Dedicated to the famous pianist Alexandre Goria,[1] it was written in France around 1846 as one of the four "Louisiana Creole pieces" that Gottschalk composed between 1844 and 1846.
And since unlicensed copies abounded in Leipzig, London, Berlin, Brussels and Milan,[4] this amount was just a partial estimative of the impact that it aroused on the musical scene of the time.
[n 1] 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.
[5] Carl Czerny made a four-hand arrangement of the piece, and Georges Bizet kept it in his repertoire for years, as well as the great pianists Józef Wieniawski and Alfred Jaëll.
[1][5] Moreover, the piece was actually played on the cello by Jacques Offenbach,[2][5] while the French violinist Léon Reynier rescore it for his instrument,[1] and even a hand-written copy of the piece was found in Alexander Borodin's personal belongings by the Soviet mathematician and musicologist Serge Dianin,[6] which some scholars insist was used as a model for his Polovtsian Dances in his opera Prince Igor.