Summertime
George Gershwin's Life in Music
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- US$17.99
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“Elegant and authoritative.” —Thomas Brothers, author of Help!: The Beatles, Duke Ellington, and the Magic of Collaboration
New York City native and gifted pianist George Gershwin (1898–1937) blossomed as an accompanist before his talent as a songwriter opened the way to Broadway, where he composed a long run of musical comedies, many with his brother Ira as lyricist. But his aspirations reached beyond commercial success. Appealing to listeners on both sides of the purported popular-classical divide, his first instrumental composition, Rhapsody in Blue, was an instant classic. He pushed boundaries again a decade later with the groundbreaking folk opera, Porgy and Bess—his magnum opus. In 1936, he and Ira moved west to write songs for Hollywood, but their work was cut short when George developed a brain tumor. He died at thirty-eight, a beloved artist who had fashioned his own brand of American music. Drawing extensively from letters and contemporaneous accounts, acclaimed music historian Richard Crawford traces the arc of Gershwin’s remarkable life, seamlessly blending colorful anecdotes with a celebration of his unforgettable music-making.
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George Gershwin, the maestro of the American Songbook, comes across as a serious composer who fused jazz and classical music in this admiring but bloodless biography. University of Michigan musicologist Crawford (America's Musical Life) follows Gershwin (1898 1937) and his rise in the ferment of early 20th century popular music from hawking tunes in New York's Tin Pan Alley to writing songs for Broadway and Hollywood musicals, including standards such as "Swanee," "I Got Rhythm," and "Someone to Watch Over Me." He foregrounds Gershwin's long-form symphonic jazz, including the "Rhapsody in Blue," the folk opera Porgy and Bess, and the "Concerto in F"; these pieces, Crawford shows, made Gershwin's reputation as a pioneer of a novel American blues-inflected classical style they occasionally appeared alongside Beethoven in concert programs and absorbed much of his time and ambition. Drawing heavily on Gershwin's letters, the author narrates the whorl of song-writing, rehearsals, parties, and concertizing that was his life, but there's little drama in the story barely even a love interest and Gershwin feels like a sunny, busy, and talented man without depth. Crawford discusses Gershwin's oeuvre in detail, but the musicological analysis "Gershwin's scheme balanced tonal stability with tonal freedom in a proportion that proved ideal for a thirty-two-bar aaba structure" doesn't sing. The result is an informative but humdrum take on Gershwin's music. Photos.
