# 3165 - 1997 32c Conductors and Composers: Louis Gottschalk, Composer

US #3165
1997 Louis Moreau Gottschalk – Classical Composers & Conductors
American Music Series

• Pictures composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk
• Part of the Classical Composers & Conductors set
• The 10^th stamp set in the Legends of American Music series

Stamp Category:  Commemorative
Set:  Classical Composers & Conductors
Series:  Legends of American Music
Value:  32¢, First Class Mail Rate
First Day of Issue:  September 12, 1997
First Day City:  Cincinnati, Ohio
Quantity Issued:  86,000,000
Printed by:  Printed for Ashton Potter (USA) Ltd. By Sterling Sommer of Tonawanda, New York
Printing Method:  Offset
Format:  Pane of 20 (Horizontal 4 across, 5 down)
Perforations:  11.1 by 11.0
Tagging:  Phosphored paper

Why the stamp was issued:  To commemorate composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, one of the best of the best in American classical music.

About the stamp design:  The stamp pictures a painting of Gottschalk by artist Burt Silverman (also responsible for the image on the 1997 Raoul Wallenberg stamp).  Art director Howard Paine said he chose Silverman because “He is a mature portrait painter… I didn’t want some glitzy, commercial, airbrush, flashy, tightly rendered kind of art…. Burt’s work is ‘painterly.’  He works in oil, and you can see dabs of color and you see brush strokes and you see the human touch.”

First Day City:  The First Day of Issue Ceremony for the Classical Composers & Conductors stamps was held in Cincinnati, Ohio, at the Classical Music Hall of Fame.  The city is also home to the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, then the fifth oldest symphony orchestra in the United States.  It is also home to the Cincinnati Opera, the country’s second-oldest opera company.

About the Classical Composers & Conductors set:  Issued to commemorate composers Samuel Barber, Ferde Grofe, Charles Ives, and Louis Moreau Gottschalk, as well as conductors Leopold Stokowsky, Arthur Fiedler, George Szell, and Eugene Ormandy.  They were chosen to represent the best of the best in American classical music.

About the Legends of American Music Series:  The Legends of American Music Series debuted on January 8, 1993, and ran until September 21, 1999.  More than 90 artists are represented from all styles of music:  rock ‘n’ roll, rhythm and blues, country and western, jazz and pop, opera and classical, gospel and folk.  In addition to individual singers and Broadway musicals, subjects include band leaders, classical composers, Hollywood songwriters and composers, conductors, lyricists, and more.  The Legends of American Music Series was a huge advancement for diversity because it honored many Black and female artists.

History the stamp represents:  Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1869) was able to substitute for his teacher at the cathedral organ during Mass by age seven.  At 13 he went to study in Paris, and shortly before his 16^th birthday he gave a recital which was attended by Frédéric Chopin, who predicted Gottschalk would become “the king of the pianists.”

In 1849, Gottschalk made his professional debut.  Critics immediately compared him to Chpin, and as a composer he was labeled the first authentic musical spokesman for the New World.  Gottschalk was especially known for his piano compositions which included The Dying Poet, The Last Hope, and Morte!!

Ethnic influences, especially those of French, Latin-American, Spanish, and West Indian music are demonstrated throughout his pieces.  His “Louisiana Trilogy” for piano, titled Bamboula, Le bananier, and La Savane, drew upon the folk music of New Orleans, the city of his birth.  While his orchestral piece, A Night in the Tropics, utilizes Latin dance rhythms, Souvenir de Porto Rico is based on a Puerto Rican peasant song.

Several of his compositions have distinctly American themes, such as The Banjo, which is a piano portrait of a minstrel show, and The Union honors the northern soldiers of the Civil War.