Americas quintessential composer, George Gershwin, is renown for his Broadway musical scores of the 20s and 30s, as well as jazz-influnced symphonic works such as Rhapsody In Blue (1924), An American In Paris(1928), and The Cuban Overture (1932). He was incredibly prolific, writing scores for dozens of Broadway shows, while he continued to study serious composition. His later works reflect his continuing growth as a brilliant composer, and his evolving mastery of modern harmony. His life was like a shooting star...fiery and brief. Tragically, two years after writing his masterpiece, the folk opera, Porgy and Bess in 1935, he died of a brain tumor on July 11, 1937. He was 39 years old. He left an incomparable legacy of magnificent music for all of us. Writer John S. Wilson said upon hearing of Gershwins death, I dont have to believe it if I dont want to. Why a Gershwin post in a group called Film Noir: Yesterday and Today you may ask? Simply, because I believe virtually every composer of film music we know, especially from the Classic Noir period - were influenced by George Gershwins music. Listen to the music in your favorite Classic Noirs, with scores by David Raksin, Elmer Bernstein, Miklos Rosza, Bernard Herrmann, Frank Skinner, Paul Sawtell, Max Steiner, to name a few...and you can hear the Gershwin influenced melodic passges everywhere. With his jazz influenced harmonies and bluesy melodies, Gershwin combined Americas authentic musical heritage with Classical forms, such as the Rhapsody and the Concerto, although his uniquely American works bore little resemblance to their European predecessors. No one single composer so dramatically changed the vocabulary of modern American Film Music as Gershwin. Listen to the 20th Century Fox theme Street Scene by Alfred Newman, that was used in numerous Fox Noirs...if you really want to hear a Gershwin-esque piece of film music. A short tribute, then, to my favorite film composer (BTW: Yes, he did actually compose two Film Scores: Delicious (1931) and Shall We Dance (1936) starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, not exactly a Film Noir)....
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 23:52:20 +0000
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