Customer Reviews

Gershwin, his life and music

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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.