Louis Moreau Gottschalk

People Buried Here

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LOUIS: Born...New Orleans. Died...Brazil.

Louis Moreau Gottschalk was an American composer and pianist, best known as a virtuoso performer of his own romantic piano works. He spent most of his working career outside of the United States. Education: Conservatoire de Paris. Compositions: The Banjo, Grande Tarantelle.

Gottschalk chose to travel to South America, where he continued to give frequent concerts. During one of these concerts, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on November 24, 1869, he collapsed from having contracted malaria.[3] Just before his collapse, he had finished playing his romantic piece Morte! (interpreted as "she is dead"), although the actual collapse occurred just as he started to play his celebrated piece Tremolo. Gottschalk never recovered from the collapse. Three weeks later, on December 18, 1869, at the age of 40, he died at his hotel in Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro, probably from an overdose of quinine. He died...of empyema, the result of a ruptured abscess in the abdomen.His burial spot was originally marked by a magnificent marble monument, topped by an "Angel of Music" statue, which was irreparably damaged by vandals in 1959. In October 2012, after nearly fifteen years of fund raising by the Green-Wood Cemetery, a new "Angel of Music" statue created by sculptors Giancarlo Biagi and Jill Burkee to replace the damaged one, was unveiled. His grand-nephew Louis Ferdinand Gottschalk was a notable composer of silent film and musical theatre scores. Info from Wikipedia...

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