ABSTRACT
The name “New Orleans” conjures up Dixieland jazz in the minds of most people around the world. This is the music that has earned the Louisiana city its eternal place in the history of twentieth-century music. Few realize, however, that there are many other kinds of music produced by outstanding musicians in and from New Orleans in the nearly three centuries since its founding, and that this city has been one of the most fertile milieux for “classical music” in America. 1 Histories of American music note that New Orleans had the most important opera in America in the nineteenth century, and the most renowned classical musician from nineteenth-century America—Louis Moreau Gottschalk—was profoundly influenced by the music of his native city, New Orleans.
