Gershwin believed that jazz was the “spontaneous expression” of modern American life
W.W. Norton; 594 pages; $39.95 and £28.to an early performance of “Porgy and Bess”, George Gershwin exclaimed that the music was so beautiful he could hardly believe he had written it. Generations of listeners have swooned, too. “Summertime”, the opera’s best-known aria, is a sultry blend of blues, folk and jazz that is said to have been recorded around 25,000 times.Born in Brooklyn in 1898, Gershwin was an innovator who used rhythm, harmony and melody to irresistible effect.
The author offers many such evocative descriptions in his scholarly account of Gershwin’s tragically short life. The works are covered in exhaustive detail, with in-depth analysis, plots and character summaries . Some important cultural history, however, is missing. There is little discussion, for example, of the racial debates surrounding “Porgy and Bess”, which is set in a fictional black neighbourhood in South Carolina.
And he briefly covers Gershwin’s childhood and early musical studies. His parents were unmusical Russian-Jewish immigrants who ran various businesses with mixed success. An interesting chapter explores the music-publishing district known as Tin Pan Alley and its influence on the composer, who left school at 15 to become a song-seller there, baffling his peers with talk of the “artistic mission of popular music”.
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