Metropolis, Flesh, Blood, & Dreams From Gershwin
A Birthday Shout-Out to George Gershwin and His Concerto in F
There’s this dream I had in which I’m wearily trudging through a bleak landscape of grimy, brittle monoliths. With each step, the monoliths become less abstract and oppressive. Darkness gives way to splashes, streaks, and sequences of sepia, blue, purple, and yellow. Streets unravel as shining machines roll out of nowhere. Lights, voices, and noises sculpt the air. Skyscrapers show their genders and whisper their stories. With each energized step I see, hear, smell, and touch people rushing past—faces in joy, in awe, in laughter, in business, and in melancholy. The intemperate blur of metropolis is now a set for an "asphalt ballet," starring warm flesh and blood, made in the image of God. Someone is watching over you and me.
George Gershwin’s CONCERTO IN F is the soundtrack of this dream.
Gershwin lived only thirty-eight years, but during the 20th Century, he did for music what Raymond Chandler did for the novel, T.S. Eliot for poetry, Alfred Hitchcock for film-making, C.S. Lewis for theology, The Marx Brothers for humor, and Pablo Picasso for painting. Gershwin crossed barriers between classical, folk, jazz, pop, the ethnic, and the experimental. He merged street noise and symphonies in the tone poem, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS. The "folk opera," PORGY AND BESS (the only American opera consistently performed around the world), gave us the evocative classic, Summertime.
George, along with lyricist brother Ira, produced a body of work that was commercially and creatively triumphant, from films scores and musicals to songs that are now standards: Nice Work If You Can Get It, Someone To Watch Over Me, I Got Rhythm, Our Love Is Here To Stay, and so many more.
The CONCERTO is, basically, a sequel to the better-known RHAPSODY IN BLUE, the 1924 magnum opus that is now an American touchstone--an orchestral masterwork with magnificent blues, jazz, and klezmer (Jewish) effects. Gershwin didn’t create the language of orchestral jazz (that credit goes to Duke Ellington, Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, and others), but the RHAPSODY certainly took it to a supreme level, inspiring composers around the world—from classical to film scoring (especially in crime noir films)—infusing the blues/jazz alphabet in daring and accessible ways.
Brian Wilson says he listens to BLUE for inspiration almost every day. Today, signatures from "Blue" are quoted in every single genre of popular music, from country to techno.
The CONCERTO is an expansion on the American jazz experience of RHAPSODY IN BLUE but, in comparison to the overtly Americanized RHAPSODY, the CONCERTO was based purely on a European template. The CONCERTO also has a broader emotional range compared to the more jovial BLUE. "Many persons thought the RHAPSODY was only a happy accident," Gershwin told biographer Isaac Goldberg. "Well, I went out…to show them there was plenty more where that had come from. I made up my mind to do a piece of absolute music."
The CONCERTO premiered at Carnegie Hall on December 3rd, 1925. It was commissioned by Walter Damrosch, conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra, and promoter of music on radio in the early days of broadcasting. "This shows confidence on his part as I had never written anything for symphony before," wrote Gershwin in his production notes.
The RHAPSODY was orchestrated by Ferde Grofe (GRAND CANYON SUITE), but the CONCERTO was Gershwin’s doing. "I started to write the CONCERTO in London, after buying books on musical structure to find out what the concerto form actually was! …I had to come through because I had already signed a contract to play it seven times. It took me three months to compose…and one month to orchestrate…"
Children of immigrants were autodidactic and motivated. Work meant "do or die." It is no wonder the lower-classed "tired and weary" empathized with underclassed African-Americans and, subsequently, harmonized with the art of the Harlem Renaissance. Gershwin, the marginally-educated son of Russian Jews, was sharp as a tack, willing to hang himself on any wall.
Like car chrome flashing past fluttering skirts, the first movement (Allegro) of the CONCERTO bursts open with tympanis, reeds, and violins on a Charleston rhythm. The Charleston was "the hot dance of decadent white people" in the 20s as well as a hit song (from the musical RUNNIN’ WILD) by ragtime pianist James P. Johnson (who Gershwin greatly admired). The Charleston of the CONCERTO subsides to an ambling piano melody (Moderato cantabile), conveying detachment, ego, and the ironic loneliness of city life. This arches into a gorgeous Grandioso, a lyric theme that is bittersweet and urgent yet suggests hope and promise to the heart.
The rich orchestration in the Grandioso is often compared to Claude Debussy, the grandmaster of French composers that Gershwin was so fond of (French composers [Debussy, Ravel, Satie] from that era are amongst my preferred musical clusters). Gershwin would one day apply for lessons with Maurice Ravel (BOLERO). Ravel declined, allegedly saying, "Why would you want to risk being a second-rate Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin?”
Gershwin intended that the second movement (Andante con moto) of the CONCERTO have a "poetic, nocturnal tone. It utilizes the atmosphere of what has come to be referred to as the American blues." It is introduced by a mysterious choir of clarinets and muted trumpet, played as if they’d been rehearsed on a fire escape above an alley. A loping urban cowboy theme accelerates, then is subdued by an echo of the Grandioso.
The final movement (Allegro con brio or Molto agitato con brio) reprises the first movement, but with even more passion. Gershwin called it "an orgy of rhythm, starting violently and keeping to the same pace throughout." A gong recalls the Grandioso, leaving us with a feeling that, when the party is over, we will not be alone in the cold, naked city.
Gershwin called himself a "modern romantic." He said, "…True music…must reflect the thought and aspirations of the people and time. My people are Americans. My time is today."
A knowledge of the 1920s lends a richer context to the CONCERTO and the RHAPSODY. To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Twenties was an age of miracles, art, excess, and satire. Rudolph Valentino brought the tango from Argentina to Hollywood. Josephine Baker took "jazz dancing" to Paris.
Race issues, fashion, morality, prosperity, and technology were joined in a whirling dervish (somewhat portending life in the Sixties). Aaron Copland said, "It was great to be 20 in the twenties."
"Various composers have been walking around jazz like a cat around a plate of soup, waiting for it to cool off so that they could enjoy it without burning their tongues," said Walter Damrosch in his program notes for the CONCERTO. "Lady Jazz . . . has danced her way around the world . . . but for all her travels and sweeping popularity, she has encountered no knight who could lift her to a level that would enable her to be…respectable. Gershwin seems to have accomplished this miracle . . . by dressing his extremely independent and up-to-date young lady in the classic garb of a concerto. . . . He is the Prince who has taken Cinderella by the hand and openly proclaimed her a Princess to the astonished world"
Andre Previn probably holds the record for a living pianist who has played the CONCERTO the most times. It would be excellent to hear "Gershwin-ologist" Mike Garson (David Bowie’s pianist) perform this.
I’m a fan of the Oscar Levant recordings from 1949. They’ve been digitally remastered from 78s to CD. Levant, a multi-media celebrity known for his scathing humor and diverse intellect, was one of Gershwin’s best friends and chief interpreters. In the rush of great recordings of the CONCERTO, Levant gets overlooked because he worked outside of the sanctum of classical pianists.
Gershwin’s musical OH! KAY was named after Kay Swift, a notable composer and pianist who was also Gershwin’s long-time girlfriend. She wrote, "Did you ever feel that a composer resembled his music? …In the case of George Gershwin, it was true. The man and his music seemed strongly alike. This idea first became apparent to me at a rehearsal of his CONCERTO…in 1925…the rehearsal was in Carnegie Hall and, although he did not run to the piano, he looked as though he might have liked to. Some of his excitement reached to the few of us who watched from the audience.
"Being slim, long-legged, and fast-moving, he always looked taller than his actual height, which was a couple inches short of six feet. He sat erectly at the piano, with no needless gestures, but with an eagerness that made the first and last movement of the CONCERTO sound sparkling, while the slower, more wistful second movement never became too sentimental.
"When he rose, at the end, to bow to the conductor and the orchestra, it was apparent that the performance had given him just about the happiest experience a composer can have—to hear his composition with the realization that the sound he has heard is as close as possible to the sound he hoped for while composing the work."
Igor Stravinsky called the CONCERTO a "work of pure genius." If you apply Stravinsky’s maxim that "music is but a way to measure time," the CONCERTO did that and gave me dreams that cannot be measured in time.
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