For Gershwin’s early life and compositions through Rhapsody In Blue, please see our George Gershwin - An American Rhapsody, In Blue (Part I).
Swanee had made Gershwin independent, as had many hit songs and musicals by him and Ira. This left him free to travel and study; like most great artists he had an insatiable curiosity about his craft. In the 1920s he went to Paris to study with European masters such as the great Impressionist composer Maurice Ravel, who told him: “Why become a second-rate Ravel when you're already a first-rate Gershwin?" After his initial audition with Ravel, the French-Catalan innovator recognized him as more of a colleague than a student, and they shared music theory insights. Gershwin was very taken with Ravel and Debussy’s use of Quartal Chords as harmonies in their own right, rather than as suspended chords as they’d been previously used. Ravel for his part was very attracted to American Jazz, saying he “preferred it to grand opera.”
Gershwin mixed well with the Paris Intelligentsia in art and music, and picked up on many European and international influences, from Oriental and African music to Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Serialism, and re-cast them into his own inimitable Jazz style. It wasn’t called Jazz Fusion in those days, but that syncretism was an essential part of his genius.
One fine result of this was An American In Paris, a symphonic tone poem with enlarged orchestra plus celesta, saxes and Parisian taxi horns!
It’s a delightful work and considered technically excellent in the orchestration. The A section jumps right into an exuberantly American walking theme, then takes after Debussy and Les Six. The B section has some definite American Blues fusing with the classical Ternary structure, continuing the blending he started with Rhapsody — the whole is quintessentially Gershwin. Jazz Fusion indeed!
Gershwin invited Ravel to come to the U.S. and hear more Jazz, and raised money for Ravel’s U.S. tour where he was gladly received as the greatest living French composer, after Claude Debussy’s passing. Ravel gave Gershwin an introductory letter to Nadia Boulanger, the greatest teacher-composer of the Era, for his second trip to Paris, but she told him “What could I already teach you that you haven’t got?” But she did encourage him to work on his orchestration, which you hear much improved in American than when he had to ask Grofe’s help in orchestrating Rhapsody.
Ravel went back home and composed his wonderful Concerto in G , his personal tribute to his colleague. It’s a fun and masterful piece, blending his French-Catalan style with Jazz, definitely Latin in character, and his thank you and salute to Gershwin, the finest compliment he could pay.
A Concerto means orchestra + piano in some kind of Sonata Form for the opening movement, but it varies widely. Gershwin stretched it to the max with Rhapsody In Blue, but his next big piece, Concerto In F of 1925, commissioned by the conductor-composer Walter Damrosch definitely has Sonata Form in the 1st movement. He was able to work in seclusion at Chautauqua, with a large orchestra to practice sectionals with, whom he instructed in Jazz while they and Damrosch gave him Classical pointers. The result is a masterful piece of symphonic color. The meticulous English orchestrator and composer William Walton said he adored Gershwin’s orchestration of this Concerto.
Gershwin’s Concerto in F with MTT (Michael Tilson Thomas) conducting, Yuja Wang at the piano!
It has three movements, Allegro, Adagio, and Agitato, with the Allegro in Sonata-Allegro form naturally enough. As Gershwin describes it:
“The first movement employs the Charleston rhythm. It is quick and pulsating, representing the young enthusiastic spirit of American life. It begins with a rhythmic motif given out by the kettle drums…. The principal theme is announced by the bassoon. Later, a second theme is introduced by the piano [counter-theme of the Sonata]. The second movement has a poetic, nocturnal atmosphere which has come to be referred to as the American blues, but in a purer form than that in which they are usually treated. The final movement reverts to the style of the first. It is an orgy of rhythms, starting violently and keeping to the same pace throughout.”
It has Charleston syncopations and Latin rhythms, Pentatonic melodies and soaring runs like Ravel, and plenty of Jazz and Blues chords along with the occasional Viennese Tritone. All movements heavy with Jazz, but with definite thematic links as in Classical Sonata Form. One wonders if the last Agitato movement, with its relentless Staccato notes, was influenced by Prokofiev’s famous Toccata Op. 11 for Piano. Different key and tonality though.
Same MTT/Yuja performance with score, see and hear for yourself (the lower Part II is the orchestra reduction, Part I is the piano):
Like Rhapsody, this was a revolutionary mixing of Classical and Jazz forms and styles and the critics were nonplussed. Some, even Prokofiev, called it “amateurish”. However it has stood the test of time and is a standard piece of Modern Classical repertoire now. Here are two famous defenses of the Concerto In F, from established Classical Music masters (Schoenberg was Gershwin’s later neighbor and friend in LA, and Damrosch the great conductor was also a friend and mentor with orchestration):
“Gershwin is an artist and a composer – he expressed musical ideas, and they were new, as is the way he expressed them. … An artist is to me like an apple tree. When the time comes, whether it wants to or not it bursts into bloom and starts to produce apples. … Serious or not, he is a composer, that is, a man who lives in music and expresses everything, serious or not, sound or superficial, by means of music, because it is his native language. … What he has done with rhythm, harmony and melody is not merely style. It is fundamentally different from the mannerism of many a serious composer [who writes] a superficial union of devices applied to a minimum of ideas. … The impression is of an improvisation with all the merits and shortcomings appertaining to this kind of production. … He only feels he has something to say and he says it.” — Arnold Schoenberg
”Various composers have been walking around jazz like a cat around a plate of soup, waiting for it to cool off so that they could enjoy it without burning their tongues, hitherto accustomed only to the more tepid liquids distilled by cooks of the classical school. Lady Jazz . . . has danced her way around the world ... but for all her travels and sweeping popularity, she has encountered no knight who could lift her to a level that would enable her to be received as a respectable member of musical circles. George Gershwin seems to have accomplished this miracle ... boldly by dressing his extremely independent and up-to-date young lady in the classic garb of a concerto. ... He is the Prince who has taken Cinderella by the hand and openly proclaimed her a princess to the astonished world, no doubt to the fury of her envious sisters.” — Walter Damrosch
When he was in Paris with Ravel and Boulanger, besides An American In Paris he was also working on a sequel to Rhapsody In Blue which he called his Manhattan Rhapsody, 1931, or Rhapsody In Rivets he couldn’t decide. Now it’s simply called Gershwin’s Second Rhapsody. It’s also a Jazz Concerto like Rhapsody In Blue, and a sophisticated piece of orchestration. Gershwin considered it his finest work, here directed by Michael Tilson Thomas (who also plays the piano parts; MTT is a virtuoso pianist as well as conductor, and helped revive Gershwin’s original version, some of whose parts had been cut in later rewritings):
It’s an amazing piece of work, using some of the themes of Rhapsody In Blue but with a ton of original material. It is wonderful! Here’s a Concerto Score version for musicians:
All Gershwin’s skill is here to see: Fine Jazz/Blues pianism, wonderful, lush orchestration he’d learned from his mentors, wild avant-garde chords like the Sharp 9 and Viennese Tritone, and some French 6ths and Whole-Tone melodies, and catchy Jazz rhythms. It’s a terrific romp through his entire skill set as a composer, and really deserves more attention as MTT has brought to it.
His next big piece was his Cuban Overture, 1932, written after a visit to Cuba and originally titled Rumba:
This is another original orchestral Overture in Ternary Form, with Caribbean rhythms and Cuban percussion specifically designated by the composer including bongos, claves and maracas. The middle section has a quiet and lovely Malaguena-type passage, but he turns the form inside-out with rhythmic shifting and dynamic drama, a continuous movement into the finale which reprises the boisterous initial theme. There's a relentless propulsion and progression which drives all great music. Its Latin flavors are beautiful and inspired, borrowing some riffs from Cuban pop music of the time, but it is unvarnished Gershwin, channeling and fusing different genres, sheer genius!
Gershwin’s beloved and memorably chromatic song classic I Got Rhythm has become a Jazz Standard, with its chord progression called “Rhythm Changes” used by many artists (e.g. Anthropology by Dizzy Gillespie, Rhythm-a-Ning by Thelonious Monk):
Pretty cool watching the Maestro play it!
His next major piece after the Cuban Overture was this quite sophisticated orchestral Variations On I Got Rhythm (1934), dedicated to his brother Ira:
This is a really fine set of Classical-type variations of a Jazz theme, using many eclectic influences from Blues to Jazz, Oriental Music, Serial Music, and the orchestral richness he’d learned from Ferde Grofe who orchestrated Rhapsody, and Walter Damrosch who conducted his Concerto In F, and Boulanger and Ravel. A mature piece of the master’s craft.
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Gershwin was a very talented painter, too, like his colleague Arnold Schoenberg. Here’s his Portrait of Schoenberg, who defended Gershwin’s Concerto in F, and Jazz in general, to the Classical Music establishment in America, of which he was the acknowledged Dean at that time. Schoenberg became his neighbor, tennis partner and friend when George moved to LA and like Ravel earlier, he encouraged Gershwin to keep on writing in his own style and not adopt too much European formalism.
The link also has examples of his artistic photography (nice composition with Irving Berlin) and other artwork, including an action portrait of fine Soprano and Julliard Graduate Ruby Elzy in song. Elzy performed Serena’s part in Gershwin’s grand folk opera Porgy and Bess.
Here’s Serena’s big number, My Man’s Gone Now, sung by Audra McDonald with MTT conducting: (Michael Tilson Thomas often worked with McDonald, for instance on his Grace album here’s Sentimental Again, which was an original Jazz song by MTT he wrote for the great Sara Vaughan).
Check out Gershwin's painting of DuBose Heyward (Smithsonian is closed but link works, scroll down), author of the novel Porgy about African-Americans in S. Carolina, who helped George and Ira with the libretto for Porgy and Bess, 1935. Here’s Gershwin's own explanation of this magnificent work:
“Porgy and Bess is a folk tale. Its people naturally would sing folk music. When I first began work on the music I decided against the use of original folk material because I wanted the music to be all of one piece. Therefore I wrote my own spirituals and folksongs. But they are still folk music—and therefore, being in operatic form, Porgy and Bess becomes a folk opera.” — George Gershwin
Complete work with score; after a brief orchestral intro, the famous and gorgeous Summertime:
Besides Summertime, its list of well-known songs include My Man’s Gone Now, It Take a Long Pull To Get There, I Got Plenty O’Nuttin, Bess You Is My Woman Now, It Ain’t Necessarily So, What You Want Wild Bess, I Loves You Porgy, O Lawd I’m On My Way, among others, which have all become Jazz standards. Scroll through the video to find your favorites.
After reading Porgy, Gershwin worked on the score in Charleston, SC, and drew inspiration from the Gullah community which had preserved many African traditions. The harmony reflects his New York Jazz home language, but skillfully blended with the African-American Folk Songs he had heard in Harlem and now SC, along with Jewish Liturgical Music he heard growing up, and his European and Classical influences. It has Arias and Recitatives like Classical Opera, but with a completely American flavor and structure. Like many operas, it makes use of Leitmotifs to highlight a particular character or theme. Summertime is recapitulated several times, as are I Got Plenty O’Nuttin and Bess, You Is My Woman to highlight various story arcs or roles. He got advice from his most advanced composition teacher, Henry Cowell (already famous in his own right in Europe as an American composer) and his friend Joseph Schillinger who had a mathematically precise way of teaching composition and art (his students included Benny Goodman, Oscar Levant, Glenn Miller, and Quincy Jones — who also studied with Boulanger). Gershwin never rested on his laurels, but was always studying with others and learning new things, whether from Gullah traditions, Oriental Music, or Classical and Avant-Garde masters — the hallmark of a truly great artist.
Gershwin stipulated that only African-Americans could sing these roles, convinced the Classical Opera singers of those days could not master the Jazz vocal idiom. His first Soprano Star Anne Brown was the first African-American woman to become a Julliard graduate, and his Choral Director was Eva Jessye who was a notable choral conductor of the Harlem Renaissance. It caused controversy in the Africa-American community, with some supporting it and others decrying its black stereotypes (for the time). Most cautiously supported it, as there were very few Operas besides Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha (not published until 1972) which had roles specifically reserved for African-Americans at that time (Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Dream Lovers for instance, but it was not well-known and could not draw the ticket sales and pay of Gershwin’s works). Porgy And Bess brought Black Folk Opera onto the stage of the National Theatre in DC for the first time, creating jobs and roles for Black artists. Brown herself said:
“My father didn’t like it [the way it portrayed African-Americans]…. but I thought that DuBose Heyward and Gershwin had simply taken a part of life in Catfish Row, South Carolina, and rendered it superbly.” — Anne Brown, 1935
Grace Bumbry, the greatest African-American Opera soprano before Jessye Norman, who brought it to the Metropolitan in NYC and fully into the Classical Opera world, said:
“I thought it beneath me, I felt I had worked far too hard, that we had come far too far to have to retrogress to 1935. My way of dealing with it was to see that it was really a piece of Americana, of American history, whether we liked it or not. Whether I sing it or not, it was still going to be there.” — Grace Bumbry, 1985
Duke Ellington was reported in the papers to have panned it, but he issued a strong rebuttal and fully supported Ira’s 1952 revival:
“Your Porgy and Bess the superbest, singing the gonest, acting the craziest, Gershwins the greatest.” — Duke Ellington, 1952
After moving to Hollywood in LA and befriending the Schoenbergs, Gershwin worked on the film score for the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers marquee Shall We Dance, 1937, which married Jazz with ballet in a completely original way (Aaron Copland was later inspired by this idea). The Maestro was still learning and innovating. At this point he was beginning to suffer from a fatal brain tumor, so enlisted Nathaniel Shilkret, a prodigy musician himself and President of RCA Victor, to help finish the orchestration. However it is an extraordinary, large-scale composition for the screen, with no less than 16 original musical numbers or songs. Here are a few examples:
Beginner’s Luck:
Watch Your Step:
They All Laughed:
And the finale “Shall we dance, or keep on moping? Shall we dance, and walk on air? Shall we give in to despair? Or shall we dance with never a care? Life is short, we’re growing older, don’t you be an also-ran; you better dance little lady, dance little man, dance whenever you can!”
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Three Preludes were part of a project of Gershwin's to write 24 Piano Preludes in all the Major and minor keys, as Chopin had done. Unfortunately it was never completed, although 3 more survive in manuscript for a total of six. Masterfully played here by Denis Zhdanov:
The first one in B flat has a definite Latin flavor, in the repeated notes and turns, occasional N6's, and in Meas. 14 where the LH part breaks out in a syncopated Habanera-like figuration of the Bass progression. Of course it's all very Bluesy with 7ths in the bass and major-minor flat 3rds vs natural 3rds tension. Latin Blues, early version. Very witty, too.
In the 2nd, beginning in C# minor, the opening Ostinato plays chromatically with the LH slide into Major and then Subdominant, evoking a chromatic oscillation in the Tenor voice (one hears the higher C# in the Tenor part as an octave Ostinato with the low Bass and the third of the chord, so the Tenor Voice is clearly heard as an E, E#, F#, E# repeating pattern. Same figuration echoed later in the Subdominant). Meas. 15 the melody switches momentarily to the LH. Very nice counterpoint in the inner parts with Gershwin. Also notice the inverted counter-theme to the Bass part starting in Meas. 19, up in the middle Alto. Takes a lot of skill to bring all these parts out clearly with just two hands. Shows Gershwin had solid Classical counterpoint training, Bach and Beethoven. Even in these short pieces, there is polyphony. The final cadence has a seventh below the main RH chord, a favorite device of Beethoven, followed by a low C# which creates a nice 9th resonance - harmony as tone color.
The 3rd one in Eb was called ‘Spanish’ by Gershwin, and it does evoke perhaps a very fast Flamenco. The chord changes are a battle between E flat Major and minor, and the RH chord thickening and skilled part-writing in the middle clearly channels Chopin, as do the chromatic runs and trills. Ends with a pyrotechnic bang!
These are all brilliant and all too brief; but sometimes, brevity is the soul of wit.
Here are two of the unpublished Preludes, the Rubato Prelude and the Novelette in 4ths rewritten and combined by Gershwin in 1925 into Short Story for violin and piano. First part (the Rubato), Debussy-like with whole tone scales, and what a chromatic slide on the violin! Second part you can hear the 4ths and some jaunty stride playing under the formal binary structure, definitely Classical-Jazz fusion. Gerhard Taschner on the violin and Martin Krause on piano:
So the rest of the unpublished Preludes were not lost, but delightfully transformed (by Gershwin)!
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Shabbat Shalom
