What the hell is a cakewalk? Is it the long, hungry walk you have to take in order to get to the cake store, or is it the long walk you have to take after eating cake to burn off the calories?

Louis Gottschalk is another one of those American composers that you rarely hear about, because, like the Boston Six, he was before Ives and Jazz. However, unlike the Boston Six, I’m willing to agree that Gottschalk isn’t exactly a true blue ‘Murican. He was born in New Orleans, but when he was 13, he traveled to Europe to receive musical training. When he returned to the US, he mostly traveled abroad, and ultimately got himself kicked out of the country because of a little hanky-panky.

Enough about him – his music is remarkable. 100 years before Copland and Bernstein made the Latin American sound popular in the concert hall, Gottschalk was living and inventing the style.

And, for the record, a cakewalk is a dance that originated with the southern American slaves.

Maurice Ravel wrote “La Valse” as a commission by the famous ballet choreographer, Sergei Diaghilev (who also commissioned the Rite of Spring, and many other famous early 20th century pieces.) Diaghilev rejected the music, saying “It’s a masterpiece, but it’s not a ballet. It’s the portrait of a ballet.”

Indeed it is a masterpiece. There’s plenty of clichéd waltz material here, but it’s presented as a parody. It doesn’t play like the countless standard 18th century European waltzes. It’s more like a drunken dream about going to a posh party and getting swept up in the music and dancing. Imagine approaching a large European manor home. You can hear the distant music inside, you see the fancy dresses and carefree partygoers. You enter the home and are overwhelmed by the music and the rhythm. You dance and dance, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, sometimes with your lover, sometimes by yourself. Eventually the champagne kicks in, and everybody starts getting wild and out of control. The music, and the party, end abruptly and you are thrown out the front door. 9/10 would waltz again.

A piece of music, written about a piece of music? That’s sooooo meta …

Against all odds – right as the onset of the Cold War, a Soviet composer’s piece became a #1 hit with American Art Music audiences. Aram Khachaturian (who would today be considered Georgian, not Soviet) wrote a ballet called Gayane, whose plot was common for pretty much any Soviet art of the time: Gayane, a good, patriotic, and hard-working Soviet, finds out her lazy drunk of a husband has turned against the state! She tries to correct his behavior, but like anyone who hates the state, he is pure evil. Naturally, her attempt to correct his anti-Soviet thinking forces him to stab her. The husband is jailed, Gayane survives, and ends up falling in love with a good Soviet boy. The two marry and become model, productive citizens, the highest good one can achieve.

Awwwww … so sweet …

At some point in this amazing love story, people come out and dance with sabres. This dance became wildly popular, and ended up being used in many popular songs as well as figure skating routines.