Gershwin

Thought you all might enjoy this quote reprinted in the book _George
Gershwin_ (ed. by Merle Armitage, Longmans Green, 1938) the year after
GG's death. It originally appeared in _Revolt In the Arts_ (ed. by Oliver
M. Saylor, Coward-McCann, 1933). When I began to read this passage, given
who had written it, it didn't make any sense -- until I got to the end.
Then all of a sudden it hit me, and a whole nest of possible contemporary
relationships came to mind.

"As for further esthetic developments in musical composition, American
composers may in time use quarter notes, but then so will Europe use
quarter notes. Eventually our ears will become sensitive to a much finer
degree than they were a hundred, fifty or twenty-five years ago. Music
deemed ugly then is accepted without question today. It stands to reason,
therefore, that composers will continue to alter their language. That
might lead to anything. They have been writing already in two
keys. There is no reason why they will not go further and ask us to
recognize quarter or sixteenth notes. Such notes, whether written or not,
are used all the time, only we are not conscious of them. In India they
use quarter tones and, I believe, consciously."

From "The Composer In the Machine Age"
by George Gershwin

Beyond this squinting into a microtonal future, some on this list may also
be interested to know that, not only were GG and Schoenberg tennis buddies
in Hollywood who gossiped about Edward G. Robinson between sets, GG
actually *liked* Schoenberg's music -- *including* the serial works --
though the serialist who probably influenced him most was Berg. Every
time I look at Gershwin's oil portrait of Schoenberg I start fantasizing
the most deliciously bizarre shop talk between them.

History isn't as tidy as we'd like it to be.

Steve Soderberg