We have been telling you about the composers in the northern part of the United States, and those who had come from Germany like the Damrosch family, but here is one composer and gifted pianist who brought a new color into American music. Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–1869), born in New Orleans, was the child of an English father and Creole mother, thus mixing Spanish, French and English blood. He was an infant prodigy; he played the piano at four, the organ at six, and at thirteen he went to Paris to study. He was praised by Chopin, and appeared in concerts with Hector Berlioz. He charmed everyone who heard him, and was the first American pianist to receive European honors. The Infanta of Spain made a cake for him and a celebrated bull-fighter gave him a sword! He toured Cuba and North and South America, giving more than a thousand concerts. But the life was too hard on him and he died at the age of forty in Rio Janeiro, Brazil. _The Last Hope_, _Ojos Creollos_ (_Creole Eyes_), _Banjo_, _Souvenirs of Andalusia_ are among the most popular of his ninety compositions for piano, which showed the strong influence of life in Louisiana, his love of sunshiny Spain, and his study in France. Here we find rhythms closely related to ragtime and jazz, as well as the slow fascinating Spanish dance. Today his works are forgotten, but for many years they were played throughout the land. STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER Stephen Collins Foster (1826–1864), for whom we have claimed the right to be called a composer of folk songs, was born in Lawrenceville (Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania, on the fiftieth anniversary of our Declaration of Independence. The understanding he showed of the Negro came to him because his parents were Southerners. He showed talent for music when he was very young, and taught himself to play the flageolet when he was seven years old. He was very self-willed and did not like discipline, so he taught himself practically all he knew of music. His first composition, _Tioga Waltz_ for four flutes, was written when he was a school boy. It was first played in school, with Stephen in the lead. His first song, _Open thy Lattice, Love_, was published in 1842. For several years, five boys met at the Foster home, and Stephen taught them to sing part songs. He composed many pieces for them, among them _Oh, Susannah_, _Old Uncle Ned_ and _Old Black Joe_. About 1830, an actor, Thomas Rice, had the idea of dressing up like an old negro porter in Pittsburgh, from whom he borrowed the clothes, and singing a song he had heard from a negro stage driver: Turn about and wheel about, and do jist so, And ebery time I turn about, I jump Jim Crow.