The American composer and pianist, George Gershwin (1898-1937), wrote music that merged American Jazz, Blues and Tin Pan Alley with classical music. Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and An American in Paris (1928), and the opera Porgy and Bess (1935).
George Gershwin (Jacob Gershwine) was born to Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn, New York, in 1898. In 1914 he dropped out of high school to work for a Tin Pan Alley music company as a song plugger. Song pluggers sold sheet music by playing popular songs on the piano in department stores.
In 1919 Gershwin wrote his first hit song, Swanee, with lyrics by Irving Caesar. Afterwards he teamed up with Ira Gershwin, his brother, and other lyricists, producing a stream of hit Broadway theatre songs like Embraceable You, I Got Rhythm and Fascinating Rhythm. During this time, he studied piano under Charles Hambitzer and composition with Rubin Goldmark and Henry Cowell.
George Gershwin, an American in Paris | Painter Miguel Covarrubias (1904-57) depicts Gershwin in Paris, 1929 | MALBA
Paris
During the mid-1920s, Gershwin moved to Paris to study composition with Nadia Boulange and Marice Ravel. He was rejected: they felt further study would be counterproductive to his well-formed style. After Ravel heard how much money Gershwin earned as a composer, he told him, "You should give me lessons." While in France, Gershwin wrote a popular work, An American in Paris.
After returning to New York, Gershwin composed the opera Porgy and Bess with Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward as lyricists. Initially a flop, Porgy and Bess is now among the most important American operas of the twentieth century.
Hollywood
The movie industry was booming—silent movies were dead and sound tracks were in—so Gershwin moved to Hollywood. He quickly broke into the business in 1936 with a commission from RKO Pictures to write a score for Shall We Dance, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Sadly, his amazing career was cut short by death in 1937 from a brain tumor. Gershwin was only thirty-eight years old.
Rhapsody in Blue
Band leader Paul Whiteman asked Gershwin to write a jazz concerto for an upcoming concert. Gershwin declined because there wasn't enough time to write it. He did an about face when he heard Vincent Lopez was planning to steal the idea of merging jazz and classical music and, thus, Gershwin wrote what was to become Rhapsody in Blue (1924) during the five weeks before the concert.
Rhapsody in Blue was well received by the public and, by the end of 1927, Whiteman's band had performed Rhapsody eighty-four times, and sold a million phonograph records. Because the work is nearly fifteen minutes long, the recording had to be sped up to fit on 12-inch records (the LP did not exist yet). Music critics were not as accommodating as Gershwin's fans:
How trite, feeble and conventional the tunes are; how sentimental and vapid the harmonic treatment, under its disguise of fussy and futile counterpoint! ... Weep over the lifelessness of the melody and harmony, so derivative, so stale, so inexpressive! - L. Gilman, New York Tribune, February 13, 1924
Rhapsody in Blue is a one-movement work for piano and orchestra. While it incorporates jazzy sounds, it's not jazz because there is no improvisation. Rhapsody has three main sections and a coda. Each section has an extended piano solo filled with flashy passages written to sound like improvisations.
The work opens with the famous clarinet solo with glissando (sliding between pitches) climbing up to a wailing high bluesy tone:
The clarinet blues theme is ensued by a repeated note theme played by horns and woodwinds. This theme reappears and is developed throughout the work:
The clarinet blues theme is bounced between orchestra and piano. About ninety seconds in the piano cuts loose with an extended solo. After the orchestra comments on the piano solo, a trumpet theme is introduced in march time:
The second section launches with a lively jazz theme in the low register:
The jazz theme is developed and tossed around the orchestra and followed by two lengthy piano solos before closing off the second section.
The third section mellows the mood with a slower tempo and sweeter sound. Violins introduce a lyrical and romantic theme:
The lyrical theme is diddled by the orchestra and handed off to the piano for development. Tempo accelerates in the coda and the lyrical theme morphs into a rollicking melody. The repeated note theme is used for a breakneck ending.
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Paris
Hollywood
Rhapsody in Blue
