George Gershwin (1898-1937)
An American in Paris
“George Gershwin is the only songwriter I know who became a composer,” noted Irving Berlin in 1961. Crossover is a discredited concept now, but Gershwin stands almost alone in having achieved a genuine cross-fertilisation of different genres.
He drew rather less complimentary reactions from most of the American classical establishment. “Nauseous claptrap” was the verdict of the New York Telegram on An American in Paris at its premiere in December 1928. Hardly less dismissive was the Evening Post, whose critic declared, “For those not too deeply concerned with any apparently outmoded niceties of art, it was an amusing occasion… To conceive of a symphonic audience listening to it with any degree of pleasure or patience twenty years from now, when whoopee is no longer even a word, is another matter.”
He found a more receptive audience in Europe: when he toured his Piano Concerto there earlier the same year, Ravel, when asked what he would like as a birthday present, declared that he wanted to meet Gershwin. The ensuing meeting, where Gershwin asked Ravel for composition lessons (as he was wont to do to almost every major composer he met, so self-conscious was he about his lack of formal training), resulted in Ravel’s observation, “why be a second-rate Ravel when you are a first-rate Gershwin?”
It was during this European visit that Gershwin bought a number of car horns in Paris. The results of his experiments with them can be heard at the outset of An American in Paris. Described as a “Tone Poem” on the manuscript, it presents a lively sequence of events, from the opening street scene to the grand romance of the slow central section. Freed from the formal constraints imposed by traditional orchestral genres, the piece proceeds in a rhapsodical, almost stream-of-consciousness manner that perhaps, along with such touches as the car horns, puts him closer in spirit to Ives than is generally recognised. One more European who recognised his significance was Arnold Schoenberg, who wrote after Gershwin’s untimely death: “I know he is an artist and a composer; he expressed musical ideas; and they were new – as is the way in which he expressed them.”
Ives: Decoration Day
Charles Ives (1874-1954)
Decoration Day
When the young Charles Ives scoffed at John the village stonemason’s off-key singing in church, his father corrected him: “Look into his face and hear the music of the ages. Don’t pay too much attention to the sounds. If you do, you may miss the music.” George Ives was an inveterate experimenter who encouraged his son to open his ears to sounds outside the scope of conventional music theory. Ives recalled his memories of his father leading the singing at camp-meeting services that were a feature of the revivalist Christianity prevalent in New England at that time: “Father…would always encourage the people to sing their own way. Most of them knew the words and music (their version) by heart and sang it that way. If they threw the poet or composer around a bit, so much the better for the poetry and the music. There was power and exaltation in these great conclaves of sound from humanity.” The clusters of sound and wayward harmonies and rhythms that fill his music reflect these childhood memories.
Decoration Day is the second of four pieces that together are known as the Holidays Symphony. Ives wrote on one of the sketches, “Symphony, but not called Sym.”, and on another occasion remarked, “These movements may be played as separate pieces. These pieces may be lumped together as a symphony.” The holiday that it portrays commemorates those who died during the Civil War of 1861-65. As with much of Ives’ music, it has its roots in earlier works: in this case an organ piece of his own based on the hymn tune “Adeste Fidelis” (better known nowadays as “Oh Come All Ye Faithful”), and the Second Regiment Connecticut National Guard March by David Wallis Reeves. A number of other popular and hymn tunes of the time can also be heard by the attentive ear.
The villagers gather and the parade forms and marches to the graveyard, where the graves are decorated and hymns sung. Then all march back to the village to the strains of the Second Regiment, below which can barely be discerned the sombre thoughts of the soldiers. Finally, “in the silence the shadow of the early morning flower-song rises over the town, and the sunset behind West Mountain breathes its benediction upon the day.”
Decoration Day
When the young Charles Ives scoffed at John the village stonemason’s off-key singing in church, his father corrected him: “Look into his face and hear the music of the ages. Don’t pay too much attention to the sounds. If you do, you may miss the music.” George Ives was an inveterate experimenter who encouraged his son to open his ears to sounds outside the scope of conventional music theory. Ives recalled his memories of his father leading the singing at camp-meeting services that were a feature of the revivalist Christianity prevalent in New England at that time: “Father…would always encourage the people to sing their own way. Most of them knew the words and music (their version) by heart and sang it that way. If they threw the poet or composer around a bit, so much the better for the poetry and the music. There was power and exaltation in these great conclaves of sound from humanity.” The clusters of sound and wayward harmonies and rhythms that fill his music reflect these childhood memories.
Decoration Day is the second of four pieces that together are known as the Holidays Symphony. Ives wrote on one of the sketches, “Symphony, but not called Sym.”, and on another occasion remarked, “These movements may be played as separate pieces. These pieces may be lumped together as a symphony.” The holiday that it portrays commemorates those who died during the Civil War of 1861-65. As with much of Ives’ music, it has its roots in earlier works: in this case an organ piece of his own based on the hymn tune “Adeste Fidelis” (better known nowadays as “Oh Come All Ye Faithful”), and the Second Regiment Connecticut National Guard March by David Wallis Reeves. A number of other popular and hymn tunes of the time can also be heard by the attentive ear.
The villagers gather and the parade forms and marches to the graveyard, where the graves are decorated and hymns sung. Then all march back to the village to the strains of the Second Regiment, below which can barely be discerned the sombre thoughts of the soldiers. Finally, “in the silence the shadow of the early morning flower-song rises over the town, and the sunset behind West Mountain breathes its benediction upon the day.”
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