by David M. Zajic and Naomi Chang
George Gershwin (1898-1937)
An American in Paris
Composed: 1928
First performed: December 13, 1928
George Gershwin grew up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the child of Russian Jewish immigrants. In this context, Gershwin’s family was not poor. His father owned restaurants and shops, and as symbol of their affluence the Gershwins acquired, in 1910, a piano. Gershwin studied piano as a teenager and worked as a song plugger, performing pop songs in public places to help sell sheet music in an era before radio. Gershwin became a successful Broadway composer, and the Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F established him as America’s foremost combiner of Classical and Jazz music. Most of An American in Paris was composed during a vacation to Paris and Vienna that Gershwin took during the spring of 1928. Unlike his musicals and the Rhapsody, Gershwin wrote his own orchestrations for American in Paris, completing them on November 18, less than a month before the scheduled premiere by Walter Damrosch and the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall.
Deems Taylor collaborated with the composer on the program notes for the premiere. They are fascinating not only as an explanation of the music’s story, but also as a sample of Taylor’s style and wit.
“You are to imagine an American visiting Paris, swinging down the Champs-Elysées on a mild, sunny morning in May or June. Being what he is, he starts without preliminaries and is off at full speed at once to the tune of The First Walking Theme, a straightforward diatonic air designed to convey the impression of Gallic freedom and gaiety. Our American’s ears being open, as well as his eye, he notes with pleasure the sounds of the city. French taxicabs seem to amuse him particularly, a fact that the orchestra points out in brief episodes introducing four real Paris taxi horns.
“Having safely eluded the taxis, our American apparently passes the open door of a café where, if one is to believe the trombone, La Maxixe is still popular. Exhilarated by this reminder of the gay 1900s, he resumes his stroll through the medium of The Second Walking Theme, which is announced by the clarinet in French with a strong American accent. Both themes are now discussed at some length by the instruments, until our tourist happens to pass a church, or perhaps the Grand Palais – where the Salon holds forth. At all events, our hero does not go in.
“At this point, the American’s itinerary becomes somewhat obscured. It may be that he continues down the Champs-Elysées, and that when The Third Walking Theme makes its eventual appearance our American has crossed the Seine and is somewhere on the Left Bank. Certainly it is distinctly less Gallic than its predecessors, speaking American with a French intonation as befits that region of the city where so many Americans foregather. ‘Walking’ may be a misnomer for despite its vitality, the theme is slightly sedentary in character and becomes progressively more so. Indeed, the end of this section of the work is couched in terms so unmistakably, albeit, pleasantly blurred as to suggest that the American is on a terrasse of a café exploring the mysteries of Anise de Lozo.
“And now the orchestra introduces an unhallowed episode. Suffice it to say that a solo violin approaches our hero (in the soprano register) and addresses him in the most charming broken English; and his response being inaudible – or ate least unintelligible – repeats the remark. This one-sided conversation continues for some little time. Of course, on hastens to add, it is possible that the whole episode is simply a musical transition. This may well be true, for otherwise it is difficult to believe what ensues: our hero becomes homesick. He has the blues; and if the behavior of the solo trumpet be any criterion, he has them very thoroughly. He realizes suddenly, overwhelmingly, that he does not belong to this place, that he is that most wretched creature in all the world, a foreigner.
“However, nostalgia is not a fatal disease – nor, in this instance, of over-long duration. Just in a nick of time the compassionate orchestra rushes another theme to the rescue, two trumpets performing the ceremony of introduction. It is apparent that our hero must have met a compatriot; for this last theme is a noisy, cheerful, self-confident Charleston, without a drop of Gallic blood in its veins. For the moment, Paris is no more; and a voluble, gutsy, wise-cracking orchestra proceeds to demonstrate at some length that it’s always fair weather when two Americans get together, no matter where. Walking Theme Number Two enters soon thereafter, enthusiastically abetted by Number Three. Paris isn’t such a bad place after all: as a matter of fact, it’s a grand place! Nice weather, nothing to do until tomorrow, nice girls. The blues return but mitigated by the Second Walking Theme – a happy reminiscence rather than a homesick yearning – and the orchestra, in a riotous finale, decides to make a night of it. It will be great to get home; but meanwhile, this is Paris!”
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Pavane pour une infante défunte
Composed for piano: 1899. orchestrated: 1910
Orchestral version first performed: December 25, 1911
Alborada del gracioso
Composed for piano: 1905. orchestrated: 1918
Orchestral version first performed: May 19, 1919
Tzigane
Composed for violin and piano: 1924. orchestrated: 1924
First performed: April 26, 1924, orchestral version November 30, 1924
Boléro
Composed 1928
First performed: November 20, 1928
Born to a mother of Basque origin and a Swiss father, Joseph Maurice Ravel’s major emotional influence—both in his life and his music—was his mother. It was she who sang Spanish folk melodies to him while he was young. Ravel inherited from her a deep sympathy for the music of Spain and a love of the Basque country, its people and folklore. Ravel’s early musical abilities were promising enough; his parents supported him in his musical efforts and considered the greatest problem to be whether Ravel should become a concert pianist or a composer. His performance abilities were called “rather gifted,” and he played with much spirit and great emotion. His peers noted that he was almost hypersensitive to artistic beauty.
A pavan is a slow, refined dance with origins in the late Renaissance. The Pavane pour une infante défunte, or Pavan for a dead princess, was written for piano while Ravel was studying with Gabriel Fauré. Ravel said that he conceived the pavane as a dance for a little princess of the 17th century – she’s dead because she lived a long time ago – rather than as a funeral lament for a dead child. The enormous popularity of the work prompted Ravel to orchestrate it a decade later.
Alborada del grazioso was originally part of a five-movement piano work called Miroirs (Mirrors). The title implies that the movements are a personal reflection of reality. An alborada is a Spanish dawn or morning song, while a gracioso is a traditional character from Spanish theater, a clown or comedian. The beginning and ending sections of the piece are lively dances, imitating the strumming of guitars and alternating between duple and triple rhythms. In between is a rhythmically free episode in which a solo bassoon plays the part of the lovelorn clown.
Ravel first heard the Hungarian violinist Jelly d’Aranyi at a private musicale in England in 1922. After the concert ended, Ravel requested d’Aranyi to play Gypsy melodies from Hungary, which she did well into the early morning. Despite his initial enthusiasm to write a Gypsy flavored work for d’Aranyi, it was two years before Ravel began work on Tzigane, which then only took him a few days to complete. The premiere of the piece, by d’Aranyi herself, was well received, leading to the orchestration of the piece later that same year
Ravel once commented, “I have written only one masterpiece. That is the Boléro. Unfortunately, it contains no music.” This bon mot expresses the idea that the musical content of the Boléro is not very interesting: a simple melody is repeated over and over during a 17 minute crescendo. The reason it is a masterpiece is it keeps our rapt attention through the use of extraordinary orchestration. The tone colors are so fascinating and exquisite that the simple modulation from C major to E major at the very end of the piece comes as a breathtaking surprise. Boléro was composed as a ballet for the famed ballerina Ida Rubinstein. The story of the ballet is set in a bar, where a voluptuous dancer stomps and whirls on the tables, exciting the men in the bar until a violent knife fight erupts. A story is told that just after the premiere, a woman in the audience pointed at Ravel and shouted that he was mad. Ravel smiled and said that she truly understood the work.
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