I’m going to write a series of short articles on some of America’s great composers. I’ll start with the greatest – George Gershwin (1898-1937). Someone said were it not for his death from a brain tumor at age 38 that he’d have become the American Verdi. I think that if anything this assessment is an understatement. So great was his talent, genius is a better word, that he’d have mastered opera and orchestral composition. Nevertheless, what he did accomplish places him at the top of the list of American composers.
Born in Brooklyn to a poor Jewish immigrant couple, he became a virtuoso pianist and a successful songwriter while still a teenager. The details of his life are well-known and easily available so I won’t go over them here instead I’ll focus on his music. His unique accomplishment was to combine Western classical music with American jazz into something distinctive and appealing to almost any musical taste. While doing this he was also writing some of the most memorable songs in the Great American Songbook.
He made a number of piano rolls so we can hear what his playing sounded like without having to rely on primitive recordings. Of the three following selections Sweet and Lowdown and Novelette in Fourths are not well known, though they should be. Swanee written in 1919 was recorded in 1920 and became the biggest hit of Gershwin’s career. Gershwin’s playing is perfection. He could have made a career as a soloist had that been his focus.
Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (1924) was his first orchestral piece that combined jazz with European art music. It was an instant hit with the public. The critics took a while to agree that it was a masterpiece. Written for jazz band and piano it was orchestrated by Fere Grofé as Gershwin’s knowledge at that time (1924) was not sufficient for the task. He subsequently learned to do his own orchestrations.
During the twenties and thirties, he wrote a series of songs for Broadway, Hollywood, and for his Opera Porgy and Bess which is now, after a long struggle, part of the standard operatic repertory. Summertime from Porgy is sung by Billie Holiday. The Man I Love is from ‘Lady Be Good’. Also from that musical is Fascinatin’ Rhythm sung by Tony Bennett.
Gershwin wrote three short preludes for piano in 1926. They are instantly recognizable as written by Gershwin. His ability to write music of complexity and interest that wins audience approval on first hearing is a gift shared by the barest handful of composers of any age or style. The first prelude is marked Allegro ben ritmato e deciso and is in B-flat major. The second is Andante con moto and is in C-sharp minor. The final one is Agitato and is in E-flat minor. Gershwin Three Preludes
In 1925, the year following Rhapsody in Blue he composed his Piano Concerto in F. Andre Previn is the soloist on this recording. His compositional skills had improved so much in the intervening year that he wrote a piece within the ground rules of a traditional concerto that still sounds like Gershwin and no one else. He also orchestrated the concerto with exceptional skill. It’s the three usual movements – Allegro (F major); Adagio – Andante con moto (D-flat major); and Allegro agitato (G minor → F minor → F major).
Irving Berlin, one of Gershwin’s musical heroes, said the definitive words about Gershwin. “George is a composer, the rest of us are songwriters.” His premature death is an even greater blow to American music than was Bizet’s death at a similar age to French music. There was no American composer with his genius to take up the compositional slack left by his demise. Verdi lived almost a half-century longer than Gershwin. If he had died at the same age everything after Rigoletto would never have been written. It will be a long time before America sees his like again.
A brief note about his fatal illness. Gershwin’s first symptoms appeared three years before his death. First, he smelled burning rubber. He then developed absence seizures. His behavior became increasingly erratic. Before his illness, he was the sunniest of composers. He saw a variety of physicians – psychoanalysts, an internist, a neurologist. All failed to make the proper diagnosis. he was told it was all in his head which was true but inadequate. In the words of his friend Oscar Levant: “What a terrible place for it to be.” The exact type of tumor he had is still not certain. The Wikipedia biography says he had a glioblastoma. But that tumor usually kills in months not years. Given the primitive diagnostic and therapeutic tools available in the 1930s it’s likely that little could have been done to save him. But it’s not impossible that diagnosing and removing the tumor before it reached lethal dimension might have been effective.
Loved his concerto in F the best and the three preludes are such fun. I had a video of Porgy and Bess that I memorized. Such a unique composer. Thank you for the post.