This week on “Sweetness and Light,” on this Independence Day, we’ll have music inspired by two seminal American composers – Stephen Foster and Louis Moreau Gottschalk.

Rejected out of hand by the Paris Conservatory, Gottschalk nevertheless gained the esteem of Chopin and Liszt. The barnstorming pianist spent much of his abbreviated life hopscotching around Latin America, after a scandalous affair forced him to flee the United States. Nevertheless, he always identified himself with New Orleans, the city of his birth.

Gottschalk died in Rio de Janeiro in 1869, under characteristically dramatic circumstances, after collapsing during a recital, having only just completed a performance of his piano work, “Morte!” or “Death!” He was 40 years old.

A number of his works were arranged by Philadelphia composer Hershy Kay for the New York City Ballet in 1951, as “Cakewalk.” We’ll hear a classic recording, with the Boston Pops conducted by Arthur Fiedler.

As an encore, we’ll hear Eugene List play Gottschalk’s “The Banjo,” in which the composer emulates banjo techniques and pays homage to Stephen Foster’s “Camptown Races.”

Foster was born in Pittsburgh on this date 200 years ago, July 4, 1826. The composer of more than 200 songs of which a great many of them are still very well-known today.

“Camptown Races” also inspired pianist Earl Wild to undertake his “Doo-Dah Variations.” The work received its world premiere in 1992, with the forces we’ll hear this morning, Joseph Giunta conducting the Des Moines Symphony Orchestra, and the composer, Earl Wild, the soloist.

Alas, Foster too suffered an untimely death, after gashing himself in a fall against a porcelain wash basin. He was only 36 years old.

Combined, Foster and Gottschalk had an incalculable influence on our nation’s cultural development that extended well beyond the field of “art music,” at a time when American composers couldn’t simply attend the local conservatory – because there weren’t any!

Join me this morning as we remember them (how could we forget?) on “Sweetness and Light,” exclusively on KWAX Classical Oregon!

Stream it, wherever you are, at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/