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).