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Who Could Ask for Anything More?
A Century of George Gershwin

By Brandi Parisi
September, 1998

Unlikely Beginnings | Early Career | Getting Discovered
The Toast of the American Music Scene | Final Curtain at the Height of Success
Music List from the Radio Broadcast

Recommended Recordings (Separate document)


Music to Browse by
The following selections are provided in RealAudio 3.0 28.8 format.
(For help, see How to Listen.)
Rhapsody in Blue (Gershwin plays Gershwin - Mercury 434 341-2)
Embraceable You (Ella Fitzgerald and the Nelson Riddle Orchestra - Verve 825 024-2)
Concerto in F: Allegro Agitato (Eastman-Rochester Orchestra - Elektra Nonesuch 9 79287-2)

Gershwin Portrait SIMULTANEOUS EAST AND WEST-COAST funerals took place on a muggy July afternoon in 1937. Politicians, artists, entertainers, and musicians gathered to mourn what was perhaps the greatest blow to American music in history: the unexpected and untimely death of George Gershwin at 38.

Whether or not Gershwin was the greatest American composer will always be debated, but, beyond doubt, he was a most quintessential American composer. An unlikely musical genius, he was a high-school dropout who, by his own admission, was far more interested in roller skating and cutting school - and making fun of kids who played instruments - than in books or music. George Gershwin's story is the stuff of American romantic folklore.

Unlikely Beginnings

He was Morris and Rose Gershwin's second son, born in Brooklyn, New York, September 26, 1898. As a child George was usually in some kind of trouble. He despised reading and studying and instead spent his time outdoors playing and getting into fights. His family purchased a second-hand piano for elder son Ira when George was 12 years old, but it was George, not Ira, who began playing songs by ear immediately, prompting the family to invest in lessons.

Piano teacher Charles Hambitzer took George tuition free and taught him the classics: composers such as Chopin, Liszt, and Debussy. Gershwin also attended concerts voraciously, but, while his passion for music grew, his interest in school did not. His grades continued to fall until, at 15, George dropped out of high school and took a job with Jerome H. Remick & Company, a music-publishing firm on Tin Pan Alley, for $15 a week. Early Career

At Remick George worked as a song plugger, promoting and selling the company's songs by playing them for potential performers. Gershwin also began to compose songs during this time though his employer discouraged his writing. Regardless, his first song was published - by a different company - in 1916.

George received $5 for "When You Want 'Em, You Can't Get 'Em, When You've Got Em, You Don't Want 'Em," his first published piece of music. The following year he left Remick, determined to make a go in musical theater. He worked as a rehearsal pianist and accompanist for the next several years and captured the attention of another Tin Pan Alley publishing company, T.B. Harmes, but this time as a composer. The company signed Gershwin, now 20, to a writer's contract at $35 a week with modest royalties for each piece of music sold.

Things moved very quickly from this point for Gershwin. He achieved his dream of writing the entire score for a show with the farce "La La Lucille" in 1919 and by 1920 was becoming quite well-known in New York theater (and party) circles. He was known to monopolize the piano at any party, and at one such event was overheard by Al Jolson while playing "Swanee." Jolson used the song in his show "Sinbad," and "Swanee" went on to sell over two million copies.

Getting Discovered

In 1920 Gershwin began to write music for George White who was producing "Scandals," a series of shows in competition with the Ziegfeld Follies. The show was an enormous success, and George stayed on through 1924. Through "Scandals," he met bandleader Paul Whiteman, "The King of Jazz," who enlisted the young composer in his quest to bring jazz into the proper concert hall. Whiteman organized a concert in February, 1924 billed as "An Experiment in Modern Music," for which Gershwin composed his "Rhapsody in Blue." As a standout in the long, esoteric show, "Rhapsody" was a hit, and it's striking, lanky performer and creator was a star.

In the audience the night of the "Experiment in Modern Music" was Walter Damrosch, the composer and conductor of the New York Symphony. Damrosch approached George the following year, and asked him to write a piano concerto for the Symphony Society of New York. Now, remember, Gershwin's formal music training was limited at best. Upon receiving the commission he bought a textbook to learn exactly what a concerto consisted of, and, legend has it, kept the manual open on his piano for the duration of his writing. His preliminary notes on the piece were simple:

1. Rhythm
2. Melody (Blues)
3. More Rhythm
In July, 1925, George Gershwin became the first American composer to be featured on the cover of Time magazine. The Concerto in F premiered December 3 that same year, and, though the reviews were mixed, the concerto was a huge success, becoming the first American concerto to find a secure place in the concert repertoire.

The Toast of the American Music Scene

CharactureGershwin was the toast, not only of New York, but of the whole country. He was a notorious scene-stealer, making appearances every night with different beautiful showgirls and starlets, swooping into any soiree just in time to take over the piano and woo that evening's crowd.

For the next few years George continued to write for both the stage and the concert hall. Recalling a trip to Paris he'd made in 1923, he began to compose a tone poem/ballet for orchestra. Returning to Paris in 1928 to finish the piece, he brought back four taxi horns which were used in the composition that would become "An American in Paris."

After coming home to Manhattan Gershwin returned to writing small songs and musical theater. It was yet another trip abroad, in 1932, that became the basis for his next large-scale orchestral composition. This time the destination was Cuba, and the musical result was a symphonic overture embodying the essence of Cuban dance.

Years before his success, while George was still working on George White's "Scandals," he produced his first opera, a one-act piece he described as "a study of Harlem life," produced with an all-white cast. The 25-minute opera was a flop. Now an acclaimed composer, Gershwin returned to the project in 1935 and wrote a longer, more involved American opera. "Porgy and Bess" premiered at the Alvin Theater in 1935.

"Porgy and Bess" enjoyed critical acclaim, but Broadway was hit hard by the Great Depression, and the show closed after 124 performance.

Final Curtain at the Height of Success

George Gershwin moved to Hollywood to write music for movies. Though he had only limited success in films, audiences came to Gershwin's public performances in droves. It was during one such performance, of the Concerto in F in February, 1937, that George experienced a brief blackout. Though the audience didn't notice, it worried the composer, and he sought medical attention. When doctors found nothing wrong, he continued to work.

By June Gershwin was complaining of constant headaches but dismissed them as being the result of overwork. Within weeks he lapsed into a coma from which he never recovered. He died of a brain tumor July 9, 1937. He was 38.

Gershwin's death at the height of his success is one of American music history's most tragic chapters. His early demise, however, guaranteed that George's music would retain a permanent precocity and youthfulness, uniquely American in both sound and spirit. It's playfully charged character still communicates to us, generations later.

While at the keyboard at a party in the late 20s, George was heard to remark, "I wonder if my music will be around in a hundred years." From the crowd came a shout, "Only if you're around to play it, George!" Fortunately, that voice was wrong.


Program Playlist
The following musical selections were included in the radio special "Who Could Ask for Anything More?" See our separate, specially prepared Gershwin discography for recommendations on recordings of many of the composer's most popular works. (Many of these recordings are available through Public Radio MusicSource at 1-800-75-MUSIC.)

Lullaby for String Quartet, The Kohon Quartet: VoxBox 5090

Selections from Porgy and Bess, Erich Kunzel, Cincinnati Pops w/soloists: Telarc 80434

Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra, third movement, Eugene List, with the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra, Howard Hanson, cond.: Mercury 434 341-2

Cuban Overture, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, James Levine cond.: Deutche Grammaphone 445 768-2

An American in Paris, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Andre Previn, cond.: Phillips 412-611-2

Gershwin Plays Gershwin, The Piano Rolls (pt. 1): Elektra Nonesuch 79287-2

Gershwin Performs Gershwin, Rare Recordings 1931-1935: MusicMasters 5062-2

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book: Verve 825 024-2

Carlos Barbosa-Lima plays the music of George Gershwin: Concord 42005
Top | Recommended Recordings

Gershwin Portrait © Hulton-Deutsch Collection
Self-Caricature - Museum of the City of New York



 

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