Italian Opera in Paris in which he was associated with the celebrated
Hector Berlioz.

He made a genuine furor as pianist, and Berlioz, in charmingly turned
phrases, speaks of him as follows:

"Gottschalk is one of the very small number who possess all the
different elements of a consummate pianist--all the faculties which
surround him with an irresistible prestige and give him a sovereign
power. He is an accomplished musician--he knows just how far fancy may
be indulged in expression. He knows the limits beyond which any
liberties taken with the rhythm produce only confusion and discord, and
upon these limits he never encroaches. There is an exquisite grace in
his manner of phrasing sweet melodies and throwing off light touches
from the higher keys. The boldness and brilliancy and originality of
his play at once dazzle and astonish, and the infantile naivete of his
smiling caprices, the charming simplicity with which he renders simple
things, seem to belong to another individuality distinct from that
which marks his thundering energy. Thus the success of M. Gottschalk
before an audience of musical cultivation is immense."

His first American tour was made in 1853-54. Then ensued a time of
travel in the West Indies, but in 1862 he was back in New York again,
and his American tours lasted until 1869, when he went to South
America, where he died at the comparatively early age of forty.

There is a disposition at the present time to undervalue the work of
Gottschalk. He was a melodist pure and simple, and his distinction
from an American standpoint consists in his having given a new note to
his music by availing himself of the rhythms and characteristic
cadences of negro, creole, and Spanish nationalities in the southern
United States and Central America. At the present time of the
pianistic day, when very little attracts attention unless it is very
difficult, it seems incredible that works so simple in their nature as
those of Gottschalk could have attracted the attention they did; but
there is more in this simplicity than at first sight appears, even if
we admit that from a critical standpoint the introductions and endings
are entirely too long for the matter they contain. Gottschalk himself
had a way of doing them which made them seem extremely significant, and
when he came to the melody itself it was played with such a delicacy
and such a masterly touch that it seized the attention and concentrated
the int