Bergé, Louis, 1840-1914

Charles Louis Bergé was born in Hesse-Darmstadt in 1840. By the time of the 1860 U.S. Census, he had immigrated to the United States, living and working in New York City as a music teacher. In 1862, he published his Promenade March with the Oliver Ditson Company, and was soon composing and publishing under his own name, also becoming a piano dealer. Bergé composed religious music prolifically, setting traditional Catholic hymns with Latin texts and publishing Catholic hymnals. He dedicated several other works to clergy of other denominations in and around New York City, as well as to the tenor Patrick Gleeson of Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago. Bergé died in New York City on March 31, 1914.