Gottschalk’s Night in the Tropics

1861-01-01 · 1861

Around 1860 and 1861, Louis Moreau Gottschalk premiered his symphony A Night in the Tropics (Una noche en el trópico) at Havana’s Teatro Tacón as one of his “monster concerts” — a huge show meant to pack the house. About 650 musicians played: a full orchestra, extra brass bands, and local Afro-Cuban percussionists. The wall of forty pianos was a different Havana stunt, for a hunting-scene piece (La chasse du jeune Henri), not a stand-in because he lacked an orchestra. “Gottschalk, therefore, became the first musician to use a symphonic score with Afro-Cuban percussion—a feat only to be repeated in 1925, with Amadeo Roldan’s Obertura sobre temas cubanos.” — Alejo Carpentier, Cuban novelist and music historian, Music in Cuba, trans. Alan West-Durán, ed. Timothy Brennan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), p. 199.

Genres: Música clásica