Gershwin Documentary

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] with every generation that has passed us by long live the cause of freedom and every event that has shaped who we are comes the awareness that history lives in all of us pick a time choose a place and escape to where the past comes alive the History Channel in the 1890s hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews fled the program of the Tsar to America the land of many opportunities among these hapless people was a poor Jew from st. Petersburg moistured Gershowitz the grandson of a rabbi in the son of a mechanic when the ship reached New York moisture rushed on the deck to see the Statue of Liberty as he leaned over the railing the wind blew off his hat in it he had tucked away the address of an uncle the only contact he had in America this anecdote would be of little interest to us if it were not the story of a man who would soon change his name to Morris Gershwin and whose two sons IRA and George would make history [Music] [Applause] [Music] in 1895 Mars Gershwin married a fellow Russian rose brewski in the following year they had their first son IRA on the 26th of September 1898 in this modest two-story brick house in Brooklyn their second son George was born in 1900 third son followed and six years later the Gershwins had their only daughter Frances always known as Frankie unlike the childhood of European composers many of them growing up in the picturesque settings of European cities George's childhood was that of an ordinary American city boy he grew up in the dirty and noisy streets of New York a perilous place where he quickly learned to fight for survival Mara's had many different professions ranging from the owner of a restaurant Turkish baths 2-billion pool parlors George was a robust child picking fights skipping school he became roller skating champion of seventh Street his nickname in the neighborhood was cheesecake on account of his father at the time running a bakery sometimes his mother had to drag him by force from the street as his sister remembers George was a pretty wild boy he was he run around freely everywhere people used to say mrs. Gershwin has nice children but that's an approach she's gonna have trouble with that son George someday at home or school there was little intellectual encouragement anybody interested in music was called a but George secretly began to learn to play the piano and when his family acquired one for IRA George not for the last time stole the show [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's the base width George sat down and played the piano at once and we were all flabbergasted and you realize that he's been playing in other places and it really was bought for IRA but when IRA heard George he gave up at once and my brother Arthur was supposed to play the violin but he found he he wondered why he had to stand and play an instrument and that's it the way George dies was it so the parents decided that now it was time to give George a proper musical education and miss Greene was found in the neighborhood who for $0.50 a lesson rushed him through the scales his next teacher mr. Goldfarb a Hungarian with an impressive mustache who played the piano with great gusto and a barrel of gestures already charged a dollar fifty cents for months George played arias from operas when he had progressed to the overture of William Tell his father thought it was time again for a change Charles Hambleton OTT only taught him to play the piano properly but also opened up the world of Chopin lists Debussy and even Schoenberg there was no way of keeping Jorge at school any longer after a short stint as a pianist in a bar he was offered the job of song plugger in the publishing firm of Jerome a Tremec on 28th Street known as Tin Pan Alley Jerome Kern Irving Berlin and Oscar Hammerstein were the Masters of Tin Pan Alley Tin Pan Alley was the street of songs all day pianos banged away as singers and actors looked for new material [Music] it was the pluggers job to make the song a hit at a time when radio television and jukeboxes did not exist Tin Pan Alley in American popular music were inseparable at the age of 15 George had become a part of the nation's song business and experience he always remembered every day at 9:00 a.m. I was there at the piano playing popular tunes for anybody that came along chorus ladies used to breathe down my neck and some customers even treated me like dirt people would come in and want to hear certain songs and they'd all say go true Gershwin's room he's the one who's ready you already hit a song the way it really is [Music] he played some wealthy purpose had a wonderful sense of harmony which always interested me because when he plays songs they hardly ever sound of the same twice because he used different harmonies and different rhythms dissatisfied with his progress Gershwin announced that he wanted to become a composer an American Mendelssohn a mental son of popular music and following his two idols Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin he began to compose in 1916 the name of George Gershwin appeared for the first time on a copy of sheet music Sophie Tucker the powerful red-hot mama had heard the piece and recommended its publication it earned George it's a rather unique creation for one thing this is a popular song in the 32 bar era that's only 20 bars in the chorus it's it's not the standard form of a popular song of that time also this song uses a flowing melody line in the bridge and yet has syncopated phrases breaking it up Gershwin was always experimenting with different rhythms and this is an example in his very first song how he was creating something different and I'm going to sing about you for whooing time is just about you who I'm going to tell the world a story and it's all going to be about you Irving Caesar was not yet the famous lyricist whose songs would include t42 and is it true what they say about Dixie but a young employee of Henry Ford he and Gershwin set out to write their first hit for a Broadway musical one day I said I have a pretty good idea for a song George he was very young you know when I was very young I said he said what do you called us in a song called you just you and so it's in ten minutes I write very fast we had you just you and George and I was great trepidation walked into mr. belches room is his office and I demonstrated with some enthusiasm oh he's do well boys it sounds very good he says what about $300 and we were silent we were this is alright we'll make it 500 that'll be 250 for each of you I thought we said 300 he wants us to give him 300 the publishing so he gave us a check for 250 each Gershwin was not yet 21 when he wrote his first complete score for Broadway lalla Lucio billed as an up-to-the-minute comedy of class and distinction tells the story of a dentist who has left two million dollars by an art on the condition that he divorces his wife a chorus girl called Lucille the inevitable happens the hero divorces his wife picks up the money and he remarries his former bride two of the musical numbers stand out there's more to the kiss than the sound and nobody but you soon Caesar and Gershwin were plotting to write another hit [Music] who walking down Broadway and with a song there was a very big identity hindustan a one step I said to George why don't we write an American one step why was the beat in the stage George and very quietly we know Swami in ten minutes ten minutes I started out he picked it up boom we're off to the races I've been away from you go long dad how long ya al jolson one of the most magnetic stars of Broadway introduced swanee at the Winter Garden and went 60 girls with light bulbs in their shoes sang the chorus the house came down I've been away from you a long time I want to be the birds are singing it is song by the banjo strumming something low I know that you call me to body you're calling me funny oh I love you how I love you my heroes swanny in the world here Cixi eve i know my Mami's waiting for me praying for me down by the floor team in a more when I get to that party within a year a million copies of sheet music was sold and the lyricist and composer each earned ten thousand dollars in royalties music hall shows were very popular they have become an American institution glorifying the American girl in the 1920s among the most famous shows were the George White's candles productions in the grand Ziegfeld Manor the ingredients were always the same a grandiose design extravagant costumes pretty girls in a series of song numbers haphazardly strung together the producer George white took a chance in commissioned Gershwin to write for his reviews from 1922 1924 Gershwin wrote 45 songs some of them are forgotten others will not be missed but two of them have become classic Gershwin they stood out immediately for their freshness and originality they were somebody loves me and stairway to paradise [Music] I'm going to get there at any price I'm on my way [Music] [Music] [Music] I'm [Music] [Music] [Music] he had a kind of a drive to be a success but that was one of the things that most of these I think in terms of the songwriters who became something in the 20s and 30s they were the children of immigrants and they came to a new country and they decided they would be more American than anybody and also they wanted to be number one and certainly he wanted to be and it's like a an accident of genes because there was no musical background we always think in terms of the Bach family and the SCAR lottie's and whatnot and Gershwin just came out of nowhere no one could understand it Gershwin's most ambitious undertaking for the scandals was a 20-minute opera called Blue Monday composed in five days it contained many musical cliches but some of the material sung in true operatic fashion pointed clearly towards developments to come with [Music] the one day that my dice lose they just repaired that's when my cares [Music] an opera fitted very oddly into a music-hall review so it was not surprising when it was withdrawn after the opening night despite his prestigious conductor Paul Whiteman my [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Gershwin's desired to write serious music was further kindled when Whiteman the famous king of jazz suggested that he write a new work for the concert hall in the jazz idiot [Music] jazz was the voice of the age it brought great a variety and Richard orchestration to popular music more subtlety and richer shading the new rhythms were for dancing and America was ready to swing with it soon the voice was also to be heard in the concert hall Stravinsky set T mio and even Debussy had begun to weave jazz into their music and Gershwin who had continued to study composition set out to write a list in Rhapsody incorporating jazz in three weeks he had written a work for two pianos with some indication of scoring Whiteman's arranger faire de Graaf a did the orchestration first for jazz band and eventually adapted it for Symphony Orchestra the historic concert took place on February the 12th 1924 at the Olien Hall in New York in the audience was a formidable array of social and artistic figures among them Jascha Heifetz Fritz Kreisler Rachmaninoff Leopold Stokowski Stravinsky called an experiment in modern music the program was to present jazz in all its various facets as the long program progressed there were signs of restlessness even boredom after 23 numbers almost at the end of the program Gershwin strolled up to the piano and sat down with the first opening wail of the clarinet solo the audience set up [Music] what he did is he opened up the concert hall to the American composer no one took American composers seriously and most you know usually you had to be European or dead mostly both you know so that he did that and they said oh here's this very young handsome guy and he's suddenly an American composer playing concertos in Carnegie Hall what's so special about Gershwin is that his music appeals to us and can be done within the traditional fabric of musical life where to put it the actual first time the piano plays it just plays and this isn't that nighttime lonesome world which perhaps is best expressed in this piece where everything is stripped aside and you just have someone sitting in a back room play [Music] now this little touch that's from Chopin or list or some other wonderful thing that he studied but this is it has a simplicity at a directness and an honesty which is unprecedented in the world of concert music there's just no adornment there's just nothing and he comes back to this again and again [Music] Gershom didn't consciously develop a tone of longing in his music it was something which was there it was in contrast to the that up-tempo you know Jazz Age quality the longing quality has been very often remarked was a synthesis of elements from Jewish music from black music from blues from various elements of jazz the Rhapsody in Blue has seen many guises it has been done in music halls played by piano solo solo harmonica and mandolin Orchestra and sung by a acapella chorus and in 1984 it opened the Olympic Games in Los Angeles [Music] to the finest concert halls This American classic it involves no less than 84 grand pianos as Gershwin's fame spread and people began to recognize his Tunes by their beat and acquitting of the rhythm which became his hallmark he moved up in the social world among his new friends and acquaintances were Gertrude Lawrence maurice chevalier the moss hearts and even maurice ravel's Gershwin was gregarious in society and with his piano playing he quickly became the center of any party an evening with Gershwin was always a Gershwin evening every time he came into anybody's house he sat down and played the piano and moss my husband and Cole Porter wrote a musical together called Jubilee and the character who is supposed to be Elsa Maxwell says they're talking about the party she's going to give she says it will be different in every way Gershwin's promised not to play I think he loved a large group because then he sat down at the piano which is what he'd loved to do better than anything else I don't ever remember him and close touch with just one or two people where he would talk and give his views he did not like to be alone he hated to be alone and I used to go over there every afternoon but he didn't even like to work alone you see when I was a he was always working and I was also working I had embroidery and all kinds of things that I brought along with me and then about four o'clock we go for a little sprint through the park running and that was fun he had a rare capacity for making friends among them was one person who became closer to him than anybody else Kay Swift the composer of fine and dandy and can't we be friends I don't think he went through a thing of saying oh I must write music I think he just did it the way v/o the way some people cross their legs when they sit down and others just sit like this I know it was that way would meet you exactly I started writing little silly tunes when I was five and always hearing music but he did not hear it nearly as much as I did as a child because his parents were not specially musical and I think it was quite instinctive I don't think he analyzed how he wanted to do anything I think it just came through in 1924 at the Liberty Theatre in New York a new show opened lady be good Fred and Adele Astaire played a brother and sister routine who had fallen on hard times it was brisk and inventive and had a wealth of original ideas the songs were delightful and literate well above the run-of-the-mill of musical comedy writing it contains such Gershwin classics as fascinating rhythm and the man I love [Music] [Applause] [Music] and he'll be making strong and when he comes my way I'll do my best to make you stay [Music] maybe I shall medium Sunday maybe one day maybe still I'm sure to medium maybe Tuesday will be [Music] a little just meant for two from which I'll never with you and so all the super I'm waiting for the man [Music] [Music] lady be good not only brought a new sophistication into popular music but it also established IRA firmly as George's partner IRA had been a prolific lyricist working often with other composers but from now on most of his writing would be with his brother George the two became inseparable IRA was the greatest pillar in George's life George loved being with people up going to parties whereas IRA would rather stay home and read and have a few friends around whom he'd like to talk to but if he was at a party with George who was usually sitting in a corner watching everything and he accepted that he thought George was wonderful and watch thought he was wonderful George was more like his mother and then he as he said she was purposeful and driven to be very successful she was a very tough cookie his father was a very sweet and gentle soul with a delightful sense of humor IRA was more like the father the more self-effacing and out of the foreground he did not mind one bit the George dominated every party sometimes he would sing he'd put his glasses on top of his head close his eyes and out would come these sounds and he sang better than George I [Music] at last it seems I found her now I won't be happy till my arms are around her Oh Oh if I could only throw me oh me oh my in 1977 thanks to June Levante I met IRA and I ended up spending six years working in IRAs archive IRA preferred to have a melody first when he worked with George George was always so prolific that it was very easy for him to play a bunch of melodies for IRA and then IRA could pick and he would settle Eirik later sometimes working with IRA where IRA would come up with a title and then they would work back and forth it was IRA who suggested that George used the famous slow theme of Rhapsody in Blue George had finished the piece plated for IRA and iris said well I think it's nice but I think you need to slow it down a bit in the latter part of the work and there's a little theme that's in one of your tune books that went like this da da da da da da da da he said I think you should try putting that in so George did the love songs of George and Ira Gershwin are usually tongue-in-cheek and of course it comes out more in the words in the music and his his harmonic sense makes his songs haunting and memorable there's always a little twist somewhere there's a chap I know in Mexico who's as strong as he can be eating nails and drinking texaco he is the time for me there is one in California more romantic far than you when he sings hot cha-cha-cha Nia I often think you do but as for you sir I'm afraid you will never [Music] oh you're no cowboy you're soft and how boy I feel no muscle it's before tussle I must I cannot use you excuse me no nightlife for you the birds would bore you the cows won't know you are horse but throw you you silly man you to ask me can you use me though what love you may be a wizard could you warm me up in a blizzard say 40 below your times of great gives your knees a week is you're not a sender you know bender though you can use me I most [Music] you IRAs lyrics brought sophistication to George's music they worked so well together they had the same sort of mind when it came to creating their songs sometimes George would play a tune for IRA and Ira would say well if you add a few notes to this phrase or that phrase then I think I've got a lyric that'll hit it right on right on the nose photographs were replacing piano rolls and victrolas / Gershwin songs into every home they brought Gershwin Fame and money in equal doses his lifestyle became more and more athlete his friends more glamorous but the family remained inseparable Iowa had married and he and the Gershwin plan bought a five-story house near the fashionable Riverside Drive the pride of the house was a self-service elevator Gershwin had begun to buy paintings his living room looked like a museum he owned a ledge a Picasso kadinsky Luo nada Gianni in the van but his passion was not only limited to buying he began to paint himself and painting became an obsession almost his greatest music was was very talented mad besides his music he was talented and whatever he did I think he was very sorry that he never finished school he had a great feeling for learning he was very bright and he wrote wonderful letters they were very to the point he would just get there were no wasted words and he had a style of his own and writing play tennis he played a good game of tennis if he played golf he played a good game of golf he danced he's to come home and show me steps from a movie that he had been doing with the Fred Astaire and he put his shoulders up and he starts showing me steps you know and we'd have a lot of fun I don't think it let him is out of focus at anytime I think he could bring a whole big sweep into whatever was going on sometimes it was listening to music and he was wonderful at their terrific thing to see anything new with him which he loved it would be thinks it would be anything differently for Gershwin the most important event of 1925 took place once more in the concert hall in a program which included Glazunov fifth symphony a treble sweeten glaze Gershwin presented a new composition the concerto and F it was performed in Carnegie Hall by the New York Symphony under Walter demos this was a proper concerto in three movements a much more substantial work than the Rhapsody in Blue [Music] he was a superior pianist and he had a very special American kind of technique and it was based on a lot of other things in American music it came out of a lot of popular styles of playing stride kind of playing ragtime piano playing jazz razzle-dazzle kind of thing he developed a technique of using repeated notes by alternating his hands slowly he loved that a lot in those kind of motor rhythms he loved also the use of grace notes and he used to crush them together so they were kind of you know playful but it's that evocative quality that his pieces have from the very first moment which is so special I mean you always know right away when you're hearing a Gershwin piece [Music] it's the hanging in space of the note the kind of blues singer aspect of it all the shift of register and these grace notes in the bass work musically very effectively does that raised shoulder jazzy raised eyebrow which is in his music everyone you played one bar I'd say George gosh I couldn't know it anywhere in the dark and then by the side there's it's just the voice the voice of a genius the way you know a Schubert song the minute you hear it the way you know Brahms intimate so the minute you hear it you know it's a province in Tibet or not somebody else's right [Music] while Gershwin's reputation as a serious composer was now established the fame of the other Gershwin the composer popular songs spread he was 27 years old one of the most eligible bachelors in town women swarmed about him yet he never married someday [Music] he had enormous charm he would come to me from his composition lessons and he would strew the the floor with all the things that he had learned bits of paper and I knew what he was doing he knew that I didn't understand exactly what he was telling me about the 12 tone scale but he was trying to remember for himself what he had learned in the lesson he was sharing it with me and then of course he had the little waltz that he played for every young lady that had a blank space in it for the name of the young lady I fell for it I considered as his mating call [Music] the way you sip your every our ball [Music] they can take that away from me away your smile just be the way you sing all the way you want my dream no no they can't take that away maybe he had too many women you know they followed him all over the place when he came home they he came home usually with about two or three women from a party they just followed him home I think all of them were hoping that they'd have a relationship with him [Music] all that energy I think go somewhere it was a great fluid had a lot of girls I met some of them they were all pretty [Music] they never could give myself entirely somehow I do think that because we let such lives of our own as children that it was very difficult to to make a real relationship [Music] with love the way I found many Russian Blake [Music] and get that way hi and also black a day Oh [Music] [Music] I don't remember any real attachment that he had except for Kay and there he loved it because they had horses and he used to go horseback riding he had several rotations and affairs I'm sure and I didn't mind because I thought I had a unique position with him and I always taught him do it so I was not Charles I would have been if I taught him Ken terribly for somebody else he didn't he was very fond of my children and he made mistake with them sometimes because he was very direct more Sullivan he was with grownups you know he'd say don't you like me and that embarrassed them the eldest one didn't like him at all because she thought he was a friend to my marriage like Woods of coffee bars and every now and then he did begin to play sad coordinate say Here I am just a sad Russian again I think he was capable of both there were so many different Sarge [Music] in 1926 George and Ira wrote the most outstanding musical success okay starring the English actress Gertrude Lawrence it included some of the best songs the Gershwins had ever written someone to watch over me clap your hands and doo doo doo [Music] someone to watch over me is a melody that George had originally used as a fast dance course for the show okay which was produced in 1926 it was supposed to sound like this [Music] in other words the rhythmic idea was Bono and George was playing that tune for Iran he said we need a we need a lyric that was kind of a throwaway because when the course is were performing IRA knew that his lyrics would probably not be heard very well but as George was playing that wait a minute this sounds good that way and then with Howard Dietz a suggestion for a title it became there's a somebody I'm longing to see [Music] when I sing at Gershwin tune I get a freedom that I don't I never have to feel like I have to stumble they're difficult they're always a challenge someone to watch over me particularly it's like the hardest thing it's just it's got such a strange it's got octave jumps in it that are very difficult for a singer to make and do them smoothly and of course when you sing it and you see what that does to the sound and your voice and what you just get to grab on to each time you change the measure and you go to the next one it's like a ladder just climbing it just takes you farther and farther into some kind of real emotional security that you can use to transmit in that song [Music] the next musical funny-face became another success for the Gershwins they had again transformed ordinary musical material into some witty and memorable songs a Babbitt met a bromine on the Avenue one day and L the conversation in their own peculiar way they both were solid citizens they both had been around and as they spoke you clearly saw their feet were on the ground how are you how's the folks what's new I'm great that's good ha ha knock wood well well that's life what do you know Hawaii gotta run oh my god goodbye every composer has their own particular style called Porter is known for his his beguine beats this could be the start of just about any Cole Porter song but George instilled very specific sophisticated harmonies into his songs too in our love is here to stay any other composer might have written the beginning of the chorus to go but George put a chord under each of those first three months thereby adding a dimension to his songs that the average guy in the street might not be able to explain but he knows that there's something about those harmonies there's something about that song that's special if you try to sing them you approach them as a singer or as an instrumentalist you start to appreciate the fineness of their structure how completely classic the the the basic architecture is that's underlying these these songs and it has a completely classic element that has something to do with the proportion I mean if you're comparing to architecture would be the the the golden proportion of the Greeks you know or anything you know the golden ratio they call it I mean it has it has that equivalent in in the form of songwriting they're indestructible and they're brilliant [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you can't blame me for feeling that she should care for me [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] on the hoods wonderful inception s why I fell is what I seek [Music] Oh [Music] [Applause] his view of life theater and music were those of a successful have a popular music furniture you see you values achill inventor there's nothing wrong with it but it's it's very easy to understand and to love because it's kind of our basic corny idea but that's what myth popular music is based on [Music] [Music] a fuss and quarrel and tear star too but after your fine work sir SolidWorks then they told the world and everybody loves them and it's nice to imagine that that's the way life is they're not pictures of true life they're pictures of mythology he was a songwriter that was the point he was from the other side of the tracks he came from the pop song side of the tracks and at a certain point in his life he wanted to write real pieces real honest-to-god pieces were the form on the 9th of March 1928 the papers announced that Gershwin was travelling to Europe to study for a new composition George IRA and their sister Frankie went to London and on to Paris the trip brought yet more Fame for the American composer the Rhapsody in Blue was performed together with Caesar Franz D minor symphony and box double concerto his concerto an F was given at the Paris Opera and the French critics went overboard although Prokofiev considered it not much more than a succession of many 32 bar courses but he had his admirers among his fellow composers he met and of course played for Ravel Darius mio Frances Poole a George auric and even the critical surge Prokofiev but when he tried to become a pupil of Nadia Boulanger the great teacher of classical music politely declined from Paris Gershwin went to Vienna where he played two album bag Gershwin always considered this the high point of his stay the other one being the visit to the famous cafe Zeca when he entered the cafe the orchestra struck up the Rhapsody in Blue and a table carried the American flag [Music] when Gerson returned to New York he bought with an 8 volumes of Debu C's work the first draft of a new score and some French taxi horns Walter Damrosch inducted an American in Paris for the first time in New York on the 13th of December 1928 with the New York Philharmonic symphony it was scored for an orchestra to which Gershwin had added three saxophones and the four taxi horns it was a colorful and jazzy piece rich in musical texture in its ardent and unpredictable mood it reflected once more the tang of the new and urgent world the world of Tender is the night of the Great Gatsby and the time of the speakeasies and casual love affairs [Music] this serious music critics as before still did not know where to place Gershwin's music some called it nauseas claptrap and innocent but tiresome babble and a blunt banality but as usual Gershwin had the public on his side and they gave the work a standing ovation it had touched a nerve he was young and he was successful the kind of a scott Fitzgerald saying in that sense of people enjoyed success and they like knowing successful people that was part of the glamour it's hard to explain but I guess there's something in the music that represents being young I mean he died young and there's a youthfulness in what they used to call pep and there's a beauty in it too I mean he was considered in a sense kind of a brittle composer which he really was and some of his playing at the piano is very sensitive but there's a toughness of the 20s and then the romanticism and no sentimentality and it's sort of old it's gotta be so American it just came out nice happy so far taneous well if music always had a spontaneous quality and if you'd written it just then that moment soon he was busily rehearsing a new score strike up the band [Music] Gershwin was no longer interested in writing conventional musicals he began to experiment with a new genre and musical with the political [Music] let's get going here get something done get to work this is a fine time for you to show up you know you're a half-hour late George I was never late in my life they've had to hold the show several times for me but I've never been late well you don't even know you're married for this show yeah I know the lyrics all right but you've written too high strike of the band was a cynical anti-war story castigating the growth of nationalist hysteria American cheese profiteer succeed in engineering a war between the United States and Switzerland over the import of Swiss cheese's it had a rollicking score and a whimsical text by IRA containing such lines as oh this is a charming war whoops what a charming war [Music] Gershwin appears to have had little interest in politics himself but at the time of the depression he was surrounded by politically motivated people he also realized that political satire would lend some urgency to his work lifting it out of the mass of ordinary musical comedy writing besides strike up the band Gershwin wrote two more musicals tackling the political life of America let him eat cake and of the icy strike up the band is an anti-war musical it was so mean it died out of town and let him eat cake is even more powerful of the icing in his look at political life of the United States during the Depression is a pretty hard look almost like look at the Reagan White House sometime and it's devastating look at a possible dictatorship in the United States I mean it's sort of light but even the music is very astringent and just contrapuntal and and very very difficult difficult to sing and difficult to perform a VI sing takes a sharp cynical look at the presidential elections in America [Applause] the successful candidate John P wintergreen wins an election on love rather than political issues needless to say such choice is doomed to failure [Music] [Applause] of the ice saying is a political satire not unlike hurt vials of mahogany it was awarded at Pulitzer Prize the first musical comedy to win this coveted accolade 1930 brought a decisive change into George and Ira Gershwin's life they went to Hollywood to write the music for the picture delicious with Hollywood's favorite couple Janet Gaynor and Charles Pharrell Broadway usually looked down on the movies but George approached the talkies with expectation he was soon disappointed writing for the movies was not the same as writing for the theater once the composition was done the composer had little influence on it but for a while he and Ira were charmed by the new and glamorous life of Hollywood dear Mabel here's your Georgie putting pen to paper to write to you again to tell you how sweet you are to tell you how much she misses you to tell you lots of things time has a special way of flying out here it just zooms past someone once said that when time hurries by you are happy if that is true we've been in heaven time that Eddy Robinson's the other night had a pardon mainly for Stravinsky many celebs were there Chaplin Goddard Fairbanks Dietrich Capra and others sat next to Poland gotta mmm she's nice me likey he was not I would say really affectionate in public I mean I I think someone who had his childhood and growing up with the Rose Guerlain who was a dominant woman and self-effacing father it was a little bit careful about getting too deeply involved was people George and IRAs relationship with Hollywood was one of love and hate but they eventually settled there they wrote the music for three more films damsel-in-distress Goldwyn Follies and shall we dance starring Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire [Music] as before the picture did not take advantage of the songs as well as it might have done but there was stunning musical dance numbers choreographed by Hermes pan but you would never know he was around he was always sort of in the background and he was not a person that would come out so I think we should do this of that he was just he was a very quiet sort of person [Music] we'll be doing the scene where Fred and Ginger one walking with the dog and he watched them as they were walking and wrote this wonderful little ditty George wrote a temple and they've just walked to his temple but he caught the temple of the way they walked and the way the dog was trotting along and he did it right on the set it's like that pure inspiration she was a very dance wise you might say [Music] the delightful walking the dog scored for a small Orchestra with Georgia sophisticated comment on Hollywood's big overblown film scores but the song which really summed up how George and Ira felt about Hollywood was blah blah blah written for delicious [Music] nearly everybody comes back from California with a tan and a pocketful of motion-picture money I also wanted to add a serious composition the old artistic soul has to be appeased every so often wrote George Gershwin from Hollywood so when he returned to New York he brought with him sketches for a second Rhapsody the second Rhapsody was premiered under Serge Koussevitzky with the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Gershwin as the soloist Gershman found it in many respects in the orchestration and in the form the best he had written so far as usual he was pleased with himself and not embarrassed to share it [Music] for a long time Gershwin had been haunted by the idea of writing an opera through jazz he had become increasingly interested in black culture he had read DuBose Hayward's best-selling novel Porgy the story of a crippled black beggar Gershwin who had not forgotten his humble upbringing sympathize with the plight of the poor but what drew him mostly to the subject were the dramatic and musical possibilities of black opera could offer in 1934 Gershwin traveled to South Carolina he retired to a little shack on Foley Island near Charleston and began to compose fiercely after 20 months the Opera was finished there were offers from the Metropolitan Opera House but Gershwin wanted porky not only to reach large audiences but he also wanted a Negro cast the Metropolitan Opera could not guarantee either [Music] is my woman ah and you was napping singing dance for two I had an appointment to sing for him to my surprise got off the elevator he opened the door and it was he then are all white uniform white clothes and I said I'm Todd Duncan and he said I'm George Bush it was on that day that after I sang just a part of an old Italian soul Aria just part of it he looked up he said will you be my poor game I wrote two letters to George Gershwin asking for an audition which was granted within two or three days his secretary rang and asked me to come and bring some music which I did I was asked to come back and sing for his mother a week later and for IRA and other friends another week later and then as I mentioned before he would telephone to me and say and come down hadn't sing I've written now five pages more and oh I want to sit here how it sounds in your voice I never supposed for a moment that I would get the part of this we will start with the piano solo at five bars e49 thing about not waste time with now 5000 online scene one [Music] the opera was directed by a Rouben Mamoulian and conducted by alexander smaller's Gershwin himself supervised the musical direction [Music] this footage was shot during the rehearsal Gershwin had studied and worked hard at the material he had attended prayer meetings trying to model his restitutive on the inflections of Negro speech many of the choral passages are deeply rooted in spirituals [Music] I first heard it from George Gershwin's fingers and his own voice the very beginning of it sounded oh so foreign to me and I felt that it sounded like chopsticks but very soon it's sacred into something that was so beautiful something that I'll never I will never it will never die it went immediately into summertime and I thought that I was in heaven [Music] [Applause] [Music] who's an idiom an American idiom and an idea that I'd never come across I didn't hear it it Schubert ashumen or wolf it was another idiom which I didn't know anything about and I loved it I loved it immediately it was on my skin it was in my blood and my soul and my very heart I didn't have to be logical and think about it my solar plexus told me that this is it [Applause] [Music] [Applause] this is an opera about a purports to be about Negro life but it is by a white man the plays by a white man is a white man's view of Negro life and the music is a white man's view of Negro music the black people themselves who act as player and sing the Opera are of a divided mind about that they don't really like white people stories about them because they don't think they're quite true sort of mythology to know well I'd like to know what is a black man's opera in the first place I mean he wrote an opera about black people but that's Gershwin's idea of black people and that's perfectly valid [Music] coming from the old country and oppressed into a new country that's where man takes on new elements and I think that was part of the answer of George Gershwin and and of his brother both when it opened in New York after a tryout in Boston the audience gave it an ovation which lasted over 15 minutes many people felt that Gershwin had written the first genuine folk opera in American history but the critics as usual did not know how to place it and even such a distinguished musician as Virgil Thompson wrote a scathing review in 35 some people couldn't accept it as an opera because it was a kind of a hybrid it was a Gershon musical written like an opera that's a communication of the strength the drama the passion that comes in the grand operas is in Porgy and Bess and the ingredient the main ingredient that is a port invest is the same ingredient that's in Tosca the same ingredients it's in Siegfried and that means performance passion communication share heaven excitement theater [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] dealing with Negro life he wrote I have bought to the operatic form many elements that have never before appeared in opera I have created a new form which combines opera with theater Gershwin had finally reconciled his two loves that for serious and that for popular music the last few years the Gershwins lived in Beverly Hills they moved into a palatial home which became the place for interminable parties and dinners rubbing shoulders with the rich and the famous Gershwin did not delude himself about Hollywood he called it a place of overrated personalities and false priorities where all they wanted hit songs one can whistle a composer working in Hollywood however famous was just another guy working on the movies he and I set up to five o'clock in the morning at his home in Beverly and he told me how unhappy he was and that he was making a lot of money in films and he says Todd I'm not the kind of composer where our man tells me I need five songs for this Phil not composed he says I can't do that anymore and he says I'm dying to get back to New York and to compose when I want to he was not just a happy-go-lucky fellow he had a very melancholy and I think very lonely side too I always had the feeling there was something worrying him the back of his head he was a very complicated person he had so many different sides and if one was sensitive one could sense this conflict so to speak in his behavior in February 1937 while playing his concerto an F in the Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles his mind suddenly went blank a similar experience happened to him several days later he became listless and suffered headaches doctors diagnosed a brain tumor I knew he was ill but I didn't think the second then he went on nobody did and I said I know you could handle this we went had sort of parted for a year Jesse Allen went it went miserably and I said I know you're going to handle this the way you always handle any it's kind of crisis and come out of it well and he said I'm coming back I'm coming back from both of us and that was the last thing he ever said to me I thought it was a nice thing I was proud of it and then I thought he bought and my daughter axel and I'm glad to listen concert I stood up suddenly just at the end of it I think she was being played and she said my daughter said what's it what's the matter and I said we're going home George is gone almost four thousand people crowded into the temple of Fifth Avenue for the funeral service and many thousands more aligned to both sides of Fifth Avenue while this service went on in New York another was held in Hollywood everywhere in the studio's the cameras stopped rolling for one minutes of silence Koussevitzky wrote like a rare flower that blossoms once in a while Gershon represented an original and rare phenomenon and Schoenberg said he expressed musical ideas and they were new the last song that George and Ira wrote was for a unsuccessful movie called the Goldwyn Follies George had finished the chorus of the song but IRA had to write the verse these lyrics were an emotional catharsis for IRA they enabled him to grieve for his brother [Music] the more I read the paper the less I comprehend the world and all the scammers how it all nothing seems to be lasting but that isn't our affair we've got something permanent [Music] we can [Music] love is here to stay radio [Music] is that we know may just be passing fancies and in time may go [Music] to stay going along [Music] Gibraltar may tumble [Music] you

Channel: Sherway Academy of Music

Views: 167,734

Rating: 4.8883004 out of 5

Keywords: music education, piano, guitar, violin, voice, bass, organ, TV, visual arts, transportation, history, Gershwin, Tin Pan Alley

Id: FHmu7tUhRVA

Length: 88min 30sec (5310 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 10 2018