because of a sickly and nervous nature, always have a propensity to melancholy, the stirring and noisy existence that the career of nomad virtuous imposes on me is that to which I have the greatest antipathy."

But for all that, the only thing worse than having to play was not being able to play:

"O human inconsistency! The piano, which has been a torment for me all week, possesses for me today (on a Sunday, when Sabbath laws forbade most activities) an irresistible charm. It is the charm of forbidden fruit, for, although it is permitted (by going to the bar through the back door) to take an indefinite number of brandy, whiskey, or gin cocktails, to play on the piano, except under certain psalmodic restrictions, is positively prohibited.  The harp perhaps might be tolerated—for David played on the harp—but the piano, fie!" 

Gottschalk goes on to relate a colorful incident from years earlier:

"...One Sunday at Cape May I sat down to practice a polka--the Forest Glade--which I was then composing. Just as I began, a violent thunderstorm burst of the hotel, and at the first flash of lightning several ladies and a clergyman, seen in the storm an unmistakable sign of divine wrath, came rapping at my door, imploring me to stop my profane, though anything but tempestuous, music. I now remember the scandalized countenances of those worthy people too distinctly to venture again on any such experiment."

Colorful anecdotes like this are part of what make Gottschalk such a good read. Even in the middle of the panic before Gettysburg, with the town in an uproar over the oncoming Confederates, and Gottschalk himself worried about capture or getting his pianos destroyed, he has to stop and make fun of a volunteer band in the town square:

"A voluntary military band (the only one in Williamsport) draws up in battle array on the principal square; is it necessary for me to say that it is composed of Germans (all the musicians in the United States are Germans)? There are five of them.  A cornet a piston with a broken-down constitution (I speak of the instrument), a cavernous trombone, an ophicleide too low, a clarinet too high, a sour-looking fifer—all of an independent and irascible temper, but united for the moment by their hatred of keeping time and their vigorous desire to cast off its yoke.  I must confess that they succeeded to such an extent that I am doubtful whether they played in a major or minor key." 

Gottschalk notes that in every audience there is, in addition to the "pretty battalion" of boarding school girls who have come to sigh over his sentimental compositions, which they all know by heart and can play (sort of), there is "the local Beethoven," with "uncombed hair, bushy beard, the amenity of a boar at bay to a pack of hounds. I know this type; it is found everywhere...It is time that many unknown musicians should be convinced that...soap is not incompatible with genius, and it is now proved that the daily use of a comb does not exercise any injurious influence on the lobes of the brain."

He has, of course, to please his public, much of which is from small towns, which is not going to make him any friends with the established musical culture in the large cities. But even he is disappointed to note that "the ears of many people are so little exercised that they recognize only two or three songs they have known from birth....and...there must be only the melody, without harmony, without variations, absolutely naked, as a fifer would play it, for them to recognize it. They least artifice, the least ornament, they lose the thread, are confused, and the complaints begin that there is no melody."

It is a difficult crowd to please at times, but then, their musical experience is not profound. In some cases, Gottschalk's recital is the first time anyone in his audience has ever heard a piano recital before. And sometimes...."The other evening, before the concert, an honest farmer, pointing to my  piano, asked me what that 'big accordion' was. He had seen square pianos and upright pianos, but the tail bothered him. Eight or nine days ago , at Zanesville, a charming young girl and her honorable mamma spent the whole concert watching my feet. They did not know the use of the pedals and saw in my movements only a kind of queer trembling and odd, rudimentary dance steps that for two hours and a quarter afforded them an inexhaustible source of amusement."

Gottschalk is trying to be nice about it. He knows you can't make fun of your audience if you want their adoration, and their dollars. (Don't make fun of Zanesville. My grandmother use to live kind of nearby.) Besides, he is a pioneer. How much can you expect? And, within a few years, he writes "I am daily astonished at the rapidity with which the taste for music is developed and is developing in the United States. At the time of my first return from Europe I was constantly deploring the want of public interest for pieces purely sentimental; the public listened with indifference; in order to interest it, it became necessary to astound it; grand movements, tours de force, and noise alone had the privilege in piano music....from whatever cause American taste is becoming purer, and with what remarkable rapidity....We should all, however narrow may be our sphere of action, bear our part in the progressive movement of civilization, and I cannot help feeling a pride in having contributed within the modest limits of my powers in extending through our country the knowledge of music."

In the meantime, he has to put up with strange critiques like the one from the lady in Auburn who said 'What a deafening racket he makes with his piano.  There is no music in it.' I have often heard others speak of it, who said that I always played too softly and that I did not make enough noise.  O critics! You would be very annoying if you were not so amusing!"

Then there is the bad food in the hotels, the wake-up call which consists of banging a gong at six in the morning (he hates that!) the superstitious and sometimes vituperative behavior of the people he meets en route, not to mention the time his train is buried in snow for a couple of days, or when the priest at Sunday Mass can't stay in one key, or when he nearly gets arrested for not paying the hall deposit before his concert in a small town, or when he goes to take a nap in a rear car on the train and discovers he is surrounded by embalmed bodies!

We know all of this, of course, because Gottschalk wrote it all down, in twelve notebooks he kept with him as he travelled, which became "Notes of a Pianist," published by his sister after his death. Even his method of describing them is entertaining:

"I am fond of my notebooks...they never leave me. They are like an intimate companion for me, a mute confidant who has an immense advantage over all the railroad friends I ever have met, that of hearing me without my being obliged to strain my voice over the sharp summits of the highest note, as it listens to me and never interrupts me. It is discreet (of what friends could as much be said?) to the extent that, had you under your eyes the ten or twelve notebooks that I have filled from the Mississippi to the St. Lawrence, and from New York to the Mormon Desert, they would take great care to prevent you from discovering anything other than undecipherable hieroglyphics; every one of their pages looks like the side of an obelisk. The jolts of the road and the haste with which I write assist, it is true, marvelously in making them discreet."

It probably also helped that they were originally in French!

In any case, Gottschalk's notebooks have provided much amusement, much companionship and camaraderie  and, of course, great material for a (lecture) concert--much more, in fact, than would fill many concerts.

Next week, Gottschalk turns war correspondent in Pennsylvania before the Battle of Gettysburg.