Louis Moreau Gottschalk

American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk was a virtuoso pianist and the first American composer to establish a reputation overseas. Gottschalk garnered fame through such American-styled works as Bamboula (1845). In the United States, his pieces Le Banjo (1855) and The Dying Poet (1853) proved enormously popular. The impact of Gottschalk's music on the later development of ragtime might seem obvious, yet there is no proven link from him to the syncopated popular music he anticipated in works like Bamboula. The music of Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton show traces of his melo...