Music Finds George

Charles Hambitzer

Once Gershwin became interested in music, he wanted nothing to do with any other subject. Maxie Rosenweig was only eight years old when Gershwin heard him playing his violin through an open window. Maxie and Gershwin had conversations about music that intrigued Gershwin and inspired him to start experimenting on the piano at his friend’s house. When the Gershwin family bought their first piano, originally intended for Ira, Gershwin immediately began playing, reproducing melodies he heard and adding chords to the best of his ability. He quickly started taking lessons and went through four teachers before he found Charles Hambitzer, who would inspire Gershwin more than any other teacher he had. He was so impressed by Gershwin’s seriousness with the piano that he refused to take payments from the Gershwins. Hambitzer taught Gershwin about the theory of music, harmonization, scales, technique, exercises, and even instrumentation (Ewen 47). Quoted from Ewen’s biography on Gershwin, in a letter to his sister, Hambitzer wrote, “I have a new pupil who will make his mark in music if anybody will. The boy is a genius, without a doubt; he’s crazy about music and can’t wait until it’s time to take his lessons” (47-8).

Remick's

At the age of fifteen, his passion for piano landed him a job at a resort in New York in the Catskill Mountains, where he earned five dollars a week playing for guests. Gershwin also started writing his own pieces of music. Although unpublished, his first piece of music was titled Since I Found You. Most of his compositions were considered a part of the popular music style and included sounds native to the area in which he lived, Tin Pan Alley. Gershwin particularly enjoyed listening to the sounds of Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” After two years of high school and a heated discussion with his mother, Gershwin dropped out to pursue a full-time career in music. Still a fifteen-year-old boy, he received a job offer from a song-publishing house, Remick’s, to be a song plugger and staff pianist. Gershwin was the youngest song plugger in the area and made fifteen dollars a week playing sheet music for prospective buyers. However, his hours were long and tiring. Ewen writes, “From eight to ten hours a day, Gershwin was a prisoner to the keyboard, pounding out the current Remick song releases” (53).   After a couple years playing at Remick’s and composing on his own, his song When You Want ‘Em You Can’t Get ‘Em, When You've Got 'Em, You Don't Want 'Em, was published in 1916 at the age of eighteen. Until his first interaction with French culture, Gershwin continued writing music, playing piano for Broadway shows, and eventually writing numbers and complete scores for Broadway musicals. Even at the age of eighteen, bits and pieces of his work found their way into big stage productions. The first show with parts of Gershwin's work was The Passing Show of 1916. Two years later, Gershwin had success incorporating some of his entire songs into popular stage productions. These productions included Half-Past Eight (1918), La, La, Lucille (1919), Lady Be Good (1924), Funny Face (1927), and Girl Crazy (1930). However, the entire list includes more than twenty other productions, sixteen of which occurred before he left for France. Gershwin also had four concert works published before leaving the country. These works include 135th Street (1922), Rhapsody in Blue (1924), Concerto in F (1925), and Three Preludes for piano (1926) (Ewen 43-78 and 333-345).

Gershwin on Time

Even when it looks like Gershwin already has it all, in 1925 at the age of twenty-seven, he was the first American-born composer to be featured on the cover of Time magazine (Starr 13). 

Gershwin (far right) and Ravel (at piano)

That That same year, Gershwin traveled to France for a very short time, but long enough to develop the thought to compose a piece of music that would tell the tale of an American’s journey through the streets of Paris. The event that solidified his choice to write this piece came three years later in 1928 when Maurice Ravel, a brilliant musician, requested to meet Gershwin while he was in the states. As a fan of Ravel, Gershwin was honored to meet him and play for him; he even asked Ravel if he would instruct him, but Ravel commented something along the lines of “better to be a first-rate Gershwin than a second-rate Ravel” and declined the task (qtd. in Rimler 29). However, Ravel insisted that he write a letter to another talented pianist in France, a woman by the name of Nadia Boulanger, inquiring if she would consider giving Gershwin lessons. Gershwin proudly took the letter and decided that he would travel to France to study and set aside time to be a serious composer. In the spring of 1928, George, his brother Ira with his wife Leonore, and sister Frances set off for Europe. The group traveled to various parts of England and Germany before arriving in Paris, France. After settling in at the hotel, Gershwin immediately took off to find Nadia Boulanger in hopes that she would give him lessons. Nadia listened to him for ten minutes, and when he finished she remarked that there was nothing for her to teach him. Rather than increasing his self-esteem that two remarkable pianists had turned him down for lessons, Gershwin was torn. He felt that he was missing the opportunity to learn techniques that many up-and-coming pianists were learning from both Ravel and Boulanger and that he would soon fall behind (Rimler 29-30).