Early Life When Morris and Rose married on July 21, 1895, she was 19 and he was 23.

Gershowitz changed his family name to Gershwin some time between 1893 and 1898, perhaps at his marriage. The first child of the family was Ira Gershwin, born with the name Israel, on December 6, 1896. Morris moved his family to Brooklyn, a second-floor dwelling at 242 Snedicker Avenue. George Gershwin was born there on September 26, 1898; his birth certificate bears the name Jacob Gershwine, which would have been pronounced 'Gershvin' in the ex-pat Russian neighborhood. The boy was named for his late grandfather, the army mechanic. However, he was not called anything but 'George'. Years later, George changed the spelling of his surname to'Gershwin' after he became a professional musician; other members of his family suit. George and Ira lived in many different residences as their father changed dwellings with Yiddish Theater District. They frequented the local Yiddish theaters, with George running errands for members and appearing onstage as an extra. After Ira and George, two more children were born to the family: Arthur (1900 1981) and Frances (19061999). George ran around with his boyhood friends, roller skating and misbehaving in the streets. He cared nothing for music until the age of ten,

when he was intrigued by what he heard at his friend Maxie Rosenzweig's violin recital. The sound and the way his friend played captured him. His parents had bought a piano for lessons for his older brother Ira, but to his parents' surprise and Ira's relief, it was George who played it. George began his foray into music at age 11 when his family bought a secondhand piano for Georges older sibling, Ira. New York, George Gershwin dropped out of school and began playing piano professionally at age 15. Within a few years, he was one of the most sought after musicians in America. After dropping out of school at age 15, Gershwin played in several New York nightclubs and began his stint as a song-plugger in New Yorks Tin Pan Alley. After three years of pounding out tunes on the piano for demanding customers, he had transformed into a highly skilled and dexterous composer. To earn extra cash, he also worked as a rehearsal pianist for Broadway singers. In 1916, he composed his first published song, When You Want Em You Cant Get Em. A natural talent, it was George who took it up and eventually sought out mentors who could enhance his abilities. He eventually began studying with the noted piano teacher

Charles Hambitzer, and apparently impressed him; in a letter to his sister, Hambitzer

wrote, I have a new pupil who will make his mark if anybody will. The boy is a genius. Throughout his 23-year career, Gerswhin would continually seek to expand the breadth of his influences, studying under an incredibly disparate array of teachers, including Henry Cowell. Wallingford Riegger, Edward Kilenyi and Joseph Schillinger. From 1920 to 1924, Gershwin composed for an annual production put on by George White. After a show titled Blue Monday, the bandleader in the pit, Paul Whiteman, asked Gershwin to create a jazz number that would heighten the genres respectability. Legend has it that Gershwin forgot about the request until he read a newspaper article announcing the fact that Whitemans latest concert would feature a new Gershwin composition. Writing at a manic pace in order to meet the deadline, Gershwin composed what is perhaps his bestknown work, Rhapsody in Blue.

During this time, and in the years that followed, Gershwin wrote numerous songs for stage and screen that quickly became standards, including Oh, Lady Be Good! Someone to Watch over Me, Strike Up the Band, Embraceable You, Lets Call the Whole Thing Off and They Cant Take That Away from Me. His lyricist for nearly all of these tunes was his older brother, Ira, whose witty lyrics and inventive wordplay received nearly as much acclaim as Georges compositions.

In 1935, a decade after composing Rhapsody in Blue, Gershwin debuted his most ambitious composition, Porgy and Bess. The composition, which was based on the novel Porgy by Dubose Heyward, drew from both popular and classical influences. Gershwin called it his folk opera, and it is considered to not only be Gershwins most complex and best-known works, but also among the most important American musical compositions of the 20th century. Following his success with Porgy and Bess, Gershwin moved to Hollywood and was hired to compose the music for a film titled Shall We Dance, This American composer had a foot in two camps: pop music and concert music. He innovated in both, writing songs and Broadway musicals which not only define the 20s and 30s (especially Oh, Kay!, Girl Crazy, and Lady Be Good) but break paths which would be fully exploited only later (Strike Up the Band, Of Thee I Sing, and Let 'Em Eat Cake) with the Rodgers and Hammerstein "book" musicals of the 40s. For the concert hall, he invented a distinctive and immediately identifiable idiom with the poeticallynamed Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and Piano Conseto (1925). Almost every one of his concert works has entered the repertory, and, just as important, the American psyche. In that regard, he is the American equivalent of Verdi. People with no interest in opera hum parts of his Porgy and Bess (1935) without knowing where the material comes from or even that it's part of something larger. He showed an absolute passion to improve his work. He managed to travel a great artistic distance from the relatively simple tunes of Rhapsody in Blue to the great formal resource of American in Pair (1928), Cuban Overture (1932), and many scenes in Porgy and Bess. Much has been made of his debt to African-American music, and it is indeed a major source of his

inspiration, but it's not the only one.Igor Stavinsky,Claude Debussy, Plotr Tchaikovsky. and even Jewish chant also contribute to his paradoxically) quite original music. Those who would learn from him have to be careful not to wind up "doing" Gershwin. His critical reputation has suffered among American critics trying to find and nurture a "serious" native style. Even now, his works usually appear on Pops programs, rather than during the regular season, and it has long been the fashion for critics to patronize the music. A really good, committed performance is hard to come by, although one can detect serious interest beginning to be directed toward the musicals and concert works. Europeans, unencumbered by distinctions of "high" and "low" art, have long considered him one of the century's great song writers. His fans included Arnold Schoenbery. Maurice Ravel (who modeled both his mature violin sonata and his Piano Concerto in G on Gershwin's idiom), and Francis Poulenc. Gershwin's works remain fresh and ravishing after 70 years. Hobby of George Gershwin painting as a creative outlet with has little sister Frances. A composer of jazz, opera and popular songs for stage and screen, many of his works are now standards. Gershwin died immediately following brain surgery on July 11, 1937, at the age 38. (1898 - 1937)

True junk has a short shelf life.

Sondra Kranedndonk Music 1010 Wednesday night class