The name George Gershwin is a magical one. It conjures up the Twenties, Broadway glitter, beauty and extravagance. Begin humming a Gershwin tune anywhere from Boston to Bangkok and someone will finish it for you: Rhapsody in Blue, Summertime, Lady Be Good, An American in Paris, to name a few. Called “Mr. Music” by his contemporaries, Gershwin (1898–1937) was a musical genius whose life epitomizes the American success story. The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, he was raised on the Lower East Side and never finished high school, yet grew up to become rich, famous, and the intimate of celebrities. Although George Gershwin's life was cut short by illness over sixty years ago, he is probably better known today than ever before. And yet too often he is the subject more of popular invention than of truth. In Gershwin: His Life and Music, author Charles Schwartz attempts to redress this imbalance by separating fact from myth. The result is an extraordinarily fascinating and honest account of the man who created such beauty that he became a legend in his own time.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Clueless.,
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This review is from: Gershwin: His Life And Music (Da Capo Paperback) (Paperback)
Composer Charles Schwartz has chosen to write a book about a writer for whom he has little respect. Furthermore, his indifference to most of Gershwin's music (he generously excepts Rhapsody in Blue) carries over into near-personal animosity. He seems to look for any stick with which to beat the composer. At times, I get the extremely strong impression of envy morphing into hurt. He repeats the story of Gershwin's "illegitimate son," talks about his supposed repressed homosexuality, all the while adding nothing new to old charges that would allow us to decide the truth one way or the other. I could forgive him all this, however, if he showed any indication that he understood the appeal of Gershwin's music -- other than, of course, that the composer's fans are musical philistines. In his own music, Schwartz creates a jazz-cum-classical idiom, and he faults Gershwin for not being True to Real Jazz, as if that's the only way jazz could be used -- that would be news to Milhaud, Martinu, Ravel, and Tippett, by the way. There are just too many a priori barriers between Schwartz's critical judgment and Gershwin's music. In the end, you learn very little about either Gershwin or his music, and in predictable prose, besides. By the way, I'm not related to the author.
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