Fascinating Rhythms Guided Listening | Summertime
- Leah Froyd
- 11 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Hello and welcome back to our email introduction to our program, Fascinating Rhythms. Make sure you catch our live performances of these brilliant composers later this month!
American composer George Gershwin (1898-1937) was highly influential in many different musical genres. Though he mostly composed for Broadway, he was known for blending the styles of pop, jazz, and classical music.
Gershwin dropped out of school at age 15 and began making piano rolls for player pianos and became a song demonstrator pitching musicians music to various record labels. It was through this experience that Gershwin developed his piano technique and was exposed to a great number of different musical styles which he was able to add to his own musical vocabulary.
His first published song and piano composition were released in 1916, and he quickly gained the interest of other musicians and producers in New York.
Gershwin’s most well-known orchestral composition is Rhapsody in Blue. Its uniqueness was by design; Gershwin wished to create a one act jazz opera with the goal to bring a higher "respectability" to jazz music. By weaving in jazz inflections into an orchestral setting, Gershwin believed he would be able to raise the reputation of jazz. By the time of the original premiere, Rhapsody in Blue was not entirely composed– Gershwin improvised the piano cadenza during the performance.
Gershwin went on to compose many more songs, orchestral, and opera compositions throughout the rest of his life. For our guided listening we will explore his famous song from his Opera, Porgy and Bess, Summertime which debuted in 1935. The opera’s subject was a novel Gershwin had become obsessed with by DuBose Heyward and the production was a collaboration between Heyward, Gershwin, and his brother Ira Gershwin as the librettist.
This opera stood out as a uniquely American opera for many reasons– one was the musical style being in the style of pseudo-folk music rather than the formal European tradition, and the other being that the story was about Black Americans rather than a fantastical story or drama amongst nobles. Despite the fact that none of the original collaborators were Black Americans, the music of Porgy and Bess quickly swept throughout the country and became adapted as a widely performed Broadway musical. Summertime has been adapted countless times in American culture and music crossing many genres.
I thought it would be fun to listen to a couple of the different interpretations of Summertime and point out key musical elements that change depending on the interpretation and genre.
In the Met’s production, listen for the way many different instruments weave in and out of the texture. In addition, you can hear the singer’s virtuosic abilities take center stage– notice how the soprano, Janai Brugger is able to connect the melodic lines seamlessly and move flawlessly through her full vocal range. These are all aesthetics of a traditional western opera meeting the pseudo-folk melody Gershwin wrote.
In this interpretation by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, listen for the way the orchestral strings are added to the usual instrumentation of a jazz band (percussion, piano, and horns). The form is elongated, leaving room for improvisational solos– there is a trumpet introduction and solo before the vocal refrains are repeated twice. In terms of the vocal style, there is much more room for inflection of style as the standard practice isn’t bound by the operatic style. Rather, both Louis and Ella imbue the music with their signature tone, style, and phrasing.
The last version of this piece I wanted to share is the instrumental version with Charlie Parker and the Jimmy Carroll Orchestra. This version blends together the orchestral details with the improvisational style of Charlie Parker. Listen for the way Parker ornaments and varies the original melody, similar to Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald.
Further Listening/Watching
An American in Paris
An American in Paris is a classic film with spectacular dance numbers and music composed by Gershwin. As a staple of old Hollywood, it was influenced and influenced countless scenes in pop culture around the world. I highly recommend watching it :-) but if you’re just interested in the music, Gershwin arranged a symphonic suite which includes all the musical numbers.
The most striking thing to me about the music is the unbridled characters of each section. You can also hear the distinct influence his work had on composers like Bernstein who composed West Side Story in the way the percussion instruments take such a central role in defining the drive and momentum of the music.
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