318 PART 3 | FROM WORLD WAR I THROUGH WORLD WAR II
Gershwin’s song writing career followed a rising trajectory. At fi rst he was
able to place interpolated songs into musical comedies and revues. Their popu-
larity led to opportunities to write complete scores for full-length musicals; a
major success was 1924’s Lady Be Good! (see chapter 11), and several others fol-
lowed throughout the next decade. And as it did for other songwriters such as
Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern, success on Broadway led eventually to offers
from Holly wood, where Gershwin spent most of the last year of his life compos-
ing songs for fi lms, most notably Shall We Dance, a 1937 dance musical starring
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
Of the hundreds of songs Gershwin wrote throughout his career for Tin
Pan Alley, Broadway, and Holly wood, several stand out as masterpieces of the
classic American popular song. Graceful, sometimes blues-tinged melodies fi ll
such romantic ballads as “The Man I Love,” “Someone to Watch over Me,” and
“Embraceable You.” Clever, energetic syncopations mark up-tempo numbers
like “Fascinating Rhythm” and “I Got Rhythm.” Between those two extremes lies
a Gershwin specialty, the relaxed, jazz-tinged song in medium tempo, such as
“Nice Work If You Can Get It” and “They Can’t Take That Away from Me,” songs
perfectly suited to the understated singing of Fred Astaire, for whom they were
written. The quantity and quality of these hits place Gershwin fi rmly in the pan-
theon of classic American song writers, along with Berlin, Kern, Cole Porter,
Richard Rodgers, Harold Arlen, and Hoagy Carmichael.RHAPSODY IN BLUE
In November 1923 the Canadian mezzo-soprano Eva Gauthier presented in
New York’s Aeolian Hall a “Recital of Ancient and Modern Music for Voice” that
mixed classical and popular music. Her modern selections included songs by
Bartók and Schoenberg, plus a set of six songs billed as jazz, including Berlin’s
“Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and two numbers by Gershwin, who accompanied
her in that part of the program. The American songs delighted Gauthier’s audi-
ence, and so did Gershwin’s performance in his fi rst concert-hall appearance.
Playing from sheet music, the young pianist took off from what was written on
the page in a way that sounded spontaneous. Gershwin’s freewheeling approach
to performance—he played in the style of an improvisation, though many details
were most likely planned—owed much to jazz, and it brought to the recital a
sense of fun not often heard in the concert hall.
Three months later, on February 12, 1924, again in Aeolian Hall, Gershwin
played the featured piano part in the premiere of his Rhapsody in Blue (LG 13.2),
a “jazz concerto” commissioned for the occasion by Paul W hiteman, the leader
of an immensely popular dance orchestra. Billing his concert “An Experiment
in Modern Music,” W hiteman courted and gained the attention of New York’s
music critics. With discussions of jazz music very much in the air, it is no sur-
prise that the unveiling of a new jazz-fl avored concert piece by an up-and-
coming young songwriter attracted public notice. W hat is surprising, however,
is that Gershw in’s work lived up to the ballyhoo of preconcert publicity. Bring ing
together three separate strands of musical development—the rise of blues as a
popular song form, the spread of jazz as an instrumental music, and the pushLG 13.2K George Gershwin
(1898–1937), pianist,
songwriter, and composer;
portrait by Arthur
Kaufmann, 1936.172028 13 305 - 331 _r 3 _mr.indd 318 30 / 01 / 13 10 : 56 PM