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Gottschalk was born in New Orleans in 1829 in a house that still stands at the southwestcorner of Esplanade and Royal streets. From early in his childhood, he wasexposed to the French and African-tinged Caribbean folk music thatcharacterized the music of the Creoles. It was this bombastic music thatleft the deepest impression on Gottschalk, later permeating his works andeventually spurring him on to international fame.
The musical climate of New Orleans in the 1830s is revealed in the childhoodof Gottschalk. Creoles made up about 50 percent of the city at that time,with the majority of the population residing in what was called Old NewOrleans, east of Canal. Gottschalk, too, was of Creole descent and wasraised primarily by his grandmother and his African-American nurse, bothnatives of the island of Saint-Dominique. Certainly Creole melodies were anatural part of the Gottschalk household.
In Gottschalk’s 1958 biography, Vernon Loggins, paints a far more romanticpicture of the inspiration behind the Creole melodies of Gottschalk’smusic. Loggins gives a vivid description of the three story, vine-coveredhome on Rampart where the Gottschalks resided from 1831-1833. Logginsclaims that young Gottschalk would stand on the third floor gallery andlisten to the sounds of the street floating on the sultry citybreeze. Music filled the streets of New Orleans then, as it still doestoday, and flowed among the houses which remained open to the street most ofthe year.
One particularly popular spot for song and dance was Congo Square;well-known to have been the location of Sunday afternoon public dances inthe early nineteenth century. Loggins describes the scene: "Always atthat hour (Gottschalk) was up on the third-floor gallery listening for thefirst sound of the drums. As soon as the beats fell into a steady rhythmhe began to march. Louder and faster the beats grew, and the boy’s marchturned into a dance. . . As the hundreds of (dancers) sang, the dancing boysang too. Over and over he would repeat the melody, until his mother wouldcome, pick him up, carry him into the nursery, and lay him on his bed. Inan instant he would be sound asleep".
Gottschalk was a prodigy at the piano. As a young boy he easily picked uptunes of the many popular French operas premiering in New Orleans andcreated variations on the well-known arias and themes. Even before hisfirst public performing debut, Gottschalk was in demand as a recitalist inthe swanky salons of wealthy New Orleanians. Upon the urging of FelixMiolan, concertmaster of the Theatre d’Orleans, Gottschalk made a less thanformal performance debut at the new St. Charles Hotel in 1840. He wasidentified on the program as "young X, a Creole", but was an instant hitwith the audience, performing a series of variations on a popular spicyLatin dance tune.
He quickly learned all that local musicians had to teach and, at the age of13, left to study piano and composition in Paris. His virtuosic playing andCreole-inspired compositions gained him immediate fame throughout Europe,with a wide-variety of audiences clamoring to see this handsome, youngvirtuoso with the splendidly outlandish origins.
In 1853, Gottschalk returned to the United States, much to the delight ofthe young girls who frequented his concerts. He never married, preferringinstead to travel the United States and Europe and to trace his Creolehistory back to the Caribbean region as well as Cuba and SouthAmerica. Some controversy surrounds the actual cause of his death in 1869,but this extensive touring was certainly a factor.
Gottschalk never returned to his hometown New Orleans for more than a coupleweeks at a time following his departure in 1841, nor did he ever settle inthe United States. However, Gottschalk was always hailed as an Americancelebrity and he always considered New Orleans his home. The city, afterall, had left the mark on him that he would eventually leave on the musicalworld.