The American composer and pianist, Louis-Moreau Gottschalk (1829 – 1869), was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, one of the most culturally diverse areas in America during his time. His father, Edward Gottschalk, was of German-Jewish heritage, and his mother, Aimée de Bruslé, was a Creole of French-Roman Catholic background. The Bruslé family had fled from Haiti to New Orleans because of the rising slave rebellion. Also, his maternal Grandmother Bruslé and Sally, her African-American nurse, were originally from Saint-Dominque. The cultures of Gottschalk’s family resulted in his mixed heritage. His family background most likely triggered an interest in him to travel and tour many places during his musical career. He travelled to places including France, Switzerland, Spain, as well as the West Indies. All of the areas he visited influenced his music in some way.
Gottschalk’s unique blend of exotic cultures was key to perpetual fame during his time. By examining the compositions Bamboula (Op. 2) and Souvenir de Porto Rico (Op. 31), I will demonstrate how Gottschalk’s musical style represents an integration of Creole, New Orleans, West Indian, and Afro-Caribbean backgrounds he was exposed to throughout his life.
Gottschalk was a child prodigy, showing astonishing musical abilities at a young age. His father, against his mother’s wishes, sent him off to study music more intensively in Paris. During his time in Paris, Gottschalk studied piano with Charles Hallé, Camille Stamaty, and later studied composition with Pierre Maleden. Paris was just the beginning of the many places where he would compose some of his finest works.
Bamboula, one of Gottschalk’s early solo piano works, is part of a set of four pieces called the L...
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For centuries, music has been defined by history, time, and place. To address this statement, Tom Zè, an influential songwriter during the Tropicália Movement, produced the revolutionary “Fabrication Defect” to challenge oppression as a result from the poor political and social conditions. On the other hand, David Ramsey discusses, in mixtape vignettes, the role of music to survive in New Orleans’ violent setting. Furthermore, “The Land where the Blues Began”, by Alan Lomax, is a film and perfect example to understand under what musical conditions profound ways of communication are made to stand the hard work of cotton plantations. As a result, music plays a crucial role in the sources’ cultures and its creation relies on particular conditions such as the social
Imagine you are walking the streets of New Orleans. You are standing right where jazz was established in the United States of America. Jazz wasn’t just about music, it also affected the culture involving social, economic, artistic and jazz leaders.
“Together the matrices of race and music occupied similar position and shared the same spaces in the works of some of the most lasting texts of Enlightenment thought..., by the end of the eighteenth century, music could embody differences and exhibit race…. Just as nature gave birth and form to race, so music exhibited remarkable affinities to nature” (Radano and Bohlman 2000: 14). Radano and Bohlman pointed out that nature is a source of differences that give rise to the different racial identities. As music embodies the physical differences of human, racial differences are not only confined to the differences in physical appearances, but also the differences in many musical features, including language, tonality and vocal expression. Nonetheless, music is the common ground of different racial identities. “In the racial imagination, music also occupies a position that bridges or overlaps with racial differences. Music fills in the spaces between racial distinctiveness….” (Radano and Bohlman 2000:8) Even though music serves as a medium through which different racial identities are voiced and celebrated individually, it establishes the common ground and glues the differences
African American religious music is the foundation of all contemporary forms of so called “black music.” African American religious music has been a fundamental part of the black experience in this country. This common staple of the African American experience can be traced back to the cruel system of slavery. It then evolved into what we refer to today as gospel music. The goal of this paper is to answer three main questions. What are the origins of African American religious music? How did this musical expression develop into a secular form of music? What is the future of African American religious music? These questions will be answered through factual research of African American traditions, artists, and various other sources.
The author also makes a short analysis of two Boston publications associated with the evangelist Jacob Knapp that present the tune WARRENTON as a popular revival tune. Both of these publications refer to the female Pilgrim (31-32). Moreover, these two publications present the tune in three-part harmony with the melody in upper voice, which reveals the format for revival hymnals around that time. The author states that the tune WARRENTON found popular acceptance in the Northern version with the female pilgrim text, while the Southern version used the text “Come, thou fount of every blessing.” (33).
Tick, Judith, and Paul E. Beaudoin. Music in the USA: a Documentary Companion. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.
Not only is it nearly impossible to pinpoint jazz’s conception in time, many locations are accredited with its origin, the United States allowed for jazz to start gaining popularity and leading into the change it had to the music scene. When jazz is brought up, many first think of its birth place being New Orleans, Louisiana. New Orleans has always been a big musi...
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe, more commonly known as Jelly Roll Morton, was born to a creole family in a poor neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana. Morton lived with several family members in different areas of New Orleans, exposing him to different musical worlds including European and classical music, dance music, and the blues (Gushee, 394). Morton tried to play several different instruments including the guitar; however, unsatisfied with the teachers’ lack of training, he decided to teach himself how to play instruments without formal training (Lomax, 8). ...
Bartok’s teachers at the Royal academy were Janos Koessler, for composition and István Thoman for piano. At the academy Bartok met Zoltan Kodaly and together they collected folk music from the region in attempt to protect it. This was to have a major impact on his style. After discovering peasant folk song, which Bartok considered to be t...
Claude Debussy is a French classical music composer. Debussy was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France in 1862. Debussy’s music was considered to fall under the impressionism study as he veered away from the traditional musical composition methods of key and pitch and worried about the different intervals in a piece. Debussy started playing the piano at the young age of seven, by age ten it was apparent that Debussy was very gifted in what he did as he was selected to attend a prestigious school for talented musicians, dancers and artists. Debussy stayed at the Conservatoire for eleven years where he perfected his talents with the help of some famous composers such as I...
Small, Christopher. Music of the Common Tongue: Survival and Celebration in African American Music. Hanover, NH: U of New England, 1998. Print
The Latin American music scene is an amazingly diverse, engaging and entertaining music culture. Thomas (2011) explains, “…Latin American music has engaged in ongoing dialogue and cultural exchange that has profoundly affected music making in Europe and the United States and, more recently, in Africa and Asia as well”. This paper will be describing different aspects of the music culture from its musical features, to the historical aspect of this interesting music culture. Also, I will discuss a personal experience with Latin American music. After researching the music culture, I attended a concert performed by Boogat, an Emmy award nominated Latin American musician from Quebec who has toured all over North America. Latin American music culture
Before I take this class, the jazz music is familiar as well as unfamiliar to me. I am pretty sure that I heard jazz performance at many times, but I cannot tell what jazz is. And there was a time when I thought jazz music was belong to the upper class, however I understand the jazz music is regardless of class and race, so much even it more tends to lower middle class. In the early of 19th century, the New Orleans was owned by the French, and due to the lax management, lots of African-Americans got away from slaveholder from America’s south. They got married with French under the “mixed marriages”, therefore there were huge amount of mixed-race know as Creoles. The Creoles had the same rights with white people, they got
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Burkeholder, Peter J. et al, A History of Western Music, New York, W.W. Norton & Company Ltd, 2010. 626 -632