Page 263 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

MODERN 1900–1950 261

George Gershwin

Born the second son of Jewish
immigrants in 1898, Brooklyn-
born Gershwin became
interested in music at the
age of 10. By the time he was
dissonance that Gershwin admired Insistence on a black cast for Porgy 15, he had a job as a “song
so much in the work of the Austrian and Bess—seen here on Broadway in plugger” in New York’s Tin
modernist composer Alban Berg. 1942—made Gershwin the subject of Pan Alley, playing the latest
criticism and prevented the opera from sheet music for prospective
A closer alliance being performed in opera houses. customers. He published his
In Europe, jazz continued to first song in 1916, but his big
influence classical composers, most This cross-fertilization between break came in 1920 when
Broadway star Al Jolson
particularly those who skirted the jazz and classical did not always performed the Gershwin song
middle-European cabaret scene. meet with approval. In 1957, the Swanee, after which he was
In Germany, the Austrian composer American composer Gunther invited to collaborate on a
Ernst Krenek’s 1927 opera Jonny Schuller, wary of unsatisfying number of Broadway musicals.
Plays, which tells the story of a jazz classical-jazz collaborations (such Following the success of
violinist, was an instant success, as Benny Goodman playing Mozart) Rhapsody in Blue, Gershwin
with its then-subversive portrayal and unconvinced by the jazz he focused as much on classical
of jazz as a challenge to European found in composers such as Ravel traditions as jazz, with
tradition. Similarly, the German and Shostakovich, suggested a new compositions such as the
composer Kurt Weill used jazz genre—the “Third Stream.” This opera Porgy and Bess and the
elements in The Threepenny Opera— required performers to be proficient Piano Concerto in F running
produced in Berlin, in 1928—to in both classical and jazz so that alongside shows such as Girl
such effect that The Ballad of Mack composed and improvised music Crazy and Funny Face, which
the Knife became a jazz standard. could sit side by side. Schuller’s he wrote with his lyricist
brother Ira, and film scores,
In the 1930s and 1940s, the ideas influenced jazz musicians, including Shall We Dance. He
boundaries between jazz and such as John Lewis, Bill Russo, died in 1937 of a brain tumor.
classical works became more fluid. and Charles Mingus, who would
Jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman go on to lead the avant-garde “free
commissioned Contrasts, a piece jazz” style of the 1960s, while, in Other key works
for clarinet, violin, and piano, from the classical tradition, composers 1925 Piano Concerto in F
Bela Bartók in 1938, while Igor such as Hans Werner Henze, in 1927 Funny Face
Stravinsky’s 1945 Ebony Concerto Germany, and Krzysztof Penderecki, 1935 Porgy and Bess
was written for another jazz in Poland, took up the challenge, 1937 Shall We Dance
clarinetist, Woody Herman. including free jazz in their works. ■

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