Souvenir de Porto Rico di Louis Moreau Gottschalk: un originale contributo alla musica nazionale americana

Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s music, and especially Souvenir de Porto Rico (1857), displays many traits of the forthcoming ragtime musical style. Rhythmic patterns and variations thereof, use of chromaticism in both melody and harmony and even — partly — form testify to the musical evolution of mid-19th-century New Orleans music, with its Afro-Caribbean influences, towards ragtime and then towards what was to be known as jazz. This article discusses Souvenir de Porto Rico both in its language and in its compositional features, through a general-to-granular investigation based on the sundry parameters characterizing it: form, melody, polyrhythms, dynamics, march as a musical ritual, and finally the improvisational character of the piece, which is not exactly a parameter but rather a typically American form of musical thought.