Louis Gottschalk Biography - A Very Quick Guide

Louis Moreau Gottschalk was born on May 8, 1829, in New Orleans and died on December 18, 1869, in Tijuca near Rio de Janeiro. By the time of his death he was regarded as “the most famous musician in the Western Hemisphere” . Often described as the Chopin of the Creoles, he combined the roles of composer and virtuoso pianist and enjoyed a level of celebrity comparable to that of modern touring stars. His career took him to an extraordinary range of venues—from small towns in the American West and remote Caribbean plantations to major centres in Latin America. He performed for Queen Isabella II of Spain, President Lincoln, and the Emperor of Brazil.

Gottschalk died at the age of forty, and within a few decades changing musical tastes caused much of his work to fall into obscurity, with only a handful of sentimental pieces—such as The Last Hope (1854) and The Dying Poet (1863–64)—remaining in circulation.