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GEORGE GERSHWIN
1898-1937
(b Brooklyn, NY, 26 Sept 1898; d Hollywood,
CA, 11 July 1937 ). American composer, pianist,
and conductor. He began his career as a song
plugger in New York’s Tin Pan Alley; by the time
he was 20 he had established himself as a
composer of Broadway shows, and by the age
of 30 he was America’s most famous and
widely accepted composer of concert music.
GERSHWIN, GEORGE [ JACOB GERSHVIN ]
(b Brooklyn, New York, 26 Sept. 1898; d Hollywood, CA, 11 July 1937). American composer. He studied the piano from 1912 with Charles Hambitzer and had lessons in theory and composition from Henry Cowell and Joseph Schillinger, among others. These lessons, however, came only after he had begun to make a reputation as a composer of popular music. In 1916 he started work as a song plugger (house pianist) for Jerome Remick's publishing company and had a song of his own published, When you Want 'em you Can't Get 'em. Swanee, sung by Al Jolson in a Broadway musical, was his first hit, and in 1919 he wrote a score for an entire show of his own, La, La, Lucille. Another show, Blue Monday, gained him a commission from Paul Whiteman's band, resulting in the one-movement piano concerto Rhapsody in Blue (1924). That year he began working with his brother Ira as his lyricist: their first show, Lady Be Good, included ‘Fascinatin' Rhythm’ as well as the title song and was followed by a series of Broadway successes, among them Tip-Toes, Oh Kay!, Strike Up the Band, Funny Face, Girl Crazy, and Of Thee I Sing.
Following common Broadway practice, these shows were orchestrated by others, as was Rhapsody in Blue in its versions for band and symphony orchestra. But Gershwin was eager to master classical techniques and establish himself as a composer of concert music, a dual process he began in the Piano Concerto in F (1925) and the tone-poem An American in Paris (1928), the latter written after a visit during which he had sought, but not received, tuition from Ravel. In 1930 he and Ira moved to Hollywood, where they worked on the film of Girl Crazy and also on Shall We Dance?, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Continuing his quest to create an American contribution to the classical tradition, he also produced the opera Porgy and Bess (New York, 1935), which was his biggest achievement and among his last. This, like the concert pieces, depends largely on the genius for melody that sparked his songs and was, indeed, unrivalled, even in that golden age of songwriting. In the many numbers the Gershwin brothers wrote together (e.g. Someone to Watch Over Me, Let's Call the Whole Thing Off, Our Love is Here to Stay, I Got Rhythm), Ira's verbal sophistication is matched by George's musical ingenuity and the distinctive subtlety he brought to the jazz style of the interwar American musical theatre.
PaulGriffiths
NPR100
* Rhapsody in Blue, George Gershwin (1924); orchestrated by Ferde Grofe (1924/1926/1942)
* I Got Rhythm, Words Ira Gershwin/Music George Gershwin (1930)
* Porgy and Bess (opera), Words Ira Gershwin/Dubose Heyward, music George Gershwin (1935)
I Got Rhythm Ethyl Merman,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS-
cHTSRmFY
1
2
3
Ellington, Cotton Tail
1 2 3 4 5 6
RHAPSODY IN BLUE
1924
for Paul Whiteman
WHITEMAN, PAUL
(b Denver, 28 March 1890; d Doylestown, PA, 29 Dec 1967). American jazz and dance-band leader. He played the viola in the Denver SO from 1907 and in the San Francisco SO from 1914. During World War I he led a 40-piece navy band, playing march tunes by day and show music by night. Sensing new dimensions for popular music in the transition from ragtime to jazz, he organized a dance band in San Francisco in 1919, and later moved to Los Angeles and Atlantic City, New Jersey, before settling in New York in 1920. There he soon became the best-known American bandleader, particularly with his recording of Whispering and Japanese Sandman (1920, Vic.), which sold more than a million copies. By the early 1920s his lush orchestral style was widely copied on countless bandstands at home and abroad. He toured the British Isles in 1923 and Europe in 1926.
For his first extended concert tour of the USA Whiteman commissioned George Gershwin to write Rhapsody in Blue, which, as part of Whiteman’s concert called ‘An Experiment in Modern Music’, was performed with the composer as soloist in Aeolian Hall, New York, in 1924. Favourable publicity prompted Whiteman to stage seven performances of this kind between 1925 and 1938, thereby obtaining wide exposure for such American composers as Victor Herbert, William Grant Still and Duke Ellington (see Symphonic jazz). Between 1928 and 1952 Whiteman’s orchestras were featured on many network radio shows and took part in several films, beginning with King of Jazz (1930). He provided music for six Broadway shows and produced more than 600 phonograph recordings. Later he served as music director for ABC.
Whiteman was a key figure in American popular music. While jazz purists accused him of diluting the character of early jazz for commercial purposes, less biassed observers applauded the high polish and versatility of his orchestras, which had to be as comfortable in the concert hall as at a college dance. He employed a number of talented musicians: in the original arrangement of Rhapsody in Blue three of his reed players were required to play a total of 17 instruments. Although his dance music tended to be sedate, there were occasional jazz solos from musicians such as Bix Beiderbecke, Frankie Trumbauer, Eddie Lang, Bunny Berigan and Jack Teagarden.
Whiteman’s musical memorabilia, including his large library of more than 3000 arrangements, were bequeathed to Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where they now form the Whiteman Collection.
GERSHWIN AND JAZZ
Whiteman's "Experiment in Modern
Music" presented Gershwin's Rhapsody in
Blue as "ultimate refinement of jazz."
Reviewer noted that many of the
musicians 'who write, orchestrate, and
play [jazz] are of Russian-Jewish
extraction.’
WHITEMAN’S INTRODUCTION OF GERSHWIN TO
CRITICS AS AN OPEN REHEARSAL, FEB. 5
FORM: ABA
Opening theme
Second theme
First four-bar phrase, but it’s not reused
Long Piano Solo (more than five minutes)
Final Section, opens with clear phrases
Complete
RADIO SHOW 1934
7. Signature
9. Variations on “I Got Rhythm”
14. Second Prelude (1923)
PORGY AND BESS - 1935
folk opera according to Gershwin
Broadway background
variety of songs
communal songs
new spirituals
call-and-response dialogue with blue notes
duet
POPULISM
Gershwin sought out black musicians, listened
to black music
Porgy &Bess a folk opera, folk tale, folk music
about American proletariat
OPERA – PORGY AND BESS
18. Introduction, Summertime, Abbie Mitchell 18
19. A woman is a Sometime Thing, Edward
Matthews 19
20. Act I, Scene 1, Finale 20
21. My man’s Gone Now—Ruby Elzy 21
22. Bess, You Is My Woman Now, Todd Duncan,
Anne Brown 22
PORGY AND BESS AS OTHER
George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess represents a particular version of assiilation/projection, "a New Yorker's Eden," in which Gershwin exerts a powerful monological control over his eclectic material via Wagnerian leitmotifs. In Gershwin's modernism, which takes seriously its encounter with urban black popular musics, despite the chromatic richness of some passages, black characters are commonly represented as "simple," either by folky pentatonics or the anjo tuns of "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin'." "Low-life" is figured through the picturesque; we see this world entirely through Gershwin's eyes,
GERSHWIN AND JAZZ
Rhythm
Melody
Harmony
“Gershwin already figured out what the best
substitution changes were going to be.”
Phrasing and Structure
32-bar A A B A
ART MUSIC
Rhapsody in Blue(1924)
Concerto in F (1925)
Preludes for Piano (1926)
An American in Paris (1928)
Second Rhapsody (1932)
I Got Rhythm Variations (1934)
Porgy and Bess (1935)
