George Gershwin

Born Jacob Gershvin on September 26, 1898, in Brooklyn to Russian Jewish immigrants, George Gershwin moved fluidly between concert compositions and popular songs during the twentieth century. His father operated an assortment of modest commercial ventures, and the young Gershwin, as The New Grove Dictionary of Music observed, "excelled at street sports." Piano instruction from Charles Hambitzer opened the door to European classical repertoire.

After leaving school in 1914 to work as a song plugger for publisher Remick, Gershwin absorbed the idioms of ragtime and stride piano. His initial major success arrived in 1920 when Al Jolson recorded the song “Swanee.” Partnership with brother Ira produced one of the era’s most finely calibrated songwriting collaborations, each brother sensitive to the other’s nuances. Their 1924 musical Lady, Be Good introduced the widely performed number “Fascinating Rhythm.”

On the concert platform Gershwin offered Rhapsody in Blue in 1924, most often heard in Ferde Grofé’s orchestration; the Piano Concerto in F of 1925; and An American in Paris, premiered in 1928. The hybrid score Porgy and Bess, labeled “folk opera” at an early stage, unfolds among Black inhabitants of Charleston, South Carolina, and features the frequently interpreted song “Summertime.”

Further stage works included the 1930 musical Girl Crazy, whose hit “I Got Rhythm” combined immediate appeal with intricate structure, and the 1932 satire Of Thee I Sing. In 1936 Gershwin relocated to Hollywood to compose for RKO. Headaches that surfaced early the following year were dismissed as tension; a brain tumor proved the actual cause, and he died on July 11, 1937.

Debate over Gershwin’s standing among classical composers remains active. Observers frequently note the kinship between his vernacular and concert languages, observing that despite sustained study of earlier masters he seldom confronted the demands of extended formal architecture traditionally central to concert music. His orchestral scores largely present chains of memorable melodies, a trait more readily accepted in a work titled “rhapsody” than in pieces aspiring to the designation “concerto” or “tone poem,” the category once assigned to An American in Paris. European listeners nevertheless embraced these compositions, and traces of their jazz vocabulary appear in the music of Maurice Ravel. Adherents of twelve-tone technique also held Gershwin in esteem; he socialized with Alban Berg in Paris and played tennis with Arnold Schoenberg in Hollywood. “It seems to me beyond doubt that Gershwin was an innovator,” Schoenberg wrote, suggesting that history might ultimately regard him as the earliest signal of a hybrid idiom that draws techniques from multiple traditions without allegiance to either the classical or popular sphere. Who could ask for anything more?