NOTES OF A PIANIST

First published by J. B. Lippincott in 1881 some twelve years after his death, Gottschalk's journal is now re-issued with editing, a prelude and postlude by Jeanne Behrend. The work provides not only a telling view of the composer-pianist from New Orleans who made his spectacular debut in the Paris of 1849 at twenty; it also offers a vista on the world, in particular his native United States which he toured so assiduously during the years 1862-65 (""This week I have given ten concerts in six days in ten different towns""). Gottschalk's pride, dedication, urbanity, loneliness are always evident as he writes of his performances, the people who came to hear him, the hotels endured; as he defends his role as a composer who plays his own works. He was witness to the Civil War, was for the Union cause; again in South America he performed amid civil strife, duly noted. The journal itself commences with his West Indies sojourn from 1857, and ends with his travels in South America to 1868, some seven and a half months before his death in Rio de Janeiro. It comprises a genuine personal document of a distinguished 19th Century American figure, and an authentic look at the Western hemisphere of that era.