Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin

Imagine an American cultural scene in which these names dominated the media: actors/actresses Bernard Schwartz, Issur and Mike Danielovitch, Betty Perske, Les Steiner, Jerome Silberman, Eugene Orowitz, Bernice Frankel, dancer Frederick Austerlitz, magician Ehrich Weiss, hosts Lawrence H. Zeiger or Michael Woleck, comics Roseanne Borisofsky, Allen Konigsberg, Joan Molinsky, Benjamin Kubelsky, Nathan Birnbaum, Jason Greenspan, musicians Asa Yoelson, R. A. Zimmerman, Israel Iskowitz, Berge Rosenbaum, Israel Baline, Fania Borach, Michael Tomashefsky, Belle “Bubbles” Silverman, Aaron Kaplan, David Kaminsky, or brothers Ira and Jakob Gershovitz.

Imagine you’d seen these people in movies, on TV, heard them on radio, heard their recordings, news reports, comedy routines, and in concerts. Further, imagine this culture was ALL in Yiddish, the “Slavic-ized” European Jewish-German linguistic potpourri.

Imagine that a man named Boris Tomashefsky spearheaded a Yiddish theater in late 19th-century New York City, that all this activity by artists and entertainers listed above, and much more, grew out of that theater, that our radio, TV, cinema, and much serious American classical music has its roots in this world—ONLY: what if?—you must know Yiddish to understand this North American Yiddishkeit—“Yiddish-ness?” Nu?

Ashkenazic Jewish culture from Central to Eastern Europe; Yiddishkeit, a wonderful mix of Jewish, Slavic, German, Hungarian and other cultures came to NYC in the late 19th- and early 20th-century, coalescing—with a major push from Yiddish superstar Boris Tomashefsky—into the Yiddish theater. Those names above represent careers rooted in that tradition. But: the good news is: ENJOY!—you don’t have to know Yiddish: the whole thing transformed itself into English, in fact, “Americanese.” Why? Because one thing those immigrants and descendants listed above had in common is they wanted to be Americans! So did their theater—it became Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, radio, eventually TV; it became silent movies, then “talkies,” MGM and other movie dynasties, Gone With The Wind, Wizard of Oz, and so forth and so on. “A horse of a different color”—but still a horse!

Now: those names above: because those names were changed by these persons, their parents, or grandparents to sound American, we know—not in any particular chronological order—Bernard Schwarz as Tony Curtis, Issur Danielovitch as Kirk Douglas, Betty Perske as Lauren Bacall, Mr. Steiner as “Ashley Wilkes,” a.k.a. Leslie Howard, followed by Gene Wilder, Michael Landon, Bea Arthur, and Fred Astaire. Mr. Weiss “escaped” that name to become Harry Houdini. Larry King interviewed, and Mike Wallace roasted, some of the following: Roseanne Barr, Woody Allen, Joan Rivers, Jack Benny, George Burns, Jason Alexander. The musicians are Al Jolson, Bob Dylan, Eddie Cantor, Victor Borge, Irving (“Oiving,” as he said) Berlin, Fanny Brice (played in Funny Girl by Barbra Streisand, who kept her name), Michael Tilson Thomas (grandson of Boris), an operatic diva of the very best sort who started, age 4, on Yiddish radio as “Bubbles” Silverman—the late and very great Beverly Sills. Kaplan became Copland. Finally, the last three names—and here the theme unfolds: what’s in a name? A language? What happens when you put Yiddish and Yiddish-culture into English and English-keit? David Kaminsky becomes Danny Kaye—who, for those of us old enough to remember, could sing more names of more Russian composers in a shorter time than anybody, in the song “Tchaikovsky” (imagine what he could do with these name changes!) That song came from the 1941 show, Lady in the Dark with lyrics by Ira Gershovitz as “Ira Gershwin,” and music by Kurt Weill (same name as always); Ira Gershovitz-now-Gershwin was by then working with Weill, because four years earlier, his life-long collaborator, brother Jakob Gershovitz, the great composer and performer, had died. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the man we know as George Gershwin.

Now that you know—if you didn’t already—you do know quite a lot (even if it is in English) about Yiddish culture, its legacy, and that much of it permeates your cultural life much of the time, you can better understand George Gershwin. His entire art grew out of that soil, combining it with other traditions in a masterful, convincing way no other composer has equaled. He synthesized the diverse elements of Yiddishkeit, and infused them with his classical training to produce a unique music as American as any music could be. His music is the old-world immigrant become American, and in turn helping build a newer, bigger, and better America. Gershwin’s “schooling” was mostly in Tin Pan Alley, starting as a teenager, and then on Broadway, moving to the concert hall somewhat later. Paul Whiteman, who commissioned Rhapsody in Blue, played a major role in that. All along, brother Ira wrote lyrics for most of George’s songs, then many of his big theatrical productions—Ira was good with words as George was with notes. Ira, by the way, as a young lad “gave” George a piano: their parents bought it for Ira, their oldest, hoping for a pianist. They got one: George! He loved the piano, Ira didn’t, and the rest, as often said, is history. Ira was happy: he much preferred writing words to making music.

George Gershwin did study privately, first with Charles Hambitzer, then Rubin Goldmark who also taught Copland, and Henry Cowell, at that time an avant-garde composer. Gershwin also consulted with Joseph Schillinger, a musical mathematician/theoretician, and he also with 12-tone composer/theorist Arnold Schoenberg (with whom he also played tennis regularly) In Paris, Gershwin consulted Ravel. It is fair to say George Gershwin had a thirst to improve his knowledge of music and worked hard to do so.

Gershwin was also interested in jazz, and that was reciprocal: Paul Whiteman, known as “The King of Jazz” by the media, commissioned Gershwin to compose a work bringing together jazz elements with classical elements. That work was Rhapsody in Blue. It was composed in 1924, orchestrated by Ferde Grofé (known mostly for his Grand Canyon Suite), and premiered by the Whiteman orchestra with Paul conducting and George himself—a phenomenal pianist—at the keyboard in Aeloian Hall in New York City in 1924. This is where this version of the Gershwin saga ends, because it is in this work that the immigrants—George Gershwin and the Yiddish culture from which he came—REALLY arrived on the music scene and became yet another important part of the American melting pot. George brought it all together, and it became a new musical-cultural platform upon which all of us since have built. As Paul Whiteman said of Rhapsody in Blue, “Jazz became a lady;” and this writer might add, America enriched its culture by bringing the Russian-Jewish Gershovitzes and their culture aboard and providing a safe, supportive, and free milieu in which they grew into “the Gershwins.”

Rhapsody in Blue has all that in it, and says it all more eloquently than words.

If you are interested in performing Rhapsody in Blue, check out these links:

Rhapsody in Blue for Piano, click here.

Rhapsody in Blue for Full Orchestra (Miniature Score), click here.

Rhapsody in Blue. Arranged by Bob Cerulli. For Intermediate Full Orchestra. Conductor Score & Parts. Click here.

For your own recording of Rhapsody in Blue, check out: