`Jazz I regard as an American folk music," wrote George Gershwin who was born 100 years ago today, "not the only one, but a very powerful one which is probably in the blood and feeling of the American people more than any other style of music. I believe it can be made the basis of serious symphonic works of lasting value, in the hands of a composer with talent for both jazz and symphonic music." This hyperactive second son of Russian-Jewish emigres, who came to epitomise the hectic life of 1920s and 1930s America, possessed that talent in abundance.
His father, Morris Gershovitz supported the family through various entrepreneurial projects including running a cigar store, a Turkish bath and a pool parlour. There was also a bakery. As Morris had a preference for walking to work, the family moved with each new venture. The Gershwin boys once reckoned they had called close to 30 apartments home. Manhattan and Brooklyn were territories they knew well and with that familiarity came an awareness of a big city's juxtaposition of poverty and wealth as well as the multi-racial cultural reality of New York.
George Gershwin's interest in music began early. At 12 he hijacked the piano intended for his serious elder brother and eventual collaborator, Ira. Discovering Dvorak, initially through hearing a classmate play a piece, alerted George to the limitless possibilities of music. Time spent wandering about Harlem listening to ragtime was not wasted.
Absorbing the blues harmonies, the rhythms of Black music inspired him. He could also draw on the traditional Yiddish tunes and cantorial voice of the Jewish liturgical, singing which was his heritage. George became obsessed with trying out tunes. Melody came naturally to him, as did innovation and an innate feel for highly chromatic chords.
By 15 he had had enough of school and began working for a music publisher as a Tin Pan Alley "piano pounder" - employed to sell songs by playing them for interested customers. Needless to say, young George seldom limited himself to playing the sheet music as printed. Besides, he was already writing his own.
Although the composer of America's greatest opera, Porgy and Bess (1935) never formally learnt to read music, Gershwin's dexterity and memory ensured he quickly mastered the keyboard. It was to be his favourite place. Whatever the party or gathering, he sought out the piano, performing endless variations of his own work. In time, his mother warned him about overdoing it, but Gershwin countered her objections, saying "if I don't play at a party, I don't have a good time".
Fame arrived in 1919, when Gershwin approached Al Jolson. He played Swanee to the singer, who included it in his stage show and also recorded it. It was a huge success and made Gershwin, still only in his early 20s, rich. Such is the confidence and energy of Gershwin's music it is easier to assume he was brash and arrogantly, confident of his genius. But he was conscious of his structural weaknesses and passionately respected the classic traditions of European music. During his travels to the Continent, he met Ravel, Poulence, Prokofiev and Berg - all of whom were interested in new trends. For his part he was anxious to learn from them, approaching Stravinsky, Glazunov and Ravel for tuition. The French composer replied, "why be a second-rate Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin." Having been informed of Gershwin's earning power, Stravinsky's reaction was understandably shrewd. "Maybe," he ventured, "I should be taking lessons from you."
The Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg became a close friend when Gershwin moved to Hollywood. Schoenberg had settled there in 1933 on fleeing the Nazis. Gershwin had hoped to become his pupil, but as they were both obsessed with tennis, they ended up subjecting each other to tough games. In his mid 20s Gershwin had begun collecting art. About that time, he had also discovered a talent for painting, and pursued this interest. Schoenberg sat for him in late 1936.
Years earlier, however, in 1924, George and brother Ira completed Lady, Be Good! It was their first collaboration and effectively refined the Hollywood musical. Unlike the prevailing tradition of revue, the Gershwin show had a narrative. The public appreciated the emergence of storyline. Three years later their political satire, Strike Up the Band, flopped. However, on being revived in 1930 - a year after the Wall Street crash - it was a success. Satire was becoming popular. Audiences loved Of Thee I Sing (1931), the Gershwin send-up of a US presidential campaign.
Money kept rolling in. When Gershwin arrived back in New York from Paris, reporters would be waiting at the docks to meet him. He wrote hundreds, thousands of songs. Admitting to having "more tunes in my head than I could put down on paper in a hundred years" George Gershwin wrote music at a break-neck pace. His peers were song writers; Gershwin was a composer - it is a significant distinction.
In contrast with the mercurial George, Ira wrote his lyrics slowly, line by line. There are many Gershwin stories - he seems to have been liked as well as respected and was credited as being one of the few composers in possession of a real sense of humour. Once, on checking out of a hotel, he realised he had left behind sketch books with details of about 40 song ideas. He was philosophical. "There are plenty more where those came from."
But what of the Gershwin legacy? Is he too obviously showbizzy to rank as a serious composer? True, there is the endless supply of dazzling toe-tapping tunes and songs - and the colourful stories; In 1943 the Danish underground used recordings of It Ain't Necessarily So to interrupt German propaganda broadcasts. Works such as Porgy and Bess, Rhapsody in Blue, Variations on `I Got Rhythm' will endure.
He is acknowledged for his pioneering ambition to extend the potential of jazz into larger forms. Yet Dvorak had already addressed the marriage of jazz and symphonic music some 40 years earlier, while Satie and Milhaud, as well as Stravinsky, were all obviously aware of ragtime and American dance crazes. They were all informed, trained composers. But Gershwin, the untrained piano pounder who wrote his Piano Concerto in F in 1925 could stand with them - and still does - as a unique example of an artist poised between popular forms and jazz on the one side and the classical tradition - albeit intuitively acquired rather than formally inherited, on the other. "Music," he argued, "must reflect the thoughts and aspirations of the people and the time. My people are American. My time is today."
The unabashed show-biz extravaganza which was the opening ceremony of the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles is remembered for its colour, its rocket man and the predictable cast of thousands. But the most enduring image is that of the comic perhaps - but definitely dramatic spectacle of 84 pianists at 84 white pianos - and the synchronous sound of Gershwin's fabulous Rhapsody in Blue.
There is a rawness and energy and a powerful sense of America in his music. It was also authentic, new. It is exciting, usually happy. But Gershwin's bachelor life was not - various affairs led nowhere, his love for movie star Paulette Goddard was futile as she refused to leave her then husband Charlie Chaplin. In 1937, Gershwin wrote "I'm 38, famous and rich, but profoundly unhappy. Why?" He developed a brain tumour and died, aged 38 on July 11th, 1937.