Mr. Gottschalk's return to America in February, 1862, was celebrated by
a concert in Irving Hall, on the anniversary of his _début_ in New York.
This was the beginning of another brilliant musical series, in pursuance
of which he appeared in every prominent city of the country. While
many found fault with Gottschalk for descending to pure "claptrap" and
bravura playing, for using his great powers to merely superficial and
unworthy ends, he seemed to retain as great a hold as ever over the
masses of concert-goers. Gottschalk himself, with his epicurean,
easy-going nature, laughed at the lectures read him by the critics and
connoisseurs, who would have him follow out ideals for which he had no
taste. It was like asking the butterfly to live the life of the bee.
Great as were the gifts of the artist, it was not to be expected that
these would be pursued in lines not consistent with the limitations
of his temperament. Gottschalk appears to have had no desire except to
amuse and delight the world, and to have been foreign to any loftier
musical aspiration, if we may judge by his own recorded words. He passed
through life as would a splendid wild singing-bird, making music
because it was the law of his being, but never directing that talent
with conscious energy to some purpose beyond itself.
In 1863 family misfortunes and severe illness of himself cooperated to
make the year vacant of musical doings, but instantly he recovered he
was engaged by M. Strakosch to give another series of concerts in the
leading Eastern cities. Without attempting to linger over his career for
the next two years, let us pass to his second expedition to the tropics
in 1865. Four years were spent in South America, each country that he
visited vieing with the other in doing him honor. Magnificent gifts were
heaped on him by his enthusiastic Spanish-American admirers, and life
was one continual ovation. In Peru he gave sixty concerts, and was
presented with a costly decoration of gold, diamond, and pearl. In Chili
the Government voted him a grand gold medal, which the board of public
schools, the board of visitors of the hospitals, and the municipal
government of Valparaiso supplemented by gold medals, in recognition
of Gottschalk's munificence in the benefit concerts he gave for various
public and humane institutions. The American pianist, through the whole
of his career, had shown the traditional benevolence of his class in
offering his services to the advancement of worthy objects. A similar
reception awaited Gottschalk in Montevideo, where the artist became
doubly the object of admiration by the substantial additions he made
to the popular educational fund. While in this city he organized and
conducted a great musical festival in which three hundred musicians
engaged, exclusive of the Italian Opera company then at Montevideo.
The spring of 1869 brought Gottschalk to the last scene of his musical
triumphs, for the span of his career was about to close over him. Rio
Janeiro, the capital of Brazil, gave Gottschalk an ardent reception,
which made this city properly the culmination of his toils and triumphs.
Gottschalk wrote that his performances created such a _furore_ that
boxes commanded a premium of seventy-five dollars, and single seats
fetched twenty-five. He was frequently entertained by Dom Pedro at the
palace; in every way the Brazilians testified their lavish admiration of
his artistic talents. In the midst of his success Gottschalk was seized
with yellow fever, and brought very low. Indeed, the report came back
to New York that he was dead, a report, however, which his own letters,
written from the bed of convalescence, soon contradicted.
In October of 1869 Gottschalk was appointed by the emperor to take the
leadership of a great festival, in which eight hundred performers in
orchestra and chorus would take part. Indefatigable labor, in rehearsing
his musicians and organizing the almost innumerable details of such an
affair, acted on a frame which had not yet recovered its strength from a
severe attack of illness. With difficulty he dragged himself through the
tedious preparation, and when he stood up to conduct the first concert
of the festival, on the evening of November 26, he was so weak that he
could scarcely stand. The next day he was too ill to rise, and, though
he forced himself to go to the opera-house in the evening, he was so
weak as to be unable to conduct the music, and he had to be driven back
to his hotel. The best medical skill watched over him, but his hour had
come, and after three weeks of severe suffering he died, December 18,
1869. The funeral solemnities at the Cathedral of Rio were of the most
imposing character, and all the indications of really heart-felt sorrow
were shown among the vast crowd of spectators, for Gottschalk had
quickly endeared himself to the public both as man and artist. At the
time of Gott-schalk's death, it was his purpose to set sail for Europe
at the earliest practicable moment, to secure the publication of some of
his more important works, and the production of his operas, of which he
had the finished scores of not less than six.
Louis Moreau Gottschalk was an artist and composer whose gifts were
never more than half developed; for his native genius as a musician was
of the highest order. Shortly before he died, at the age of forty, he
seemed to have ripened into more earnest views and purposes, and, had
he lived to fulfill his prime, it is reasonable to hazard the conjecture
that he would have richly earned a far loftier niche in the pantheon
of music than can now be given him. A rich, pleasure-loving, Oriental
temperament, which tended to pour itself forth in dreams instead of
action; vivid emotional sensibilities, which enabled him to exhaust
all the resources of pleasure where imagination stimulates sense; and
a thorough optimism in his theories, which saw everything at its best,
tended to blunt the keen ambition which would otherwise inevitably have
stirred the possessor of such artistic gifts. Gottschalk fell far short
of his possibilities, though he was the greatest piano executant ever
produced by our own country. He might have dazzled the world even as he
dazzled his own partial countrymen.
His style as a pianist was sparkling, dashing, showy, but, in the
judgment of the most judicious, he did not appear to good advantage in
comparison with Thalberg, in whom a perfect technique was dominated by
a conscious intellectualism, and a high ideal, passionless but severely
beautiful.
Gottschalk's idiosyncrasy as a composer ran in parallel lines with
that of the player. Most of the works of this musician are brilliant,
charming, tender, melodious, full of captivating excellence, but
bright with the flash of fancy, rather than strong with the power
of imagination. We do not find in his piano-forte pieces any of that
subtile soul-searching force which penetrates to the deepest roots
of thought and feeling. Sundry musical cynics were wont to crush
Gottschalk's individuality into the coffin of a single epigram. "A
musical bonbon to tickle the palates of sentimental women." But this
falls as far short of justice as the enthusiasm of many of his admirers
overreaches it. The easy and genial temperament of the man, his ability
to seize the things of life on their bright side, and a naive indolence
which indisposed the artist to grapple with the severest obligations of
an art life, prevented Gottschalk from attaining the greatness possible
to him, but they contributed to make him singularly lovable, and to
justify the passionate attachment which he inspired in most of those
who knew him well. But, with all of Gottschalk's limitations, he must
be considered the most noticeable and able of pianists and composers for
the piano yet produced by the United States.