Gottschalk was one of America's firstimportant composers. His numerous worksfor piano are mostly light. His Marche desGibaros from the Souvenir de Porto Ricotranscribed by Karl Hinterbichler is lively andbright. American born Louis MoreauGottschalk (1829-1869) was one of thegreat pianist/composers of his day. Hebegan his career in Europe but spent mostof his life touring from coast to coast in theUS, as well as South America, and theCaribbean.

He composed more than 100 works whichcombine the typical European Romanticvirtuoso style with musical traditions fromSouth America, the Caribbean, Spain andsacred and popular songs from the UnitedStates.

Originally for solo piano, Souvenir de PortoRico (op. 31), bears the subtitle Marche desGibaros, a reference to the peasants of theisland. The simple melody derives from aPuerto Rican song 'Si me dan pasteles, lesd�nmelos calientes,' 'If you give me cakes,give them to me hot,' sung by strollingmusicians during the Puerto RicanChristmas season. This simple melody isthen subjected to a series of variations. Themusic depicts the sound of strollingmusicians, first heard in the distance,coming ever closer, rising to a climax andthen fading as the Gibaros march away intothe distance. The syncopated rhythmsstrongly suggest its Caribbean origins.

Instrumentation is for 2 Trumpets in Bb(Trumpet 1 doubles on Piccolo), Horn,Trombone and Tuba.

Gounod wrote this in 1872 as a piano piece and orchestrated it seven years later. He originally conceived of it as one part of a satirical piano suite, the subject of which had nothing to do with puppetry. Once it was completed, however, he had it published as a stand-alone composition with the present title. The occasion of the music is that the Marionette has lost a duel and died; a funeral cortege takes place; the bereaved troupe takes a break then returns to the cortege. Recorded numerous times, the music was also used in several early films but reached its largest audience by far as the theme song for the TV series, ?Alfred Hitchcock Presents," 1955-1965. The current arrangement is based on the composer?s original piano score but has been augmented slightly to take advantage of brass quintet instrumentation. This arrangement was completed in 2016, and performance time runs about 5 minutes, 8 seconds. The arranger, Les Smith, will be happy to provide substitute parts (for example, treble clef baritone for trombone) at no charge; contact him directly at lessmith61@bellsouth.net. For more arrangements by Les, enter "Sweetwater Brass Press" (without the quotation marks) in the SheetMusicPlus search box.