Louis Moreau Gottschalk was an American composer and pianist who failed to apply to the Paris Conservatoire for reason no other than his country being a country of steam engines. That was Pierre Zimmermann who said that (and rejected Gottschalk’s candidature thereafter); however, browsing YouTube once I stumbled on a steam-powered synthesizer – the incident that proves thinking steam and music don’t have anything in common is not relevant anymore. Be that as it may, American composers shouldn’t be flung aside: even though the most significant contribution they made was to contemporary, rather post-war, music (minimalism being the prime example), likes of Gottschalk prove that Romantic music was more than a match for them as well. See for yourself – here is sheet music for his Souvenir de Porto Rico and the video is below:
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