Le Mancenillier (Gottschalk)

Le Mancenillier, Op. 11, is a Creole-based composition for piano written by American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk in Switzerland in the fall of 1848.[1] Dedicated to "Madame Mennechet de Barival", it was published in Paris with the subtitle Sérénade by his publisher 'Escudiers' in April 1851.[2] It is the fourth and last piece dubbed by musicologist Gilbert Chase the Louisiana Trilogy,[3] written between 1844 and 1846 when Gottschalk had not yet come of age.

Musical analysis

Based on a Saint-Domingue's eight-bar folk tune titled Chanson de Lizette, the Creole melody Ou som souroucou and either Louisiana's Ma mourri or Martinique's Tant sirop est doux, its title refers to the manchineel, a tree from the tropics which grows poisonous small apple-like fruits. It can't be burned for the smoke might cause blindness and one standing beneath its branches during a rainfall might have the skin blistered by its sap.[2] It's a composition certainly based on a poem of the same name by Charles Hubert Millevoye.[2]

Although Gottschalk called the piece a "serenade", it was written as a ballad in the ABA form.[4] With 238 bars and a 92 bpm Andante tempo marked as malinconico, it has a 2
2 time signature. The introductory melody is established under a staccato accompaniment on the left hand with the middle section marked by the contrasts of the staccato rhythm of left hand over the melodic phrases of the right, followed by a series of modulations. The third motif in B-flat comes with a fortissimo shift of the melody, followed by a long coda with light variations in triplets in the final bars.[2]

References

  1. ^ Pruett, Laura (2007). Louis Moreau Gottschalk, John Sullivan Dwight, And The Development Of Musical Culture In The United States, 1864-1865 (PDF). Florida State University. p. 110. ISBN 978-054-946-734-2.
  2. ^ a b c d Starr, S. Frederick (2000). Louis Moreau Gottschalk: Music in American Life. University of Illinois Press. pp. 75–76. ISBN 025-206-876-9.
  3. ^ Taruskin, Richard (2009). Music in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford University Press. pp. nn. ISBN 978-019-538-483-3.
  4. ^ Loggins, Vernon (1958). Where the Word Ends: The Life of Louis Moreau Gottschalk. LSU Press. p. 97. ISBN 080-710-373-X. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
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