Friends and Tennis Partners?
George Gershwin and Arnold Schoenberg created music that is so fundamentally different it’s hard to imagine that they had very much in common.
But they did. Both were Jewish immigrants, here to escape religious persecution. Schoenberg left Austria to avoid the the rise of the Nazi party. The Gershwin family fled their homelands in Russia and the Ukraine, with George being born and raised in Brooklyn. They would become good friends and tennis partners, with genuine admiration for each other’s work.
Neither of them had a formal music education. Schoenberg was largely self taught, only studying counterpoint with the composer Alexander Zemlinsky. Gershwin learned conventional piano techniques and traditional classical repertoire from his childhood piano teacher, Charles Hambitzer.
At the age of 15, Gershwin left school to become a Tin Pan Alley ‘song plugger’. He earned $15 a week and sold his first song for 50 cents. But soon, “Swanee” would become a national hit, and others would follow leading to the success of his early musicals. While In his twenties, Schoenberg orchestrated operettas to earn a living while composing his own music, including “Transfigured Night”. Strauss was an admirer of his work, as was Mahler, who even assisted in supporting him.
Gershwin’s early success allowed him to experiment, and he decided to create a one-act jazz opera, “Blue Monday”. It is probably the fore runner of “Porgy and Bess”, and his only early commercial failure. Schoenberg developed the 12-tone technique – a discovery he felt on par with Einstein’s work in physics – that would ensure “the supremacy of German music for hundreds of years.”
After ’Rhapsody in Blue”, Gershwin traveled to France in search of the formal classical training he felt he’d lacked. At the Paris Conservatory, Nadia Boulanger rejected him, afraid of ruining his jazzy style. He sought composition lessons from Ravel, who replied, “Why become a second-rate Ravel when you’re already a first-rate Gershwin?” When he learned what Gershwin was earning, he added “You should give me lessons.”
Gershwin spent his time in France composing “An American in Paris”, and returned to the US to an uninterrupted career of spectacular musical success creating songs, Broadway musicals and scores for films. Schoenberg would become recognized as the most influential composer, teacher and music theorist of the 20th century. His students included Berg and Webern, and his views on music history and aesthetics influenced musicians including Artur Schnabel, Rudolph Serkin and Glenn Gould.
On the recommendation of Otto Klemperer, Schoenberg immigrated to the US and was appointed a professor at UCLA. At his home in Los Angeles, Shirley Temple and George Gershwin were his neighbors, and his guests included Otto Klemperer, Edgar Varese, Harpo Marx and Peter Lorre.
While highly critical of Bizet, Ravel, Stravinsky and even Mahler for a time, Schoenberg praised Gershwin as an artist and composer. When the “Concert in F” was met with early criticism, Schoenberg defended him as someone who “has something to say and he says it.”
But when Gershwin approached him for composition lessons, he received a familiar response – “I would only make you a bad Schoenberg, and you’re such a good Gershwin already.”
Most importantly, they held a deep desire to advance the musical traditions of their respective homelands. For Gershwin, even though he incorporated Ukrainian melodies he heard as child into songs such as “Summertime”, he believed “true music must reflect the thought and aspirations of the people and time. My people are Americans. My time is today.” For Schoenberg, he firmly believed that he was merely extending the Romantic traditions of Brahms and Wagner, as ‘a natural continuer of properly-understood good old tradition!’.
I believe that Gershwin and Schoenberg both recognized each others ability to organize and manipulate sounds into a wholly new music emanating from their own very unique voice, and would continue to influence music throughout the 20th century.
Listen to these two works. Any of this resonate within you?