December 13, 1928—Featuring what its composer termed
“the most modern music I've yet attempted,” An American in Paris, the
product of George Gershwin’s trips
abroad to deepen his knowledge of orchestration and harmony, premiered across
the Atlantic, performed by the New York Philharmonic and conducted by Walter
Damrosch. Still only 30 years old, Gershwin was displaying the ambition that
would enable him to transcend the boundaries of his Tin Pan Alley apprenticeship. Many musicians playing the piece at the premiere, though, did not appreciate his moxie. They would be
horrified by the thought that the composition they performed with such little
appreciation that night would become one of the most loved classical music
pieces of the last century.
Twelve years after this event, and three years after
Gershwin’s untimely death, his close friend, pianist-composer-humorist-raconteur Oscar Levant, described an overnight
train journey they had taken in A Smattering of Ignorance: “A
lengthy discussion of music occupied us for an hour or so, and I was actually
in the midst of answering one of his questions when he calmly removed his
clothes and eased himself into the lower berth.... I adjusted myself to the
inconveniences of the upper berth…. At this moment my light must have disturbed
George [Gershwin’s]’s doze, for he opened his eyes, looked up at me and said
drowsily, ‘Upper berth—lower berth. That’s the difference between talent and
genius.’”
The anecdote tells us what good company the puckish
Gershwin could be, but if he thought genius would have been enough to get him
by, he would never have been serious enough to change musical direction—nor
crucially, over the long term, figure out how he would apply the musical immersion
he underwent with Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud,
and Arnold Schoenberg.
(Not that these men could understand his direction, either: Ravel asked, when Gershwin asked about receiving orchestra lessons from him, "Why would you want to risk being a second-rate Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin?" Even Schoenberg, who did eventually come around and instructed him, marveled, after he heard about the American's current income from Broadway show tunes, that perhaps Gershwin ought to give him lessons.)
(Not that these men could understand his direction, either: Ravel asked, when Gershwin asked about receiving orchestra lessons from him, "Why would you want to risk being a second-rate Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin?" Even Schoenberg, who did eventually come around and instructed him, marveled, after he heard about the American's current income from Broadway show tunes, that perhaps Gershwin ought to give him lessons.)
Gershwin made his first trip to Paris in 1924, after
his success with Rhapsody in Blue.
Two years later, after yet another visit, he decided to write a piece about the
city that would capture an American’s impressions of it. To lend his composition
extra authenticity, he even bought French taxi horns whose sounds he would use.
But it would still not be until the spring of 1928, when he and lyricist
brother Ira went to the city for some rest and relaxation after their work for the frenzied opening of their musical Rosalie for Florenz Ziegfeld, that he got to work on the idea
forming in his head. (Ira, normally no slouch, used this time, as he put it, "[seeing]
the sights and [drinking] beer.")
Gershwin completed his piano sketch for An American in Paris by early August,
then his orchestration for it on November 18, less than a month from the premiere
by Damrosch, who had also conducted the premiere of Gershwin’s prior major
classical work, Concerto in F.
The New York Philharmonic reflected the loathing
that traditional classical musicians possessed for the interloper Gershwin,
who, for his part, attended its rehearsals dressed in a derby hat and smoking a
cigar. One music critic of the time
exhibited similar snobbery over Gershwin’s attempt to cross musical boundaries:
“An American in Paris is nauseous
claptrap, so dull, patchy, thin, vulgar, long-winded and inane, that the
average movie audience would be bored by it."
Au
contraire, as they say. One Gershwin phrase about the piece
he was planning in the summer of 1928—that it was “really a rhapsodic ballet”—may
have inspired Hollywood to think about its possibilities for dance on film. In
1951, MGM released a movie that incorporated the name of the piece into its
title and a generous helping of the composer’s music, though the half-hour
composition itself was reduced to last than five minutes onscreen. It was a career highlight
for star Gene Kelly, director Vincente Minnelli, and even Levant, whose
character imagines himself playing Concerto
in F before an audience in a large concert hall, taking on the successive
roles of pianist, conductor, kettle drummer, xylophonist,
violinist, concert master and, at last, an audience member who shouts "Bravo,
encore!"
Whether or not you agree that the movie should have
won the Best Actor Oscar that year (beating out A Streetcar Named Desire and A
Place in the Sun), it surely remains one of the highlights of the American
musical, just as the composer it honored remains safely esconced now in the classical
music canon to which he aspired.
(The
accompanying Bain News Service photograph of George Gershwin is now in the Library
of Congress's Prints and Photographs division.)
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