CHAPTER 13 | GEORGE GERSHWIN 323
ensemble, Rhapsody in Blue entered the orchestral repertory and became the twen-
tieth century’s most performed piece of American concert music. A hybrid of classi-
cal music, blues, and jazz, Rhapsody in Blue offers performers more than one way to
emphasize its divergent elements.PORGY AND BESS
Beginning with Rhapsody in Blue in 1924, Gershwin pursued a dual career as
a popular songwriter and a composer of concert works. Entrusting the job of
orchestration to an assistant was standard procedure in the hurried schedules of
Broadway and Holly wood, and Gershwin continued to do so for his musical com-
edies and his movie music. But he did his own orchestration for all of his concert
works after the Rhapsody: the Concerto in F for piano and orchestra (1925), the
tone poem An American in Paris (1928, partly composed during Gershwin’s visit to
that city), and the Cuban Overture (1932), among others.
Orchestration by the composer is only one of the features that distinguishes
Porg y and Bess (1935) from Gershwin’s stage musicals. Gershwin called Porg y
and Bess a “folk opera”; the work’s precise nature was contested from the start.
Gershwin’s Broadway background led some to doubt whether he was up to a full-
fl edged operatic challenge. The score called for opera singers, but the show played
nightly in a Broadway theater. Knowledge that massive cuts took place before the
New York premiere has also fed the view that the work is more a succession of
musical numbers than an operatic whole, as has the popularity of some individ-
ual numbers. Moreover, commercial success for Porg y and Bess fi rst came after
Gershwin’s death—in 1937, at age thirty-eight—when, stripped of its recitative, it
was played as a Broadway musical: a drama of separate musical numbers linked
with spoken dialogue. Not until 1976 did the complete opera reach the stage, in a
landmark production by the Houston Grand Opera, which the previous year had
presented the fi rst full production of Scott Joplin’s Tre e m o n i s h a (see chapter 10).
Based on a libretto by Dubose Hey ward, from his novella Porg y (1925), Porg y
and Bess features music of remarkable variety. The memorable melodies of the
best-known numbers have made them enduringly popular. These songs include
“Summertime,” a lullaby that invokes the spirituals of slavery times; “My Man’s
Gone Now,” sung by the widow of a man killed in an onstage brawl; Porgy’s
banjo song “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’,” in aaba form (as is “My Man’s Gone Now”);
and the love duet “Bess, You Is My Woman Now.” The principals of the opera
are also members of a larger community, virtually always onstage, whose char-
acter Gershwin portrays in communal songs. Instead of borrowing traditional
spirituals, Gershwin wrote new ones, ranging from songful exaltation (“Leavin’
for the Promise’ Lan’”) and consolation (“Clara, Clara”) to stark desolation
(“Gone, Gone, Gone”) and even chanted prayer (“Oh, Doctor Jesus”), inspired by
Gershwin’s visits to black churches in South Carolina while he was composing
the work. There is also a picnic episode where the amoral drug peddler Spor-
tin’ Life gets the community, softened up by a day of carousing, to join him in
a mockery of biblical teaching, sung in call-and-response dialogue full of blue
notes (“It Ain’t Necessarily So”).
Gershwin’s use of African American folk songs as a model for the music of
Porg y and Bess was widely acknowledged from the start. Not until more recently,a “folk opera”best-known numbersinfl uences172028_13_305-331_r3_ko.indd 323 23/01/13 8:39 PM