[Dixielandjazz] A definitive Gershwin edition in progress--NYTimes 9-14-2013

[Norman Vickers]

To:  Musicians and Jazzfans list; DJML and  Pensacola Mencken  list

From: Norman Vickers, Jazz Society of Pensacola

 

This interesting information from today's New York Times about research at U
of Michigan for definitive edition on the  work  of George and Ira Gershwin.

How wonderful!  It's been a long time coming.  

 

I send this also to the Pensacola Mencken list.  Mencken was a serious
amateur pianist favoring classical works, especially German.  His "Saturday
Night Club" group ate, drank, discussed and played classical music.   He
played second piano behind Max Broedel, a German imported as first
professional medical illustrator in U.S.  at Johns Hopkins Medical School.
Mencken didn't like jazz, couldn't play it.  But this was the prevailing
attitude of music teachers and the American Federation of Musicians in the
1920s.  There's the famous article in Etude Magazine, the magazine to which
all respectable music teachers  subscribed, condemning jazz as uncultured.
Since the Gershwins were in Mencken's time-period, it seems reasonable to
send it along to the Pensacola Mencken list as well.

 

 




  _____  

September 13, 2013  New York Times


Toward a Go-To Gershwin Edition


By LARRY ROHTER
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/larry_rohter/i
ndex.html> 


Is it to-may-to or to-mah-to? That question may be unanswerable, but an
agreement between the estates of George and Ira Gershwin
<http://www.gershwin.com/>  and the University of Michigan, to be announced
on Sunday
<http://www.music.umich.edu/performances_events/event_display.php?f=d&d=1379
217600&i=8149#8149> , aims to create the first definitive edition of the
Gershwins' entire joint body of work, including such landmark pieces as
"Rhapsody in Blue <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U40xBSz6Dc> ," "Porgy and
Bess" and "An American in Paris." 

The project, which is expected to require several decades of note-by-note
and word-by-word analysis, will allow University of Michigan scholars
unrestricted access to Gershwin scores, letters and compositional drafts,
which are at the Library of Congress and will remain there. From that
material, at least 35 volumes are to emerge, in both book and electronic
form, with the goal of cementing the Gershwins' reputation as uniquely
American geniuses and providing a reliable road map for future performances.


"George and Ira Gershwin are seminal figures in American culture, and their
legacy remains stronger than ever as classical and popular forms become
increasingly intertwined," said Christopher Kendall
<http://www.music.umich.edu/faculty_staff/bio.php?u=&lname=kendall&fname=chr
istopher> , dean of the School of Music, Theater
<http://www.music.umich.edu/index.php> & Dance at the University of
Michigan. "The Gershwins were at the cutting edge of that phenomenon, so
there's no question that this project is a singular opportunity for the
university and the Gershwin legacy." 

The project will encompass the works that George
<http://www.biography.com/people/ira-gershwin-9309681> , who died
<http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70F17F7345E177A93C0A8178CD
85F438385F9&scp=1&sq=george+gershwin>  in 1937 at 38, and Ira
<http://www.biography.com/people/ira-gershwin-9309681> , who died
<http://www.nytimes.com/1983/08/18/obituaries/ira-gershwin-lyricist-dies-son
gs-embodied-broadway.html>  in 1983 at 86, wrote together, George's
orchestral works and, conceivably, Ira's work with other partners. Mark
Clague, a music historian at the University of Michigan, said the objective
was to adhere as much as possible to the authors' original intent, as
difficult as that may be to determine. 

"For some works, there is more than one version, and we'll definitely be
exploring the intentions behind those changes," he said. Where the
instructions are vague or seemingly contradictory, he continued, "you have
to know what the composer was thinking. The idea is to intervene as little
as possible, but provide something that musicians can play." 

The Gershwin heirs said it was possible that fragments of heretofore
unperformed music composed by George or lyrics written by Ira would be
discovered as scholars make their way through the vast archive. But because
the main goal of the project is to produce a reliable score for use by
performers, each volume will be accompanied by essays and critical
commentary explaining the decisions taken. 

Marc Gershwin, a nephew of George Gershwin who administers his copyrights,
said the need for an authoritative critical edition had become increasingly
obvious to the heirs in recent years. He remembers going to Bregenz,
Austria, with Michael Strunsky, his counterpart on the Ira Gershwin side of
the family, to see a new staging of
<http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/25/theater/porgy-and-bess-in-austria-a-long-
way-from-catfish-row.html%60> "Porgy and Bess" and hearing complaints from
the conductor of the production, Andrew Litton. 

"He said, 'Hey guys, you've got to do something about this score, there are
so many things that have to be corrected all the time,' " Mr. Gershwin
recalled. "Because the precision just wasn't there when these things were
first done many years ago, there were always these big mistakes, and
conductors became acutely aware that what was being given them was flawed." 

It is not clear in what order the Gershwins' many orchestral works, operas
and songs for Broadway musicals and Hollywood films will be re-examined or
published, though Mr. Kendall, himself a conductor of Gershwin works,
expressed a desire to get to "some of the epic and iconic works" early on.
Nor is the source of financing for so ambitious a project, which he said
could last up to 40 years, entirely clear. 

"Some of the money is already in place, in the structure of the school for
scholarly work by our faculty," Mr. Kendall said. "And we have connections
through our existing work to the American Musicological Society and the
National Endowment for the Humanities. But additional fund-raising will be
required." 

All involved in the project credit Marc Gershwin's son Todd, a graduate of
the University of Michigan, for bringing the two sides together. The younger
Gershwin was a sports management major, and, according to his father,
initially acted more out of loyalty to his alma mater than from firsthand
knowledge of the university's School of Music, Theater & Dance, but once
talks started, the logic of a collaboration became clear. 

In musicological circles, the University of Michigan is known as a center of
scholarship for American music, both classical and popular. The second
edition
<http://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-grove-dictionary-of-american-mus
ic-9780195314281;jsessionid=3E23E35E73F45B26D186706EE58E19E5?cc=us&lang=en&>
of the Grove Dictionary of American Music, due out next month from Oxford
University Press, was prepared there, with Mr. Clague as the project editor,
and another faculty member, Richard Crawford, is a renowned Gershwin expert
who is working on a biography of George Gershwin. 

"Having Todd call us was definitely a game-changer," Mr. Clague said.
"Normally we have to pay copyright fees" for print rights "but here we were
being invited to do this. You can imagine how excited we were." 

The project is to have an advisory board composed largely of leading
scholars and performers with firsthand experience of the Gershwin catalog.
Those will include Mr. Crawford and Mr. Litton, as well as the composer
William Bolcom, the singers Joan Morris, Jessye Norman and Michael Feinstein
and the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas. 

It is highly unusual for composers who straddled the line between the
European classical and American vernacular musical traditions to see their
work gathered in a critical edition, a distinction more common for the likes
of Beethoven and Mozart. Mr. Strunsky said that securing the Gershwins'
legacy "for the ages" was especially important in an era in which a growing
number of people seem to know "Rhapsody in Blue" only from a United Airlines
commercial and may be completely unfamiliar with classic songs like
"Summertime," "I Got Rhythm" or "They Can't Take That Away From Me." 

"Go down on the corner and ask people, 'Do you know who George Gershwin
was?' and I will bet you that you'll get 1 out of 40," Mr. Strunsky said.
"With Ira it would be even less, so we have to keep getting our music out
there." 

 
--End--