''Le Bananier'' (The Banana Tree) in C minor, Op. 5, is a composition for piano by American composer

Louis Moreau Gottschalk Louis Moreau Gottschalk (May 8, 1829 – December 18, 1869) 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 the United States. Life and car ...

. Dedicated to the famous pianist

Alexandre Goria Alexandre Édouard Goria (21 January 1823 – 6 July 1860) was a French virtuoso pianist and composer recognised among amateurs enthusiasts for his numerous salon pieces of different styles, which enjoyed great success at their time. The number ...

, it was written in France around 1846 as one of the four "Louisiana Creole pieces" that Gottschalk composed between 1844 and 1846. Based on the Creole folk melody ''En avan' Grenadie'' (contraction of ''Grenadiers''), it was alternatively published with the subtitle ''Chanson nègre,'' and was widely popular in Paris at the time of its release.

Musical analysis

The composition is an irregular sentence of 128 bars in two strain lines. The first of the two, which make up the piece, has a mussete accompaniment, being the melody in the second strain supported by two other contrapunctual voices. Harmonically, this bass evokes the "musette" attached to many an eighteenth-century gavotte.

Market impact

According to expert Robert Offergeld, after more than 2.000 copies sold in Paris alone, the publishing company, which held the rights to the piece, earned 250,000 Francs in sales before deciding to sell it to another for more 25,000 francs in profits. And since unlicensed copies abounded in Leipzig, London, Berlin, Brussels and Milan, this amount was just a partial estimative of the impact that it aroused on the musical scene of the time."'Benacci', a publisher of Lyon who came to Paris expressly to induce me to sell him a manuscript... offered 10,000 francs for the copyright of the ''Bamboula'' and ''Bananier,'' notwithstanding more than 2,000 copies of the latter had been sold here: my publishers, the 'Escudiers', answered: ''If you were to offer us 60,000, we should refuse it.''" (Gottschalk, in a letter to his father dated May 1850) Source: The last allotment received by Gottschalk from the publisher 'Escudiers' for ''Le Bananier'' was so large that he came to think about pushing all his pupils, with the exception of the best ones, over to other teachers at the conservatoire on his return to Paris from Switzerland. The demand for the bulk of his music by the Swiss retailers was surprisingly large enough that his publishing company in Paris could not supply it.

Emile Prudent Emil or Emile may refer to: Literature *''Emile, or On Education'' (1762), a treatise on education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau * ''Émile'' (novel) (1827), an autobiographical novel based on Émile de Girardin's early life *''Emil and the Detective ...

introduced it to Central Europe. Carl Czerny made a four-hand arrangement of the piece, and

Georges Bizet Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic music, Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, ''Carmen'', whi ...

kept it in his repertoire for years, as well as the great pianists Józef Wieniawski and

Alfred Jaëll Alfred Jaëll (5 March 183227 February 1882) was an Austrian pianist. His students included Benjamin Johnson Lang and Samuel Sanford (the eponym of the Sanford Medal). Life He was born in Trieste, then in the Austrian Empire. He studied under Car ...

. Moreover, the piece was actually played on the cello by Jacques Offenbach, while the French violinist

Léon Reynier Léon Reynier (11 August 1833 – 5 May 1895) was a well known and greatly appreciated French virtuoso violinist. Life Reynier was born in Saint-Cloud. He is said to have been presented by Napoleon III with a richly varnished 1681 orange-reddish ...

rescore it for his instrument, and even a hand-written copy of the piece was found in

Alexander Borodin Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin ( rus, link=no, Александр Порфирьевич Бородин, Aleksandr Porfir’yevich Borodin , p=ɐlʲɪkˈsandr pɐrˈfʲi rʲjɪvʲɪtɕ bərɐˈdʲin, a=RU-Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin.ogg, ...

's personal belongings by the Soviet mathematician and musicologist Serge Dianin, which some scholars insist was used as a model for his Polovtsian Dances in his opera '' Prince Igor.''

Notes

References

External links

*
Le Bananier, Op. 5 - Louis Moreau Gottschalk
on YouTube {{DEFAULTSORT:Bananier, Le Compositions for solo piano 1846 compositions Compositions by Louis Moreau Gottschalk Piano compositions by American composers Piano compositions in the Romantic era Compositions in C minor