George Gershwin

George Gershwin, born Jacob Gershwine on September 26, 1898, in Brooklyn, New York, was an American composer and pianist whose work spanned jazz, popular, and classical music. His Broadway credits include Funny Face, the revue George White's Scandals (1922), Crazy For You, The Gershwins' Fascinating Rhythm, and the revue The Broadway Whirl, among other productions. He died on July 11, 1937, at the age of 38, from a brain tumor.

Gershwin's parents were Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. His father, born Moishe Gershovitz, emigrated from Russia to avoid compulsory military service, arriving in New York on August 14, 1890, and eventually anglicizing his name to Morris Gershwine. His mother, Rose, was born Roza Bruskina in Saint Petersburg and relocated to New York with her family due to rising anti-Jewish sentiment in Russia. Morris and Rose married on July 21, 1895, and settled in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, where George was born in a second-floor apartment at 242 Snediker Avenue. He was the second of four children, following his brother Ira, born December 6, 1896, and preceding Arthur Gershwin (1900–1981) and Frances Gershwin (1906–1999). George changed the spelling of his surname to Gershwin around the time he became a professional musician, and other family members followed.

Growing up largely in the Yiddish Theater District, Gershwin showed no interest in music until around age ten, when hearing his friend Maxie Rosenzweig play the violin captivated him. His parents had purchased a piano for Ira, but it was George who took to the instrument. He studied with various piano teachers for approximately two years before being introduced, around 1913, to Charles Hambitzer by pianist Jack Miller of the Beethoven Symphony Orchestra. Hambitzer taught Gershwin conventional piano technique, introduced him to the European classical tradition, and encouraged him to attend orchestral concerts, remaining his musical mentor until Hambitzer's death in 1918. Gershwin also studied composition with Rubin Goldmark, Henry Cowell, and Joseph Brody.

In 1913, at age fifteen, Gershwin left school to work as a song plugger on Tin Pan Alley, earning fifteen dollars a week from Jerome H. Remick and Company. His first published song, "When You Want 'Em, You Can't Get 'Em, When You've Got 'Em, You Don't Want 'Em," appeared in 1916 and earned him fifty cents. That same year, his first song to appear on Broadway, "Making of a Girl," written with Sigmund Romberg and lyricist Harold Atteridge, was performed in The Passing Show of 1916. Also in 1916, he began recording and arranging piano rolls for Aeolian Company and Standard Music Rolls, working under pseudonyms including Fred Murtha and Bert Wynn, and he briefly accompanied Nora Bayes and Louise Dresser in vaudeville. His 1917 novelty rag "Rialto Ripples" achieved commercial success.

Gershwin scored his first major national hit in 1919 with "Swanee," with lyrics by Irving Caesar. Broadway star Al Jolson heard Gershwin perform the song at a party and chose to include it in one of his shows. Around this period, Gershwin began collaborating with songwriter and music director William Daly, with whom he worked on the Broadway musicals Piccadilly to Broadway (1920) and For Goodness' Sake (1922), and jointly composed the score for Our Nell (1923). Daly subsequently served as a frequent arranger, orchestrator, and conductor of Gershwin's music. In the early 1920s, Gershwin also worked regularly with lyricist Buddy DeSylva, and in 1922 the two created the one-act jazz opera Blue Monday, set in Harlem, widely regarded as a forerunner to Porgy and Bess.

Much of Gershwin's most celebrated work was created in collaboration with his brother Ira. Among their best-known songs are "Fascinating Rhythm" (1924), "Embraceable You" (1928), and "I Got Rhythm" (1930). In 1924, Gershwin composed Rhapsody in Blue for orchestra and piano, orchestrated by Ferde Grofé and premiered by Paul Whiteman's Concert Band in New York. His orchestral composition An American in Paris followed in 1928, written after he moved to Paris with the intention of studying with Nadia Boulanger, who declined to take him on, concerned that formal classical training would undermine his jazz-influenced style. Maurice Ravel expressed similar reservations when Gershwin inquired about studying with him.

Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess, composed with Ira and librettist DuBose Heyward, premiered in 1935 and included the song "Summertime." Though initially a commercial failure, it came to be regarded as one of the most significant American operas of the twentieth century. His musical Of Thee I Sing (1931) became the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Later in his career, Gershwin moved to Hollywood, where he composed film scores. He died on July 11, 1937, at thirty-eight years old, from a brain tumor. His compositions have since been adapted extensively for film and television, and many have become jazz standards.