Composed: 1934–35 Premiered: 1935, New York Libretto by DuBose Heyward after his novel Porgy, with lyrics by Heyward and Ira Gershwin Act I During a crap game in Catfish Row, Charleston, Clara sings a lullaby to her baby. Porgy, a cripple, returns home in his goat cart. Crown, high on ‘happy dust’ provided by ...
1898–1937 American composer As a teenager, Gershwin played the latest hit songs to potential customers in a sheet-music store, and by the age of 21 (with his ‘Swanee’, made popular by Al Jolson) he had become a successful songwriter himself. After a visit to Europe, when he heard the latest musical shows and operettas that London, Berlin ...
1898–1937, American On the night of 12 February 1924, Gershwin became an instant sensation when performing his Rhapsody in Blue at New York’s Aeolian Hall. Written in less than a month and advertised as ‘An Experiment in Modern Music’, Rhapsody melded Classical structures with jazz, ragtime and the blues, heralding a new era in American music. While ...
(Piano, composer, 1898–1937) One of the most enduringly popular composers of the twentieth century, Gershwin composed such enduring melodies as ‘Summertime’, ‘Embraceable You’ and ‘Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off’. His tuneful songs with their rich harmonic progressions are ideal for improvisation and were popular with jazz musicians including Louis Armstrong, Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, ...
Composers of the early twentieth century sought out further percussion instruments to add to their sound palette. Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra (1913) requires a xylorimba: a composite instrument, with a top end sounding like a xylophone, the bass end like a marimba. Walton’s Façade (1926) requires wood blocks: stemming from Africa, these are a series of resonant ...
century, the clarinet came into its own as an orchestral instrument. It was vitally important to composers such as Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951), Stravinsky, Béla Bartók (1881–1945) and George Gershwin (1898–1937). New playing techniques and extreme expressive demands were also ideally suited to the clarinet’s wide pitch range and variety of tonal colours. In the first half of the twentieth ...
of tone-wheel generators coupled with a keyboard. The Hammond tone-wheel organ was patented in 1934 and the Model A went into production in 1935, with Henry Ford and George Gershwin among the first customers. The now-legendary B3 was first produced in October 1955 and quickly became a lasting favourite with musicians of all genres for its distinctive sound and versatility. ...
Williams (1882–1958). The wind machine may be teamed with the thunder sheet – a large flexible metal sheet suspended from a frame, which gives a rumbling sound when shaken. Gershwin wrote for four tuned car horns in An American in Paris (1928), and Leonard Bernstein (1918–90) instructs the timpanist to blow a police whistle to break up the fight scene ...
part of the bar. This is particularly true in fast and furious passages like the xylophone solo in the opening of the overture to Porgy and Bess (1934–35) by George Gershwin (1898–1937). Performers often practise playing a single-stroke roll smoothly and evenly – they need to make an instrument that naturally has a short decay sound smooth and seamless when playing ...
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), Franz Schubert (1797–1828), Robert Schumann (1810–56), Frédéric François Chopin (1810–49), Franz Liszt (1811–86), Felix Mendelssohn (1809–47), Johannes Brahms (1833–97), Claude Debussy (1862–1918), Maurice Ravel (1875–1937), George Gershwin (1898–1937) and many more. Its foremost practitioners, from Liszt to Ignacy Paderewski (1860–1941) and beyond, were the pop stars of their day. Great music, however, like ...
to the late-1950s) were among the twentieth century’s most gifted musicians. Following Jerome Kern, who pioneered the use of music to explore the themes of a production, George Gershwin (Of Thee I Sing), Irving Berlin (Annie Get Your Gun) and others combined traditional European melodies with the sounds of African-America to breathe new vibrancy into the musical. Oscar Hammerstein ...
freewheeling Chicago-style jazz with the World’s Greatest Jazz Band (1968–71) and as a leader into the early 1980s. Styles & Forms | Twenties | Jazz & Blues Personalities | George Gershwin | Twenties | Jazz & Blues ...
b. 1926, American Born in South Carolina, writing and producing operas while on the faculty of Florida State University during the early 1950s – the locally popular Slow Dusk (1949) and The Fugitives (1951), which disappeared after its first performance – Floyd created the work that became his calling card. Written in seven months and presented at the university ...
of aleatory music, in which performers make some of the composing decisions, his output was prolific. He was also an influential teacher, of John Cage (1912–92) and Gershwin, among others, and his New Music Edition published the work of Ives and Ruggles. Recommended Recording: Quartets, Colorado Quartet et al (Mode) Introduction | Modern Era | ...
1885–1945 American composer Like Gershwin, Kern began his career as a song-plugger (playing new songs to potential customers in a publisher’s showroom) and then gained invaluable experience writing additional or replacement numbers for musicals imported to the US from Europe. In 1915, he formed a partnership with the writer Guy Bolton (soon joined by P. G. Wodehouse as lyricist). ...
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