Perhaps, perhaps not. Liszt himself described Gottschalk as the Alcibiades of the Piano and Gottschalk was also called - routinely - the American Chopin. The performing Gottschalk was known as a "concert pianist" - not as anything less; I think rather than describing him as a pop musician of his day, he was probably a little more accurately the 19th-century equivalent of a crossover musician. His music, while structurally for the most part quite simple, certainly is as demanding as Schumann; the fact that he was swarmed and swooned over is really not his own fault. I think he was integral in popularizing an aspect of what truly must be thought of as 'classical' music; is he today thought of as a pop composer or a 'classical' one? While his music lacks the depth of - oh, say, any number of DWM composers, I feel the only real claim to his being described as a popular musician was simply in the fact that he popularIZED piano concerts.
Jenny Lind - oh, come on! Royal Swedish Opera for years, Agathe in Freischutz, Alice in Robert le Diable, so many other roles; association with Mendelssohn, her great love of Bach and performance of so many of his oratorios - the fact that PT Barnum wildly promoted her in her 93 (count 'em) American concerts doesn't mean she was a popular performer in our current sense of that adjective; she was popularizing classical music on her American tour! Her rep on those concerts was eclectic (with German conductor/composer Julius Benedict and Italian baritone Giovanni Belletti as demanded by Lind), but contained (besides American popular songs,) opera arias and other 'classical' rep as selected by Lind - who was proud of her standing as a serious artist. Does the fact that popular-entertainment maven Barnum produced her concerts make them pop concerts? Nope. Again: she was popularizing eclectic repertoire - with emphasis on her serious 'classical' training. A crossover artist, perhaps, but a popular entertainer - in the way we use that term today? No. A classically-trained, classical artist performing an eclectic rep to throngs - and introducing many 19th century Americans to classical music in the process. Best, Les Les Marsden Founding Music Director and Conductor, The Mariposa Symphony Orchestra Music and Mariposa? Ahhhhh, Paradise!!! http://arts-mariposa.org/symphony.html http://www.geocities.com/~jbenz/lesbio.html ----- Original Message ----- From: David W. Fenton To: finale@shsu.edu Sent: Saturday, May 26, 2007 10:49 AM Subject: Re: [Finale] OT: John Cage's first national TV appearance (1960) On 26 May 2007 at 10:33, Mariposa Symphony Orchestra wrote: > In the mid-to-late 1800s American symphony > orchestras and opera companies were sprouting everywhere; every last > small town had its Opera House which was routinely sold out when a > Jenny Lind or Louis Moreau Gottschalk came through. Both of these would correspond to today's POPULAR music. At the time they were not thought of as "art" music at all. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
