Don's Independence Day Listen: Gottschalk's The Union

Dear music lovers,

Happy Independence Day!

It’s been a hard few years for American culture, a time when many of our cultural leaders have lost the will to defend their inheritance. That’s one of the reasons I founded The Podium. But when things seem darkest, we can always learn a little something from the artists who faced worse circumstances than we do, and whose art was still there to lead us through the fog.

At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Louis Moreau Gottschalk was at the top of his game. Like most cultural celebrities from his hometown of New Orleans then and now, the “American Liszt,” had a flare for the dramatic. Like his Hungarian counterpart, he travelled the world writing innovative fantasias incorporating folk musics (of America, the Caribbean, and Brazil), astonishing audiences with his dexterity, and winning the hearts of young women.

But a year later, like most Americans, the composer found his world turned upside down. A union sympathizer hailing from the South, he was an exile from his homeland, much of which would be turned to rubble. So, he did what any good patriotic-minded artist would do, spending the war travelling from loyal city to city, playing his music to raise the flagging spirits of the American people, and reminding them of what a special thing it was they were guarding.

The centerpiece of these concerts was his newly-composed wartime piano fantasy The Union, composed on a trio of “national airs” (“The Star-Spangled Banner,” “Yankee Doodle,” and “Hail, Columbia”). Listening to it today, we hear the confidence of young America shining through, even in a country that was on the verge of losing everything. Today, I recommend that you imagine yourself sitting in the front row of a Washington, DC concert hall, like President Lincoln and his wife in March 1864, and that you take heart just as they did.

In the piece, you’ll hear all the mastery that made Gottschalk the dean of early American composers. You’ll be jolted by artillery blasts in the opening sequence, hear the most simultaneously aching and hopeful voicing of the national anthem ever written (in F-sharp major, no less!), and then hear Yankee Doodle and Hail Columbia woven together into an irresistibly playful, ultimately victorious quodlibet (a simultaneous exposition of two different well-known tunes).

I hope The Union will help you rejoice today in all that we have built together, and already successfully defended many times over. May it give you the strength to continue doing “the work” over the months to come.

DB