{"id":2452,"date":"2023-02-13T16:18:27","date_gmt":"2023-02-13T21:18:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=2452"},"modified":"2023-02-13T16:18:30","modified_gmt":"2023-02-13T21:18:30","slug":"the-gershwin-moment-on-npr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2023\/02\/the-gershwin-moment-on-npr.html","title":{"rendered":"“The Gershwin Moment” on NPR"},"content":{"rendered":"
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To close my recent National Public Radio documentary\u00a0\u201cThe Gershwin Moment<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>I pose the following hypothetical: What if George Gershwin, a contemporary of Aaron Copland, had lived as long as Copland did \u2013 and died in 1988 at the age of 90 rather than in 1937 at the age of 38? I then turn to the music historian Mark Clague, who heads the Gershwin Initiative at the University of Michigan. Mark memorably responds:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the most powerful experiences I had researching Gershwin\u2019s music was at the Library of Congress looking through his letters \u2013 and I found one in which he was speculating about the projects he would undertake after Porgy and Bess<\/em>. One of them was a symphony. It was like a punch to the heart to read about what George Gershwin might have done had he not died at the age of 38. It would have completely changed what we think of as American music<\/em>. I was struck just the other day reading that the Metropolitan Opera had discovered that tickets for operas by living composers were selling better than the [European] classics. Had George Gershwin lived we wouldn\u2019t just be discovering that in 2023. We would have obtained a vibrant living tradition of American composers being the main voices [in the US] for symphonic music and opera. We would have had an unbroken tradition going back to Rhapsody in Blue<\/em> in 1924.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I close by remarking:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn the history of Western classical music, two composers famously died in their thirties:  Mozart at thirty-five; Schubert at thirty-one. Had either lived a few decades longer, our musical inheritance would be immeasurably richer \u2013 but the fundamental trajectory of German music would have stayed much the same. Gershwin, in comparison, was a divine interruption, a comet from another planet. He was foraging in a New World musical wilderness whose distant borders were inhabited by figures as far-flung as Charles Ives, Aaron Copland, Irving Berlin, and Jelly Roll Morton. The poet Franz Grillparzer wrote a famous epitaph for Schubert\u2019s grave: \u2018The art of music here entombed a rich possession; but even far fairer hopes.\u2019 Grillparzer, however, was misled: most of Franz Schubert\u2019s most profound music was unknown at the time of his death, unpublished and unheard. With its anticipation of \u2018far fairer hopes,\u2019 Grillparzer\u2019s German epitaph better suits America\u2019s George Gershwin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can hear \u201cThe Gershwin Moment\u201d\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong>. The other participants are John McWhorter, pianist Kirill Gerstein, and cultural historian Traci Lombre. The musical clips include three of my favorite historic Gershwin recordings: Ruby Elzy singing \u201cMy Man\u2019s Gone Now\u201d at the Hollywood Bowl Gershwin Memorial concert, Nina Simone singing \u201cI Love You Porgy,\u201d and the 1960 Soviet\u00a0Rhapsody in Blue<\/em>\u00a0with Alexander Tsfasman and Gennady Rozhdestvensky. We also hear a rather rare clip of Gershwin talking and playing, Kirill Gerstein improvising a sublime cadenza in the Concerto in F, and Kenneth Kiesler leading the orchestra of the University of Michigan School of Music in a couple of excerpts from the original\u00a0An American in Paris<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 music you\u2019ve probably never heard before (including a different set of taxi horns).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As always, my thanks to my technical producer Peter Bogdanoff, and to Rupert Allman and Jenn White of \u201c1A.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A pertinent blog: “The Gershwin Threat”<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

LISTENING GUIDE:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

00:00 Rhapsody in Blue, <\/em>as recorded in Soviet Russia in 1960<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4:12 — John McWhorter on resituating Gershwin in the story of American music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8:55 — Ruby Elzy sings “My Man’s Gone Now” for the departed coposer<\/p>\n\n\n\n

13:40 –Kirill Gerstein plays “I Got Rhythm”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

14:30 — Gerstein performs and discusses his improvised cadenza in the Gershwin Piano Concerto in F<\/p>\n\n\n\n

23:33 — Traci Lombre on Gershwin and Black America<\/p>\n\n\n\n

26:20 — Gershwin plays “I Got Rhythm”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

27:40 — Nina Simone sings “I Love You Porgy”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

29:50 — “Music by Gershwin” on the radio (1934)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

35:10 — Mark Clague on An American in Paris<\/em> — taxi horns and sonata structure (with the University of Michigan Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Kiesler)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

40:40 — What if Gershwin had lived as long as Copland (with comments by Mark Clague)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To close my recent National Public Radio documentary\u00a0\u201cThe Gershwin Moment,\u201d\u00a0I pose the following hypothetical: What if George Gershwin, a contemporary of Aaron Copland, had lived as long as Copland did \u2013 and died in 1988 at the age of 90 rather than in 1937 at the age of 38? I then turn to the music […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2452","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-Dy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2452"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2459,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452\/revisions\/2459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}