A sermon by Dave Weissbard

delivered at

The Unitarian Universalist Church

Rockford, Illinois

February 10, 2002

Why a sermon about George Gershwin? In most churches, sermons are delivered only about people who were mythical beings or great martyrs or exemplars of ethical living. George Gershwin was none of these.

The standards are a little different in a Unitarian Universalist church. Mythical beings are of less concern to us because we figure if they were mythical, we aren’t going to glean a whole lot of useful stuff for our own real lives from what they did. If they were great martyrs, we may consider them interesting and important, but at the same time, the truth is we are not much into martyrdom. For us, the flawed human genius seems a lot more relevant: inspiring but not beyond relating to. Here we are on good ground with George Gershwin.

The first piece of music I remember loving was my first record: the Toy Symphony, at that time attributed to Joseph Hayden, although I believe the attribution has changed in the last half century. The next was the William Tell Overture, because I was devoted to the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Third, and right up there at the top ever since, was George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. The Chautauqua Symphony used to perform one pop concert every week, and every year, one of those was an all Gershwin concert. The featured piece alternated between the Rhapsody in Blue and the Concerto in F. [Part of Chautauqua’s attachment to Gershwin was because he composed part of the Concerto in F right at Chautauqua. When it was the year for the Rhapsody, I made sure I didn’t miss that concert - no matter what. When I took summer jobs, the understanding was that I would be off for the Gershwin concert. The sound of the Rhapsody in Blue never failed to transport me. That attachment was reinforced by the fact that, in the early days of television, Pops Whiteman had a weekly program that my family watched on the only channel there was in Albany, and of course, his theme was Rhapsody in Blue. I had recordings of the Rhapsody in Blue that I wore out. When I was in college, I became a part of the family of Kenneth Munson, the chair of the music department, when I was dating his daughter, Christina. One day, when I waxed eloquent about my love for the Rhapsody in Blue, Dr. Munson tried to be polite and point out that it was ok but he pointed out that it was a dead end musically. It wasn’t something that other people subsequently imitated, which meant that it really was not a significant work. I accepted his judgement for what it was worth, but it didn’t shake my attachment, only how public I was willing to be about it.

This fall, I was excited when I heard the sound of the Rhapsody in Blue coming from this sanctuary. I learned that Kay had taken on the challenge of transcribing it for organ to perform in a special recital dedicating the new organ at Holy Family Church. I asked when she was going to play it for us, and she said she would need time to get it ready for our organ. That time has finally come.

When I told Kay I hadn’t decided what to preach today to set off the music, she asked, “Why not about Gershwin?” Why not indeed? So I have spent the better part of the week immersed in Gershwin biographies. I trust we do have a sermon here.

This sermon is divided into three parts. In the first, we’ll look at Gershwin’s life leading up to the Rhapsody in Blue, which was one of its highlights. The second part of the sermon will be Kay’s performance of the Rhapsody. The final part will look at some of the complexities, the challenges of Gershwin’s life and what I see as its meaning for us.

Morris Gershovitz emigrated from Russia in the early 1890's to escape the draft. He was from a family of some stature and had trained to manufacture the tops of women’s shoes. He arrived in New York unable to speak English. He had the address of his mother’s brother tucked in his hat, which blew off his head when he leaned out to get a better look at the Statue of Liberty. It seems a miracle of sorts that he did locate his uncle. He also found Rose Bruskin, a girlfriend whose family had come to America and whose father was a foreman in a factory that made women’s shoes. He had a job, and before long, a wife. At some point they changed their name from Gershowitz to Gershvin. They had a son the following year whom they named Israel, two years later a son named Jacob, two years later a boy named Arthur, and six years later, a girl they called Frances. Israel became known as Ira, and Jacob became George.

Morris did not stay in the show business long. He was an entrepreneur. He operated a restaurant, a Turkish bath, a bakery, a cigar store, a pool parlor, and became a bookmaker at a racetrack. The family lived in 28 different homes in 20 years. They were never wealthy, but they were not poor, either – they always had a maid because Rose was never into homemaking or mothering much.

Ira was a pretty easy kid – the typical first child responsible type. George was a bit of a hell raiser. He was always out on the street. He pointed out that “The only thing I ever played was hooky.” He was known to rip off fruit from grocer’s stands, and bagels and other delicacies from bakeries. He sometimes left his shoes at home so he could get into the movies by pretending to be a homeless orphan.

George was not a prodigy. He had no interest in music. The story is that one day when he was 6, he was passing a penny arcade on 125^th street when he heard a strange sound coming from a mechanical piano. It stopped and he scrounged up a nickle to start it back up. The sound was Rubenstein’s “Melody in F.”

None of the biographers note any further contact with music until George was 12 and had earned a reputation as one fo the worst students at PS 25. One day he was skipping out of a school assembly at which a boy, Maxie Rosenzweig, who was 2 years younger, was about to perform Dvorak’s “Humoresque” on his violin. Somehow the sound reached George. He later said, “It was to me a flashing revelation of beauty. I made up my mind to get acquainted with this fellow.” He waited for an hour and a half in a pouring rain, but Maxie had left by another door. He went to Maxie’s house and he wasn’t home, but the family was impressed by his enthusiasm and set up a meeting between the two boys. They became best friends. George would pick out tunes on the Rosenzweig’s piano. He suggested they would make a great team – Maxie told him he had no future in music. Hey - a 10 year old critic. What’d he know?

Rose Gershvin decided that Ira needed to take piano lessons and so she got a second hand piano. Ira was not interested, he was into words, not music. George rushed over to the piano and started playing. The family didn’t know he had ever touched one before and they were amazed.

He started taking lessons from Miss Green, a young woman in the neighborhood, but she quickly realized his talent was far beyond her abilities. Her moved on to a guy named Goldfarb. Then a symphony pianist he often listened to introduced him to his teacher, Charles Hambitzer. Hambitzer recognized George as a genius and never took a penny for teaching him everything he knew.

By the time he was 15, George had started writing music, and decided to drop out of high school to immerse himself in the world of music. He got a job at 15 on Tin Pan Alley in a music publishers as a song plugger – sitting in a booth at a piano, playing the songs for people who might be interested in hearing them. Sometimes he would be sent out into public to try to find opportunities to get the music out into the public to get people to buy the sheet music. He also began making rolls for player pianos, on the side. He was paid $25 for every 6 he made.

At some point, which no one has specified, George was so impressed with the comedian Ed Wynn, that he changed the v in his name to a w – Gershwin instead of Gershvin. The rest of the family went along with it.

George became well known as a plugger – composers always wanted to hear the way he played their songs – and he kept on composing on his own. When he was 18 he wrote “When You Want ‘Em, You Can’t Get ‘Em; When You’ve Got ‘Em, You Don’t Want ‘Em.” The publishers weren’t interested, but Sophie Tucker heard it and persuaded one to go for it. He was paid $5. He ended up attracting the attention of Sigmund Romberg who invited him to work with him on his next production - to which George contributed several songs.

He worked with several productions, contributing songs until 1919, when he was 20, his first musical “La, La, Lucille” (a bedroom farce) opened on Broadway. It ran for 104 performances and was closed only because of an actors strike which closed all the theatres. He was still contributing songs to others shows and in the same year, his first big hit Swanee was included in a revue. It didn’t make a big splash there, but then he ran into Al Jolson at a party, played it for him, and the rest, as they say, is history.

George got connected with George White who competed with Flo Zigfield with his “Scandals” each year - George wrote for the 1920-24 editions. It was for the 1922 Scandals that he wrote “I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise” and 1924 included “Somebody Loves Me.”

Paul Whiteman was the conductor for the Scandals in 1922 and that was the cause of his asking George to compose something for his band. They talked about it and then George forgot about it until the evening of January 3^rd 1924 when his brother Ira brought in a copy of the New York Tribune which said that George Gershwin was composing a jazz concerto for Whiteman’s Aeolian Hall Concert “An Experiment in Modern Music” on February 12^th which was also to include works by Irving Berlin and Victor Herbert. In spite of the fact that he had a musical opening on January 21^st, he got to work on the score. He barely finished it in time for Ferde Grofe, Whiteman’s arrange to do the orchestration. It was the 22^nd of 23 numbers on the program and the audience was tired, but the opening sound of the clarinet woke them up and they loved it. Most of the critics were far from lavish in their praise. One referred to the “lifelessness of its melody and harmony.” Gershwin always had trouble with the critics, and we’ll get to that in Part III. But now it’s on to Part II of the sermon: Kay Hotchkiss’ transcription for organ of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”

What we see is often related to the ways in which we expect to see - the categories, the patterns we have in our minds. In a fascinating recent anthology called “The Gershwin Style: New Looks at the Music of George Gershwin” Charles Hamm addresses directly the problem I had with Ken Munson regarding Rhapsody in Blue. Citing the same standard textbook we used in Music 110, Grout’s History of Western Music, Hamm suggests that:

One of the problems with Gershwin was that he did not “fit in” with the “modern trends.” His music was tonal rather than atonal and it was, heaven forbid, “popular” with people. That was unforgivable.

One of the other problems was that Gershwin was both a Jew and a high school dropout. The critics had certain expectations about the future of American music and those involved attendance at the right universities and studying with the right European teachers. The result of the “right” preparation was a recognizable approach to music. That was not where Gershwin was coming from at all.

The frequency of anti-Semitic references in the reviews is quite appalling. Time Magazine even did a cover story on Gershwin near the time of the Rhapsody in Blue premier which is rife with anti-Semitic references.

Gershwin was an outsider. Even Jewish composers who knew how to play the game considered him an outsider. And he knew it. He hungered for approval. He was starved for it.

There are two variant pictures of Gershwin that have emerged over the years. One is the version approved by his family which depicts him as successful and confident, even arrogant. It was not unknown for him to refer to himself as a genius. One typical story told by Oscar Levant is of a hair raising taxi ride in which Gershwin leaned over and tapped the cabbie on the shoulder and told him, “For God’s sake, man, drive carefully! You’ve got Gershwin in the car.”

Certainly the list of great songs he wrote, mostly with lyrics by his brother Ira, is phenomenal:

Somebody Loves Me

Fascinating Rhythm

Lady Be Good

The Man I Love

Why Do I Love You

Someone to Watch Over Me

Love is Sweeping the Country

Of Thee I Sing

Who Cares?

I Got Rhythm

Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off

Slap that Bass

Strike Up The Band

They All Laughed

‘S Wonderful

Nice Work If You Can Get It

Love Is Here to Stay

Love Walked In

They Can’t Take That Away from Me

At the same time, there is, in the"serious category," the Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris, the Concerto in F, the Preludes, and then there is all the wonderful music from “Porgy and Bess” which I don’t want to put in quite the same category as the aforementioned songs, because it was different.

Gershwin was popular – he was acclaimed, but did he ever get the respect he deserved?

The problem began at home. He grew up in what we would today describe as a dysfunctional family. There was little affection for any of the children. Ira was respected, at least for a time. George, on the other hand, was put down constantly by his parents, although he was worshiped by his siblings, Ira particularly. Even late in his career, his mother compared him unfavorably to other composers, asking why he couldn’t be more like them. His father, when asked how he liked Rhapsody in Blue responded, “I have to like it.” Some writers thought that cute; others, in the context of the family’s life, saw it as yet another put down.

The fact is that George was never able to have an intimate relationship. He had a whole stable of women who were devoted to him, but he could never talk seriously with any of them about a committed relationship – he talked about it - but never seriously. There is no evidence that he was gay. The reality is that he had little or no experience of love and therefore couldn’t really give it. He had the reputation as a great lover, but two supposed friends who watched his performance through a peep hole in a whore house called that reputation into question. These days Gershwin would be labeled an exploiter of women, but I would suggest that the exploitation was somewhat mutual in many cases.

It seems well established that he did have a son, whom his family has continued to deny; and possibly even a daughter by one of his long term lovers who was married to someone else. He appears to have had an ongoing distant relationship with his son who was brought to his home regularly by limousine.

Gershwin died tragically at the age of 38 from a brain tumor. Modern neurologists who have examined the evidence are clear that it was not a malignant tumor and that it had probably been having an impact on him for more than a decade. He had repeated stomach problems beginning in 1922, which were likely related to the part of the brain in which the tumor was growing. He had terrible headaches for many years. 4 years before his death he began smelling things that other people couldn’t smell. And as it got to the acute phase, he started stumbling and sometimes acting erratically.

He did see a famous psychiatrist, Gregory Zilboorg, who was brilliant but terribly exploitive of patients. Zilboorg insisted that all his problems were psychosomatic. The family, taking its cue from the psychiatrist insisted that there was nothing wrong with George that a good hit wouldn’t cure.

Paulette Goddard, who had been enticing George, while involved with other men, was appalled at his deteriorating physical condition. He went to Cedars of Lebanon hospital three weeks before he died and was told that his symptoms were nothing more than hysteria.

He was living in the same house in Hollywood with Ira and his wife, Lenore. They became so appalled at his sloppy eating habits and falling down that they exiled him from their home to the home of a friend who was out of town, with a nurse - they kept his familiar butler with them. On July 9^th, 1937, he fell into a coma and died two days later when surgery that could easily have succeeded just a month earlier, failed.

Somehow, George Gershwin was never able to get the kind of respect that would have made a difference in his life.

There was a point, at a party after the premier of “American in Paris” when Otto Kahn, Chairman of the Board of the Metropolitan Opera, made a pompous and presumptuous speech in which he told George publicly that what was missing in his music was suffering. He needed to suffer more in order to be able to compose better music. Kahn didn’t know what he was talking about.

When we look at the broad canvass of George Gershwin’s life, it is clear that beneath all the optimism and cheer and love of his music, there was a pervasive pain – both psychological and physical - that most people never saw. Gershwin had the incredible gift to turn his personal suffering into a blessing for the world.

George Gershwin appeared to many to be a happy-go-lucky playboy, but in truth he was at the core a man with a great deal of emptiness which he filled with music which has enriched our lives.

One of the problems with our times is that we are always at the ready to judge the behavior of others on the basis of what we know, forgetting how much about them there is that we do not know. We go back and second guess the decisions people have made, we invalidate them and their accomplishments because they did not behave in ways we deem seemly.