Louis Moreau Gottschalk

GOTTSCHALK, Louis Moreau. b. New Orleans, Louisiana, 8 May 1829; d. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 18 December 1869. Gottschalk’s father, Edward Gottschalk (1795-1853), was a Jewish businessman, born in England, his mother, Aimée Bruslé Gottschalk (1808-1856), was described by a brother-in-law as ‘extremely diffident… much more than…expected in a French woman.’ In his definitive biography of Gottschalk, S. Frederick Starr (1940-) writes that Gottschalk’s impulse for music came from his mother, and ‘from her also came the French language and Catholic faith that were so much a part of his orientation.  Most important, he found his mother’s ancestral world darkly fascinating, and that fascination...