THE MADRILENE AND VALLISOLITAN COMPOSITION OF L. M. GOTTSCHALK

Abstract

From a North American perspective, the life of Louis Moreau Gottschalk in Spain in 1851 and 1852 becomes an adventure in its own right irrespective of his composing. From the Spanish perspective, on the other hand, Gottschalk's music works might command a still higher place in musical annals than his activities. As a supreme eclectic, Gottschalk interrelated Spanish folkloric idioms; as a supreme improvisor, he turned his imagination into performed reality, and as a composer he utilized his times away from the concert stage for converting the novel products of his fertile imagination into genuine compositions. Indeed, it is from an international perspective, one of pure genius, that we review Gottschalk's composition in the culturally active capitals of the New and Old Castiles of the mid-nineteenth century: Madrid and Valladolid. What fresh ideas were materializing in Gottschalk's agile mind there that he was transmit ting to his equally agile fingers? One such conception, published in a limited edition, Gottschalk's conflation of jota, fandango, and jaleo de Jerez into one grandiose Capricho espa?ol, preempted the composer's separate finalized editions of La jota aragonesa and Souvenirs d'Andalousie. A haunting original melody with broken-chord guitar-like accompaniment graces this technically demanding Spanish caprice. The finesse with which this lyrical passage returns to the fandango, not to mention the smooth flow