George Gershwin (1898–1937,) born Jacob Gershovitz, was an American composer and pianist whose compositions spanned both popular and classical genres. One of the most significant and famous American composers of all time, he is celebrated for orchestral and piano melodies that blend classical music forms with the stylistic nuances of popular music and jazz.
Gershwin composed many successful songs and musicals, the orchestral work Rhapsody in Blue (1924,) and the folk opera Porgy and Bess (1935.) His brother Ira Gershwin (1896–1983) wrote the lyrics for many of these works, including Funny Face (1927,) Girl Crazy (1930,) and Of Thee I Sing (1931.)
Born to impoverished Russian-Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn, New York, Gershwin excelled on roller-skates rather than schoolwork. His musical education was limited by circumstance. He studied piano as a boy, published his first popular song at the age of 14, and left high school to work for Jerome H Remick and Co., a Tin Pan Alley music-publishing company. In 1920, he had his first hit with ‘Swanee,’ and he began to compose songs for Broadway reviews.
In 1924, Gershwin wrote his first successful musical comedy, Lady Be Good, collaborating with his brother, the lyricist Ira Gershwin. In the 1920s and early 1930s he scored a series of hit musicals, including Of Thee I Sing (1931,) and in the process produced numerous classics of American popular songs, such as ‘Someone to Watch Over Me,’ ‘Embraceable You,’ and ‘I Got Rhythm.’
Gershwin also wrote songs and scores for motion pictures, notably several screen musicals with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. In 1924, a commission from the conductor Paul Whiteman led to his composition of Rhapsody in Blue, a concert work combining Romantic emotionalism and the jazz idiom with extraordinary success. The Concerto in F for piano and orchestra (1925) and An American in Paris (1928) followed.
George and Ira Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess (1935) was commercially unsuccessful when it was first staged, but has since won worldwide popularity. Porgy and Bess spawned the hit aria Summertime.
Gershwin died of a brain tumor at the height of his powers. He was 38.
The American pianist and musicologist Howard Pollack wrote George Gershwin: His Life and Work (2006.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by George Gershwin
The composer does not sit around and wait for an inspiration to walk up and introduce itself… Making music is actually little else than a matter of invention aided and abetted by emotion. In composing we combine what we know of music with what we feel.
—George Gershwin
True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.
—George Gershwin
Topics: Music
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