During Thalberg's first visit to America he had an active and dangerous
rival in the young and brilliant pianist, Louis Moreau Gottschalk,
who was as fresh to New York audiences as Thalberg himself, though the
latter had the advantage over his young competitor in a fame which
was almost world-wide. Of American pianists Louis Gottschalk stands
confessedly at the head by virtue of remarkable native gifts, which, had
they been assisted by greater industry and ambition, might easily have
won him a very eminent rank in Europe as well as in his own country. An
easy, pleasure-loving, tropical nature, flexible, facile, and disposed
to sacrifice the future to the present, was the only obstacle to the
attainment to a place level with the foremost artists of his age.
Edward Gottschalk, who came to America in his young manhood and settled
in New Orleans, and his wife, a French Creole lady, had five children,
of whom the future pianist was the eldest, born in 1829. His feeling for
music manifested itself when he was three years old by his ability to
play a melody on the piano which he had heard. Instantly he was strong
enough, he was placed under the instruction of a good teacher, and no
pains were spared to develop his precocious talent. At the age of six he
had made such progress on the piano that he was also instructed on
the violin, and soon was able to play pieces of more than ordinary
difficulty with taste and expression. We are told that the lad gave
a benefit concert at the age of eight to assist an unfortunate
violin-player, with considerable success, and was soon in great request
at evening parties as a child phenomenon. The propriety of sending
the little Louis to Paris had long been discussed, and it was finally
accomplished in 1842.
On reaching Paris he was first put under the teaching of Charles Halle,
but, as the latter master was a little careless, he was replaced by M.
Camille Stamaty, who had the reputation of being the ablest professor
in the city. The following year he began the study of harmony and
counterpoint with M. Malidan, and the rapid progress he evinced in his
studies was of a kind to justify his parents in their wish to devote him
to the career of a pianist.
Young Louis Gottschalk was much petted in the aristocratic salons of
Paris, to which he had admission through his aunts, the Comtesse de
Lagrange and the Comtesse de Bourjally. His remarkable musical gifts,
and more especially his talent for improvisation, excited curiosity and
admiration, even in a city where the love of musical novelty had been
sated by a continual supply of art prodigies. Young as he was, he wrote
at this time not a few charming compositions, which were in after-years
occasional features of his concerts. His delicate constitution succumbed
under hard work, and for a while a severe attack of typhoid fever
interrupted his studies. On his recovery, our young artist spent a few
months in the Ardennes. On returning to Paris, he became the pupil of
Hector Berlioz, who felt a deep interest in the young American, as an
art prodigy from a land of savages in harmony, and devoted himself so
assiduously to the study that he declined an invitation from the Spanish
queen to become a guest of the court at Madrid.
An amusing incident occurred in a pedestrian trip which he made to the
Vosges in 1846. He had forgotten his passport, and, on arriving at a
small town, was arrested by a gendarme and taken before the maire. The
latter official was reading a newspaper containing a notice of his last
concert, and through this means he assured the worthy functionary of his
identity, and was cordially welcomed to the hospitality of the official
residence.
His friend Berlioz, who was ever on the alert to help the American pupil
who promised to do him so much credit, arranged a series of concerts
for him at the Italian Opéra in the winter of 1846-'47, and these proved
brilliantly successful, not merely in filling the young artist's purse,
but in augmenting his fast-growing reputation. Steady labor in study and
concert-giving, many of his public performances being for charity, made
two years pass swiftly by. A musical tour through France in 1849 was
highly successful, and the young American returned to Paris, loaded
down with gifts, and rich in the sense of having justly earned the
congratulations which showered on him from all his friends. A second
invitation now came from Spain, and Louis Gottschalk on arriving at
Madrid was made a guest at the royal palace. From the king he received
two orders, the diamond cross of Isabella la Catholique and that of
Leon d'Holstein, and from the Duke de Montpensier he received a sword of
honor. We are told that at one of the private court concerts Gottschalk
played a duet with Don Carlos, the father of the recent pretender to the
Spanish throne.
Among the romantic incidents narrated of this visit of Gottschalk to
Madrid, one is too characteristic to be overlooked, as showing the
tender, generous nature of the artist. An imaginative Spanish girl,
whose fancy had been excited by the public enthusiasm about Gottschalk,
but was too ill to attend his concerts, had a passionate desire to hear
him play, and pined away in the fret-fulness of ungratified desire. Her
family were not able to pay Gottschalk for the trouble of giving such an
exclusive concert, but, to satisfy the sick girl, made the circumstances
known to the artist. Gottschalk did not hesitate a moment, but ordered
his piano to be conveyed to the humble abode of the patient. Here by her
bedside he played for hours to the enraptured girl, and the strain of
emotion was so great that her life ebbed away before he had finished the
final chords. Gottschalk remained in Spain for two years, and it was not
till the autumn of 1852 that he returned to Paris, to give a series of
farewell concerts before returning again to America, where his father
and brothers were anxiously awaiting him.