George Gershwin

The immigrants' son

Gershwin was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1898, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. His father moved the family from neighborhood to neighborhood following work, and the boy grew up roller-skating in the streets. Once he found the piano, he progressed quickly with a good teacher, learning Chopin, Liszt and Debussy.

Tin Pan Alley

At fifteen Gershwin left school and went to work in Tin Pan Alley, New York's street of music publishers. His job was to sit in a shop playing new songs for customers to sell sheet music. Playing countless songs all day, he absorbed the language of popular music through his fingertips.

Soon he was writing songs himself, and in 1919 his song "Swanee" became a huge hit and made his name. After that the brothers, Ira writing lyrics and George the music, turned out one Broadway musical after another.

Into the concert hall

With Rhapsody in Blue in 1924, Gershwin brought the language of jazz into the concert hall in a big way. The next year came the Concerto in F, and in 1928 the orchestral work An American in Paris, drawn from impressions of a trip to Paris; it even calls for real taxi horns. He longed to study composition further with European musicians, and the story goes that in Paris he asked Ravel for lessons and was politely declined.

Porgy and Bess

In 1935 Gershwin staged the opera Porgy and Bess, portraying life in a Black community in the American South, with songs such as "Summertime." It did poorly at first but later became established as a defining American opera. It has been performed with the condition that its leading roles be sung by Black performers.

An end that came too soon

In the late 1930s Gershwin moved to Hollywood to write film music. But in 1937 severe headaches and strange symptoms set in, and by the time a brain tumor was found it was too late. He died after surgery, at thirty-eight.

Music to hear on Pyeongeum

• Rhapsody in Bluethe fourteenth stop on our Music Journey, opening with a clarinet glissando.

After listening, think again about how the street-song language he learned and the large forms of the concert hall came together in one piece.

People around him

• His brother Ira Gershwin: his lifelong partner, who wrote the lyrics to his songs.
• Paul Whitemanthe bandleader who commissioned and premiered Rhapsody in Blue.
• Ferde Groféthe arranger who scored Rhapsody in Blue for the band's instruments.