George Gershwin was born ‘Jacob Gershwine’ Sept. 26, 1898 in a 2nd-floor Brooklyn Apartment. His parents were refugees from Imperial Russia, where persecution of Jews had been increasing under the autocratic Czar Alexander III. His father Moishe Gershovitz named George after his grandfather Jacob, but in America he Anglicized to Morris Gershwine, and Jacob changed his name to George, and they eventually dropped the ‘e’ at the end of the family surname. His mother Rose had also fled Russian persecution, and she and Morris had four quite musical and artistic children, Ira, George, Frances, and Arthur. They moved to East Manhattan after Ira and George were born, and the kids grew up in the Yiddish Theatre District.
Frances Gershwin was a talented singer and painter, who earned the first serious money from music of anyone in the family. She then got married and raised 4 kids (also artists and performers), which didn’t prevent her traveling with George to Paris to further study painting. She lived longer than any of the others (92); in 1973 she released her legacy album For George and Ira. Here’s Someone to Watch Over Me and Embraceable You from that album, which have become Jazz standards:
The great Prog Jazz Fusion master Chic Corea did a contempo version of Someone which is bloody Amazing . You can still hear the contours of George’s original melody, now decorated with polychords, Quartal chords, 7 flat 9s galore, brilliant episodes of Secundal cluster arpeggios, and flat 13s along with an occasional sharp 11. George and Frances would have loved it!
Arthur Gershwin was the other composer in the family, but it was a hobby not a living; he was a stockbrocker. An example of Arthur’s composition, Invitation To The Blues is sung here by Jo Stafford, pretty good!
Ira Gershwin of course became a great lyricist and librettist and worked with his brother and other composers to create many classic songs and musicals and a couple operas, but he didn’t write music; however, he had to have a keen ear for it to do librettos as well as he did. His brother’s premature passing affected him greatly and he quit writing for awhile. After a hiatus he resumed writing lyrics and librettos with other great composers such as Kurt Weill, Jerome Kern, and Aaron Copland. With Copland he created the soundtrack to the movie The North Star, about Ukrainian resistance to the Nazis: Song of the Guerillas (and other tracks). Here’s a classic he later wrote with Harry Warren, which many believe to be a veiled tribute to his brother and their electric collaboration, performed by Michael Feinstein who helped preserve Ira’s archives and revive many Gershwin songs: There is No Music For Me:
As for George himself, he was an early talent at the piano and began as a song plugger on Tin Pan Alley, NY. This gave him a tremendous amount of practice and exposure to all the popular music of the day, Ragtime, Blues, Jazz of all varieties at the time. His first published composition was When You Want 'em You Can't Get 'em, a fine classic Rag number for a 16-year old, with flashes of future talent shining through. Here he plays it on a piano roll he made himself:
Working for the Aeolian Company making piano rolls was grist for the mill for young George. He made hundreds of rolls including his early compositions and this increased his depth of knowledge and confidence. Here’s an excellent early Ragtime hit from 1917: Rialto Ripples. Note the quality part-writing and the chromaticism of the inner parts, esp the tenor (a precursor to Rhapsody?) Pretty sophisticated counterpoint for a lad of 18:
He got his formal training in early too; his mother arranged lessons for him and then Jack Miller introduced him to Charles Hambitzer, who besides playing piano and organ was a multi-sectional performer on several string and woodwind instruments with the Beethoven Orchestra in NY, and then the Waldorf-Astoria Orchestra. Classically trained and a skilled composer, Hambitzer gave the precocious youngster a good grounding in the art of composition and became a friend and mentor. Nathaniel Shilkret, a noted conductor and composer for radio and an executive at RCA Victor, described Hambitzer's classical piano playing as ‘phenomenal’ and he passed this art on to young George, who developed a deep love for the Classics, both the French and the German masters. George also studied composition with Rubin Goldmark, Copland's teacher who had been trained by the Fuchs in Vienna, and Henry Cowell, a Progressive composer-inventor of genius. So Gershwin was no Tin-Pan Alley ingenué but a well-grounded composer, even before he went to Paris to meet Boulanger, Ravel and Les Six.
His first big hit was Swanee, inspired by Stephen Foster’s Swanee River but a complete reinvention:
The Major Subdominant in minor mode right away creates a Dorian feeling. Lots more chord changes and much more uptempo melodies than the original; it hints at Foster’s tune in the chorus rather than quoting it directly. It has a catchy ‘chorus’ which really forms a part B and stays in major tonality right to the Coda (nice glissando on the cadenza). Some inspired writing and kind of unorthodox for a pop song; it doesn’t use Strophic Form (repeated stanzas with different words) in the intro, it’s binary and begins with a dark minor stride rhythm, almost mock-serious march which is the part A. It became part of the American subconscious. This early hit at age 20 made George financially independent after it was popularized by Al Jolson.
Soon after this hit, he worked with songwriter and founder of Capitol Records Buddy DeSylva to produce Blue Monday (aka 135th Street), a pioneering piece of symphonic Jazz which was a precursor to the later Porgy and Bess. DeSylva did the libretto. It was George’s first Classical/Jazz Fusion tribute to the Harlem Renaissance and is underrated:
Some very fine orchestration, with Jazzy muted trumpets and slides, it really is a dress rehearsal for Porgy and Bess. It has seven Sections which follow each other with no breaks; a half-hour mini-Opera blending Jazz and Classical, with a bit of musical in the mix. Not as sophisticated as Porgy or his later works, but the Jazz conductor Paul Whiteman was so taken with it he commissioned Gershwin to compose a symphonic/concerto Jazz piece for him to conduct as a showpiece. This led to Rhapsody In Blue, and Blue Monday/135th Street is often cited as its precursor rather than to Porgy and Bess, which is of course related.
Here’s a piano score solo version by the composer of the famous Rhapsody, judge for yourself:
Many interesting stories as to the genesis of this Jazz classic (originally piano 4 hands). The composer himself said he heard most of its outline in his mind’s ear on a train to Boston, under pressure to complete the work for Whiteman’s premiere. He conceived it as a melting-pot of America, a kind of Walt Whitmanesque ‘poem of the city’ on wheels. Classical buffs have claimed it was partly inspired by Beethoven’s 'Tempest' Sonata, 1st movement, due to a few similarities in the chromatic inner parts. Could be coincidence, but Gershwin did like the Classics and was fond of that Sonata, playing it for guests, as well as Debussy, Rachmaninoff, and other Classical/Romantic piano he’d been exposed to by Hambitzer and Goldmark. So who knows, but it’s a work of peculiar genius. Gershwin liked clarinetist Ross Gorman’s famous wail at the end of the opening run and made it part of the piece. He initially titled it an American Rhapsody; his brother Ira suggested Rhapsody in Blue after viewing a Whistler exhibit (recall the portrait of Whistler's mother titled Arrangement in Gray and Black).
It’s a Jazz Concerto in one long continuous movement, but with definite sections. Under deadline pressure and unsure of the full orchestration, Gershwin handed his original piano 4-hands draft to Whiteman’s skilled arranger Ferde Grofe for orchestration (the upper part is the piano). Grofe’s first version was for Whiteman’s small Jazz orchestra, but he did later versions for full Classical forces. It’s a Concerto in the sense the piano has solo parts where the orchestra gets quiet, but NOT in the sense of Classical Sonata Form, though it does have some recurring structure. A Rhapsody is not unlike the earlier Fantasia form which, like the Toccata of Baroque days, allowed free-wheeling of the composer’s imagination in just about any form he/she wished to show off their playing. In this one there are five themes in four broad Sections, with much motivic inter-relatedness: I. Moderato, II. Scherzo, III. Andantino, and IV. Finale which does recapitulate 3 of the themes, so the recap at the end is somewhat Sonata-like. Contrary to many criticisms, it does have a definite form with its five themes, the Ritornello, Train Theme, Stride Theme, Shuffle Theme, and Love Theme appearing in the Sections in specific places and all but the Train and Shuffle Themes recapitulated in the Finale: I. Ritornello, II. Train, Stride, Shuffle, III. Love, IV. Love, Stride, Ritornello. So it is not formless, just a complex recursive structure and very idiosyncratic. It’s a Fantasia in modern guise. Harmonically it goes in reverse direction (counterclockwise) around the Circle of 5ths, and uses Root Movement by thirds to cycle through circular modulations (Gershwin was doing this before Coltrane). Rhythmically it blends Ragtime, Charleston, and Cuban rhythms with Classical Recitative really stretching the basic 4 pattern in extreme Rubatos. The harmony and counterpoint is delightful — this is early Classical/Jazz fusion and the critics just didn’t understand it.
Rhapsody In Blue with Maestro Leonard Bernstein conducting & playing! He takes his own liberties with the Solo section, but hey it’s Bernstein. He was deeply influenced by Gershwin as a young pianist/composer and had a lifelong love of his music:
Full story of the composition: "Wait and Nod" explains it in detail. Gershwin at first refused to do the commission for Whiteman, as he was working on a musical. Then Whiteman leaked to the press it was already in the works. George had but a scant five weeks to come up with a good outline, and he did it! The older and more experienced Grofe helped with the orchestration, but all of the harmony and counterpoint is Gershwin’s. George also wrote in some of the orchestra parts in the 2nd draft, for Whiteman’s 26 player Jazz ensemble, and added some folk instruments like accordion and banjo. Grofe later did a full Classical Orchestra version. Here’s George’s original 56-page autograph 4-hands piano score, Library of Congress: www.loc.gov/…
Rhapsody In Blue was revolutionary in its fusion of Classical and Jazz, and it set the tone for the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties. F. Scott Fitzgerald said it embodied early 20th-century America’s “youthful Zeitgeist”. It made an indelible mark on the conclave of serious composers, including Gershwin himself, who was inspired by its success to write more works for the Classical concert hall.
We’ll continue next month with the other major works of this great American composer! (Part II) Thurs. Nov 6.
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Shabbat Shalom
