Louis Moreau Gottschalk, John Sullivan Dwight, and the development of musical culture in the United States, 1853--1865

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the relationships between the lives and works of Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-69) and John Sullivan Dwight (1813-93). It demonstrates that the points of intersection were influenced not only by musical concerns – composition, performance, and criticism – but also by larger social and cultural issues that shaped mid-nineteenth-century America, including race, religion, politics, and philosophy. A broader goal of this project is to gain a fuller understanding of the culture of America at mid-century and most specifically of its musical life. This was a crucial time for the formation of the musical styles and tastes that prepared the way for the current conditions of American musical culture. The final purpose of this dissertation is to reveal the far-reaching influence of the connections explored here. Through the combination of social and cultural research, style analysis, and reception history, I demonstrate that the music composed and performed by Louis Moreau Gottschalk and the critical writings of John Sullivan Dwight were shaped by a variety of social forces, including the cult of virtuosity, blackface minstrelsy, exoticism, nationalism, sentimentalism, and New England Transcendentalism. The effects of the careers of Dwight and Gottschalk can still be felt in the ways music is seen, heard, and performed in America. The two men were connected within a web of cultural intersections that thrives in the diversity of American music today.

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