George Gershwin
George Gershwin was born in Brooklyn, New York on September 26, 1898. Though he received serious musical training in piano from Charles Hambitzer, and in harmony and theory from Edward Kilenyi, he early set his sights on popular rather than serious music. When he was fifteen he found a job as song plugger and staff pianist in Tin Pan Alley where he soon began writing songs. The first to get published was “When You Want ’Em You Can’t Get ’Em” in 1916; in the same year another of his songs, “The Making of a Girl” appeared for the first time on the Broadway stage, in The Passing Show of 1916. Gershwin’s first complete score for Broadway was La, La, Lucille, and his first smash song hit was “Swanee,” both in 1919. Between 1920 and 1924 Gershwin wrote the music for five editions of the George White Scandals where he first demonstrated his exceptional creative gifts; his most famous songs for the Scandals were “I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise” and “Somebody Loves Me.” For one of the editions of the Scandals he also wrote a one-act Negro opera to a libretto by Buddy De Sylva—originally called Blue Monday but later retitled 135th Street.
Late in 1923, Paul Whiteman, the orchestra leader, commissioned Gershwin to write a symphonic work in a jazz style for a concert Whiteman was planning for Aeolian Hall, in New York. That jazz composition—introduced on February 12, 1924—was the Rhapsody in Blue with which Gershwin achieved world renown, and which once and for all established the jazz idiom and jazz techniques as significant material for serious musical deployment. From then on, until the end of his life, Gershwin continued to write concert music in a popular style—growing all the time in technical assurance, in the command of jazz materials, and in the inventiveness of his melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic writing. In the eyes of the world he assumed a position of first significance among American composers. For the symphony orchestra he wrote the Piano Concerto in F, An American in Paris, Cuban Overture, Variations on I Got Rhythm, and the Second Rhapsody; for solo piano, the three piano preludes; for the stage his monumental folk opera, Porgy and Bess.
While devoting himself to the concert field, Gershwin did not neglect the popular Broadway theater. He produced a library of remarkable songs for such productions as Lady Be Good (1924), Oh Kay! (1926), Funny Face (1927), and Girl Crazy (1930). The best of these included “Fascinating Rhythm,” “Lady Be Good,” “Someone to Watch Over Me,” “Clap Yo’ Hands,” “’S Wonderful,” “I Got Rhythm,” “Embraceable You,” and “But Not for Me.” The lyrics for these and other Gershwin song classics were written by his brother, Ira.
In 1930 Gershwin revealed a fresh bent for mockery and satire, together with a new skill for more spacious musical writing than that required for a song, in Strike Up the Band, a satire on war. These qualities in Gershwin’s music came to full ripeness in 1931 with the political satire Of Thee I Sing!, the first musical ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama.
In 1931, Gershwin wrote his first original score for motion pictures, Delicious. When he returned to Hollywood in 1936 he settled there permanently and wrote the music for several delightful screen musicals, among these being Damsel in Distress, Shall We Dance, and The Goldwyn Follies. The songs he wrote for the last-named revue (they included “Love Walked In” and “Love Is Here to Stay”) were the last pieces of music he was destined to write. He died in Hollywood, California on July 11, 1937, a victim of a cystic tumor on the right temporal lobe of the brain. His screen biography, Rhapsody in Blue, was produced in 1945. In 1951, the screen musical, An American in Paris (whose score included several of Gershwin’s songs as well as the tone poem that gave this picture its title) received the Academy Award as the best picture of the year. Porgy and Bess was adapted for motion pictures, in a Samuel Goldwyn production, in 1959.
It would be difficult to overestimate Gershwin’s importance in American music. To the popular song he brought the technical skill of a consummate musician, endowing it with a rhythmic, melodic and harmonic language it had rarely before known. By that process he often lifted it to the status of true art. To serious music he contributed the vitality and the spirit—as well as the techniques and idioms—of American popular music; serious musicians throughout the world were inspired by his example to create a serious musical art out of the materials of American popular music. Since his untimely death, his artistic stature has grown in all parts of the civilized world. There will be few today to deny him a place of honor among America’s foremost composers.
An American in Paris is a tone poem for symphony orchestra inspired by a European vacation in 1928. It received its world première in New York on December 13, 1928, Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. In this music the composer describes the nostalgia of an American tourist for home, and his experiences as he strolls along the boulevards of Paris. It opens with a “walking theme,” a sprightly little tune for strings and oboe; our American is beginning his stroll. As he walks he hears the piercing warnings of taxi horns: Gershwin’s score calls for the use of actual Parisian taxi horns. The American passes a café, and stops for a moment to listen to the sounds of a music-hall melody, presented by the trombones. Then he resumes his stroll, as a second walking subject is heard in the clarinet. A solo violin (which Deems Taylor interpreted as a young lady accosting our tourist!) provides a transition to two main melodies in both of which the American’s growing feeling of homesickness finds apt expression. The first is a blues melody for muted trumpets; the second a Charleston melody for two trumpets. The blues melody receives climactic treatment in full orchestra. After a hasty recollection of the second walking theme, the composition comes to a vigorous conclusion. As Mr. Taylor goes on to explain, the tourist now decides “to make a night of it. It will be great to get home, but meanwhile, this is Paris!”
The Concerto in F, for piano and orchestra, was the immediate consequence of Gershwin’s phenomenal success with the Rhapsody in Blue. The Concerto was commissioned in 1925 by the New York Symphony Society and its conductor, Walter Damrosch. They introduced it in Carnegie Hall, on December 3, 1925, with the composer as soloist. This work, like its eminent predecessor, is in a jazz style; but unlike the first version of the Rhapsody in Blue it boasts Gershwin’s own orchestration. (From this time on Gershwin would always prepare his own orchestrations for his serious concert music.) There are three movements. The first (Allegro) begins with a Charleston theme shared by the woodwind and timpani. The main body of this movement is given over to a spicy jazz tune first heard in the bassoon and after that in full orchestra; to a tender melody for solo piano; and to a lilting waltz for strings with decorative treatment by the piano. The second movement (Andante con moto) is lyrical throughout, and at times subtly atmospheric and poetic. Muted trumpet, against harmonies provided by three clarinets, set the romantic stage for the felicitous lyrical thoughts that ensue: a brisk, jazzy, strikingly rhythmic idea for the piano; and a broad, sensual melody for strings. This movement ends in the same sensitive atmospheric mood with which it began. In the finale (Allegro con brio) dynamic forces are released. Main themes from the first two movements are recalled with a particularly effective recapitulation of the second theme of the first movement in the strings.
The Cuban Overture was written in 1932 after a brief visit to Havana and was introduced at the Lewisohn Stadium in New York, Albert Coates conducting, on August 16, 1932. This is a concert overture for orchestra utilizing native percussion Cuban instruments. The work has three sections played without interruption. The first consists of two melodies, a Cuban theme in strings followed by a second lyrical subject which is placed against the contrapuntal background of fragments from the first Cuban theme. A solo clarinet cadenza leads to the middle section which is a two-voice canon. The ensuing finale makes considerable use of earlier thematic material and ends with an electrifying presentation of a fully projected rumba melody in which prominent use is made of Cuban percussion instruments (cuban stick, bongo, gourd, and maracas).
The folk opera, Porgy and Bess, was Gershwin’s last work in the field of serious music—and his greatest. It took Gershwin over two years to write his opera, a period during which he spent some time in the opera’s setting of Charleston, South Carolina, absorbing not only local color but also native Negro music whose style he skilfully assimilated into his own writing. He completed his opera in the summer of 1935; on September 30 its world première took place in Boston; and on October 10, it began its New York run. It cannot be said that either critics or audiences were fully aware at the time that they were hearing a masterwork. Some of the Boston and New York scribes found things to admire in the opera, but most of them were highly critical. Olin Downes said “it does not utilize all the resources of the operatic composer or pierce very often to the depths of the pathetic drama.” Lawrence Gilman found Gershwin’s emphasis on the popular element a disturbing blemish while Virgil Thomson did not hesitate at the time to refer to it as “a fake.” The run of 124 performances in New York (followed by a three-month tour) represented a box-office failure.
Gershwin himself remained convinced he had written a work of first importance, but regrettably he did not live to see his faith in his opera justified beyond his wildest hopes or aspirations. Revived in New York in 1941 it had an eight-month run, the longest of any revival in Broadway history. More important still, many critics revised earlier estimates. Virgil Thomson now spoke of it as “a beautiful piece of music and a deeply moving play for the lyric theater.” Olin Downes said that Gershwin had here “taken a substantial step, and advanced the cause of native opera.” The New York Music Critics Circle singled it out as the most important musical revival of that season.
But still greater triumphs awaited the opera. In 1952, a Negro cast toured Europe under the auspices of the State Department. Before that tour was over, several years later, the opera had been heard throughout Europe, the Near East, in countries behind the Iron Curtain, the Soviet Union and Latin America. Everywhere it enjoyed acclaim realized by few contemporary operas anywhere. There were not many dissenting voices in the universal judgment that Porgy and Bess was one of the most significant operas of the twentieth century, and certainly one of the most popular. And its popularity was further enhanced by the stunning production given it by Samuel Goldwyn in motion pictures in 1959.
The text of the opera was based on the play Porgy, by Dorothy and Du Bose Heyward, produced by the Theater Guild in New York in 1927, which in turn had been adapted from Du Bose Heyward’s novel of the same name. The opera text and lyrics were written by Du Bose and Dorothy Heyward with several additional lyrics by Ira Gershwin. The tragic love affair of the cripple, Porgy, and Bess, a lady of easy virtue, is set in the Negro tenement, Catfish Row, in Charleston, South Carolina. Porgy has found true happiness with Bess for the first time in his life. When Crown, Bess’ old sweetheart returns to claim her, Porgy kills him but manages to elude the law after having been detained a while. Upon returning to Catfish Row he discovers that his Bess had succumbed to the lure of dope, and the gay life in New York offered her by Sportin’ Life. Heartbroken, Porgy jumps in his goat cart to follow Bess to New York and try to bring her back.
The main melodic sections of the opera have provided the material for several delightful suites. The most famous is A Symphonic Picture by Robert Russell Bennett, commissioned by Fritz Reiner, the conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony in 1942. Bennett created out of the score an integrated tone poem faithful to Gershwin’s own harmonic and orchestral intentions. The tone poem (or suite) is made up of the following sequences in the order of their appearance: Scene of Catfish Row with the peddler’s calls; Opening Act II; “Summertime” and Opening of Act I; “I Got Plenty of Nuttin’”; Storm Music; “Bess, You Is My Woman Now”; “It Ain’t Necessarily So” and the finale, “Oh Lawd I’m On My Way.”
George Gershwin himself prepared an orchestral suite from his opera score in 1936, and conducted it in performances with several major American orchestras in 1936-1937. This manuscript, long forgotten, was found in the library of Ira Gershwin, and was revived in 1959 by Maurice Abravanel and the Utah Symphony. Now named Catfish Row, to distinguish it from other suites prepared by other musicians, it had five sections: “Catfish Row,” “Porgy Sings,” “Fugue,” “Hurricane,” and “Good Morning, Brother.”
Beryl Rubinstein transcribed five of the principal melodies from the opera for piano, and Jascha Heifetz for violin and piano.
The three piano Preludes are famous not only in their original version but also in transcriptions for symphony orchestra. The first prelude, in B-flat major, is rhythmically exciting, highlighting the basic elements of the tango and the Charleston. The second, in C-sharp minor, is the most famous of the set. This is an eloquent three-part blues melody. The concluding prelude, in E-flat major, once again like the first one has greater rhythmic than melodic interest, a lively expression of uninhibited good feelings. Besides transcriptions for orchestra by Roy Bargy, Gregory Stone and several others, these preludes have been adapted for violin and piano by Heifetz, for trumpet and piano by Gregory Stone, and for saxophone and piano by Sigurd Rascher.
The Rhapsody in Blue was Gershwin’s first work for symphony orchestra and it is the composition with which he first won fame, fortune, and artistic significance. It was commissioned by Paul Whiteman for an all-American music concert planned by that bandleader for Aeolian Hall, New York, on February 12, 1924. With the composer at the piano, the Rhapsody appeared as the tenth and penultimate number of a long program, but it was the work that gave Whiteman’s concert its main interest and significance. The critics the following day were divided in their opinion. On the one hand, Henry T. Finck considered it superior to the music of Schoenberg and Milhaud; equally high words of praise came from Gilbert W. Gabriel, William J. Henderson, Olin Downes, Deems Taylor, and Carl van Vechten. In the opposite camp stood Pitts Sanborn and Lawrence Gilman who described the work as “meaningless repetition” and “trite, feeble, and conventional.”
But the opposing opinions notwithstanding, the Rhapsody in Blue immediately became one of the most famous pieces of serious music by an American. It was transcribed for every possible instrument or groups of instruments; it was adapted several times for ballet; it was used in a motion picture. Royalties from the sale of sheet music and records brought in a fortune. Through the years it has never lost its popularity; it is still one of the most frequently performed American symphonic works.
Its prime significance rests in the fact that it decisively proved that it was possible to produce good music within ambitious structures utilizing idioms and techniques of American jazz. The Rhapsody in Blue was by no means the first composition to do so; it was preceded by works by Erik Satie, Stravinsky, and Milhaud among others. But due to its enormous popular appeal it was the most influential composition of all in convincing the world’s foremost composers that jazz could be used with serious intent. Undoubtedly it was largely as a result of the triumph of the Rhapsody in Blue that world-famous composers like William Walton, Constant Lambert, Maurice Ravel, Kurt Weill and Paul Hindemith among many others produced serious jazz music.
Much has been said about its diffuseness of structure, and the inept way its material is developed. But for all its faults, the Rhapsody in Blue remains a vital, dynamic and at times an inspired piece of music. It is filled with wonderful lyricism; its rhythmic cogency is irresistible; its identity is completely American.
The work opened with an ascending seventeen-note slide by the clarinet which culminates in the saucy, first theme. A transition in the wind instrument leads to another brisk, jaunty idea for piano. After some development, and several ascending chords in the piano we get to the heart of the rhapsody and to one of the most famous melodies in all contemporary symphonic music: a spacious, rhapsodic song for the strings. The full orchestra repeats it. Two earlier themes are now briefly recalled, the first theme by the full orchestra, the second by the piano. A brief, dramatic coda brings the rhapsody to an exciting conclusion.
For the Paul Whiteman concert of 1924, Ferde Grofé provided the orchestration from a two-piano version handed him by the composer. Gershwin later prepared his own orchestration, and it is this version that is now given by all the major symphonic organizations.
The Second Rhapsody for orchestra succeeded the more popular Rhapsody in Blue by eight years; it was first performed by the Boston Symphony under Koussevitzky on January 29, 1932. Gershwin originally called this work Rhapsody in Rivets because the opening measures present a strongly rhythmic subject in solo piano suggesting riveting. This “rivet theme” is then taken over by the full orchestra, after which we hear a rumba melody. These ideas are then developed. A piano cadenza brings on a spacious melody, first in strings, and then in brass. All this material is amplified before the rhapsody is swept to an exciting end.
This rhapsody was the outgrowth of a six-minute sequence written by the composer for the motion picture, Delicious. The sequence was intended to describe the sights and sounds of a city. In the picture only one of the six minutes of this music was retained, but Gershwin liked the rest of it well enough to expand it into a major symphonic work.
The Variations on I Got Rhythm, for piano and orchestra, was written for a tour of one-night stands made by Gershwin throughout the United States in all-Gershwin programs. Its first performance took place in Boston on January 14, 1934. The main subject is a famous Gershwin song, “I Got Rhythm” which Ethel Merman made famous in the musical comedy Girl Crazy. The symphonic work begins with a four-note ascending phrase from the first measure of the song’s chorus, presented by solo clarinet. The theme is then taken over by solo piano and after that by full orchestra, after which the entire chorus is presented by the piano. In the ensuing variations the composer changes not only the basic structure of the song, melodically and rhythmically, but also its mood and feeling, traversing the gamut of emotion from melancholy to spirited gaiety.
Still another remarkably effective symphonic adaptation of “I Got Rhythm” was made by Morton Gould, and introduced by him with his orchestra over the CBS radio network in 1944.
Gershwin wrote two marches, both with satirical overtones, which are often given at “pop concerts.” Each was meant for a musical comedy. “Strike Up the Band” comes from the musical comedy of the same name, produced on January 14, 1930 starring Clark and McCullough. This was a stinging satire on war and international diplomacy, with America embroiled in a conflict with Switzerland over the issue of chocolates. The march, “Strike Up the Band,” helps deflate some of the pomp and ceremony of all martial music.
“Wintergreen for President” comes from Of Thee I Sing, the epoch-making satire on politics in Washington, D.C., first produced on December 26, 1931. “Wintergreen for President” is the music accompanying a political torchlight parade whose illuminated signs read “Even Your Dog Loves Wintergreen” and “A Vote for Wintergreen Is a Vote for Wintergreen” and so on. The march music carries over the satirical implications of this procession by quoting such tunes as “Hail, Hail the Gang’s All Here,” “Tammany,” “A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” and “Stars and Stripes Forever.” This music even carries a hasty recollection of Irish and Jewish music to suggest that Wintergreen is a friend of both these people.
Gershwin’s greatest songs are often performed in orchestral transcriptions at all-Gershwin concerts and other “pop performances,” sometimes singly, and sometimes in various potpourris. Besides songs already mentioned in the first part of this section, Gershwin’s greatest ones include the following: “Bidin’ My Time” from Girl Crazy; “I’ve Got a Crush On You” from Strike Up the Band; “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” from Shall We Dance; “Liza” from Show Girl; “The Man I Love,” originally meant for Lady Be Good but never used there; “Mine” from Let ’Em Eat Cake; the title song from Of Thee I Sing; “Soon” from Strike Up the Band; “That Certain Feeling” from Tip Toes; and “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” from Shall We Dance. Among those who have written orchestral medleys of Gershwin’s songs are Nathan van Cleve, Fred von Epps, Claude Thornhill, David Broekman, Irving Brodsky, George B. Leeman, and Nathaniel Finston.