DURING HIS GANGPLANK INTERVIEW after the Majestic landed in New York Harbor on June 18, 1928, George Gershwin reached into one of his dozen suitcases, pulled out a Paris taxi horn, and honked it. “This is to be part of the scenery and atmosphere in my new ‘American in Paris,’ ” he told the reporters. Then he waved the manuscript of his composition in progress. “It begins in 2/4 time,” he declared, “very gay, the atmosphere of Paris,” and he identified other national gaits while he was at it—Vienna was 3/4, New York 4/4, London 6/8, and Russia 5/4. After some remarks about the Paris performance of his Concerto in F and his admiration for Alban Berg (he had been “all over Europe talking about Berg”), Gertrude Lawrence walked by, and he noted that he’d write a new musical for her as soon as “a good book with a plot” could be found. Strike Up the Band would be resurrected, he added. The public could expect a “Rhapsodie in Blue No. 2” too, and “after that a Rhapsodie in Red, but not radical.”1 Comments like these made it clear that the European trip had done nothing to change Gershwin’s commitment to both the Broadway stage and the concert hall.
Indeed, the complexity of his creative horizon had increased, for, together with his references to Berg, he wrote that summer to introduce himself to Charles Henry Meltzer, a British dramatist, critic, and opera librettist, to ask whether he might have a libretto ready to go, or an idea for one.2 Expressing “agreeable surprise,” Meltzer asked Gershwin what he had in mind. The composer replied on August 3:
I have seen two performances that appeal to me as much as anything I have ever seen from the standpoint of operatic possibilities; one was DuBose Heyward’s “Porgy” and the other was “The Dybbuk.”3 “Hansel and Gretel” is another type of opera that appeals to me. I must tell you, though, that foremost in my mind at present is symphonic orchestration, and I expect to do some more work for symphony orchestras before attempting an opera. Still there is no harm in our getting together to talk it over.
Meltzer replied that something like “Porgy” seemed the more likely choice because of its subject: “Americans would love to hear one big opera dealing with America.” However full Gershwin’s slate for the future might be, the operatic challenge posed by Otto Kahn in his November 1924 interview had claimed an abiding place in his plans.
During the late summer and early fall of 1928, Paul Whiteman recorded an arrangement of the Concerto in F that he had commissioned from Ferde Grofé with Roy Bargy, the Whiteman Orchestra’s regular piano soloist; both Gershwin and Bill Daly attended retake sessions that were deemed necessary. The new arrangement was unveiled to the public at Carnegie Hall on October 7, as part of Whiteman’s “Third Modern American Music Concert.”4 Although the concert drew an overflow crowd, critics disagreed about Gershwin’s concerto. Samuel Chotzinoff of the New York World reaffirmed his belief that the Concerto in F, even in this arrangement, was “one of the two most important works composed in the last ten years,” the other being the Rhapsody in Blue.5 But Olin Downes of the Times found Grofé’s “excessive instrumentation” to be no improvement to a composition that in the first place was “a serious effort, but on the whole, a poor one.”6
The musical comedy score Gershwin wrote that summer for Gertrude Lawrence was Treasure Girl, produced by Aarons and Freedley in hopes of repeating her success with Oh, Kay! The show seems to have had an uneventful tryout period, but after opening on November 8 in the Alvin Theatre, it closed early in January after only sixty-eight performances. The notion that this show could flop seemed improbable, considering its charismatic star, successful producers, gifted songwriting team, and corps of skilled dancers. And in fact, the critics found things to praise besides the star: Joseph Urban’s sets, the superior costuming and production values, and the contributions of dance director Bobby Connolly, not to mention a few strong musical numbers by the Gershwin brothers. Other cast members too—especially comedian Walter Catlett and the secondary couple, Mary Hay and Clifton Webb—won kudos. But from the start, Treasure Girl flunked musical comedy’s ultimate test: it failed to entertain the audience. Robert Benchley, writing for Life magazine, found the experience deadly: “There is a general atmosphere of a lost cause about the whole thing which depresses the cast as well as the audience.”7
Most agreed that the libretto by Fred Thompson and Vincent Lawrence deserved much of the blame. Attempts at humor, wrote Richard Lockridge of the Sun,
fell and struck the stage and did not perceptibly stir thereafter. “It was a heritage from my grandfather,” he says bravely, as he hands her the diamond ring. “Oh, it must have been grandpa’s glass eye,” she comes back promptly. And then they wait. “What does ‘four’ stand for?” he asks. “ ‘Four’ stands for a quartet,” says the other he. And they wait. There is no need to go on; no necessity even to point out that some of the lines are better than these, since it must be apparent that few could be worse.8
Brooks Atkinson of the Times accused the book’s authors of taking “the unforgivable liberty of presenting the accomplished Miss Lawrence in a disagreeable light. When she is not too uncritical of herself Miss Lawrence embodies most of the qualities that make for versatility and splendor in musical comedy stars—slender, fresh beauty, a lilting style of dancing, fullness and sweetness of voice, infectious mirth, a trick or two of clowning, subtle coquetry and a gift for dramatic acting.” However, “handicapped by a book that pictures her as a malicious liar and a spoiled child generally . . . she rather overdoes her clowning and coquetry.”9
The romance in Treasure Girl between Ann Wainwright, played by Lawrence, and Neil Forrester, played by Paul Frawley, was rarely delightful to behold. The treasure hunt around which the show revolves is a commercial scheme cooked up by real estate mogul Mortimer Grimes to sell properties on land he is trying to develop: Grimes’s hope is that by staging a competition with a princely prize, he will lure prospective customers to his property. Neil is Grimes’s manager, recovering from the end of his romance with Ann, who claims to be wealthy but is being hounded by a process server for unpaid debts. In the course of searching for the treasure, Ann finds her way to the cottage where Neil lives. Having once shaken hands on the premise that, for the two of them, “love is a wash-out,” they sing a number steeped in wistfulness, regret, and irony: “I Don’t Think I’ll Fall in Love Today.” (Ira doubted that this title would have come to him if he hadn’t read G. K. Chesterton’s poem “A Ballad of Suicide,” which features the refrain “I think I will not hang myself to-day.”)10 When Ann tries to lure Neil away so that the hunters can search for buried treasure on his property, the emotional current latent between them boils to the surface in an impassioned love song, “Feeling I’m Falling,” with lyrics filled with a flood of f-words—fooling, feeling, falling, fatal, flutter, felt, flame—mostly in three-syllable lines. But when Ann then rejoins the competition, Neil retreats into his cottage in disgust.11 And rather than delivering a traditional high-energy first-act finale, the librettists left Lawrence poignantly alone onstage to portray her character’s inconstancy: a mimetic challenge that flopped. It is no wonder that as the Act I curtain came down on opening night, applause was brief and tepid. Nor is it surprising that the score for this finale has been lost.12
Ann eventually finds the treasure, a box full of money, and engages in an unpleasant fight with Neil. The last scene features the two-piano team of Victor Arden and Phil Ohman, elevated to the stage from the orchestra pit, accompanying Ann in her only solo song, “Where’s the Boy? Here’s the Girl.” She has apparently been transformed, by a process akin to that of Shakespeare’s taming of the shrew, and realizes that she needs Neil by her side. When he announces that he has decided to move to Mexico, Ann takes a now-or-never risk: “I have found the treasure of all the treasures,” she announces to the crowd that has gathered to celebrate her winning of the prize. “Neil Forrester has just asked me to be his wife and I have accepted him.” Dazed at first by her claim—“So you love me that much?”—Neil ends up taking Ann in his arms. Normally, no better result is possible in a musical comedy, yet Treasure Girl ends on a skeptical note. In one of the script’s more telling exchanges, after Hopkins, the process server, addresses Neil with “Mr. Forrester, my congratulations! This is the happiest day of your life,” Neil responds, “No it isn’t. I’m going to be married tomorrow.” To which Hopkins replies: “That’s what I say. This is the happiest day of your life.”
An early January closing proved the end of the road for Treasure Girl. No tour for the company followed, nor did a London production.
. . .
AS DISAPPOINTED as Gershwin may have been by his first Broadway venture after the European trip, by then other opportunities had materialized. On August 14, the New York Post reported that he had received an offer of $100,000 from the Fox Movietone Company to write music for a “talking moving picture.” But two more years would pass before he and Ira were ready to tackle this new medium; the offer arrived as George completed the orchestral composition he’d been working on since January.
In an article by Hyman Sandow in Musical America on August 18, based on a long conversation in the Gershwin domicile on West 103rd Street, the composer explains the nature and purpose of An American in Paris, a piece of orchestral program music whose title signals its departure from traditional orchestral fare:
My purpose is to portray the impression of an American visitor in Paris as he strolls about the city, listens to the various street noises, and absorbs the French atmosphere. . . . Our American friend, perhaps after strolling into a café and having a few drinks, has suddenly succumbed to a spasm of homesickness. The harmony here is both more intense and simple than in the preceding pages. This ‘blues’ rises to a climax followed by a coda in which the spirit of the music returns to the vivacity and bubbling exuberance of the opening part with its impressions of Paris. Apparently the homesick American, having left the café and reached the open air, has downed his spell of the blues and once again is an alert spectator of Parisian life. At the conclusion, the street noises and French atmosphere are triumphant.13
As a world capital, Paris had a rich and distinctive musical legacy for a composer to draw upon, but for An American in Paris Gershwin introduced his own musical tradition to complement the French one. He emphasized that contrast through tempo: walking music played off against nonwalking—café—music. These two realms of musical contrast—French versus American, mobile versus stationary—aided the composer in shaping his ABA1 form. The statement (A) is designated by a tuneful and absorbing flow of musically related moments experienced during a tourist’s city walk, while the contrasting portion (B) is ruminative, addressing listeners with a stately and memorable blues theme, which is interrupted briefly by the effervescent strut of jazz-based dance music. The return of A1 material, brief enough that Gershwin calls it a coda, reconciles the contrast somewhat by bringing portions of A and B into proximity with each other. As Deems Taylor wrote, characterizing the end of the work on Gershwin’s behalf: “The blues return,” but the orchestra “decides to make a night of it.”14
On December 8, 1928, a guide suggesting the narrative that unfolds during the orchestra’s performance of An American in Paris was published in the New York Evening Post. “This analysis was prepared on behalf of Mr. Gershwin,” the statement explained, by Deems Taylor, “after going over the score and hearing a rehearsal.”15 At the premiere concert in Carnegie Hall, a slightly longer version of Taylor’s scenario was distributed:
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 with preliminaries, and is off at full speed at once, to the tune of the First Walking Theme, a straightforward, diatonic air, designed to convey an impression of Gallic freedom and gaiety.
Our American’s ears being open, as well as his eyes, he notes with pleasure the sounds of the city. French taxicabs seem to amuse him particularly, a fact that the orchestra points out in a brief episode introducing four real Paris taxi horns (imported at great expense for the occasion). These have a special theme allotted to them (the driver, possibly?), which is announced by the strings whenever they appear in the score.
Having safely eluded the taxis, our American apparently passes the open door of a café, where, if one is to believe the trombones, La Maxixe is still popular. Exhilarated by the reminder of the gay 1900s, he resumes his stroll through the medium of the Second Walking Theme, which is announced by the clarinetist in French with a strong American accent.
Both themes are now discussed at some length by the instruments, until our tourist happens to pass—something. The composer thought it might be a church, while the commentator held out for the Grand Palais, where the Salon holds forth. At all events, our hero does not go in. Instead, as revealed by the English horn, he respectfully slackens his pace until he is safely past.
At this point, the American’s itinerary becomes somewhat obscured. It may be that he continues on down the Champs-Élysées; it may be that he has turned off—the composer retains an open mind on the subject. However, since what immediately ensues is technically known as a bridge passage, one is reasonably justified that the Gershwin pen, guided by an unseen hand, has perpetrated a musical pun, 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 the 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 the terrasse of a café, exploring the mysteries of an Anise de Lozo.
And now the orchestra introduces an unhallowed episode. Suffice it to say that a solo violin approaches our hero (in soprano register) and addresses him in the most charming broken English and, his response being inaudible—or at least unintelligible—repeats the remark. The one-sided conversation continues for some little time.
Of course, one hastens to add, it is possible that a grave injustice is being done to both author and protagonist, and that the whole episode is simply a musical transition. The latter interpretation 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 orchestra be any criterion, he has them very thoroughly. He realizes suddenly, overwhelmingly, that he does not belong to this place, that he is the most wretched creature in the world, a foreigner. The cool, blue Paris sky, the distant upward sweep of the Eiffel Tower, the bookstalls of the quai, the pattern of the horse-chestnut leaves on the white, sun-flecked street—what avails all this alien beauty? He is no Baudelaire, longing to be ‘anywhere out of the world.’ The world is just what he longs for, the world that he knows best; a world less lovely—sentimental and a little vulgar perhaps—but for all that, home.
However, nostalgia is not a fatal disease—nor, in this instance, of overlong duration. Just in the 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, gusty, wisecracking 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 till tomorrow. The blues return, but mitigated by the second Walking Theme—a happy reminiscence rather than 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!
The December 13 premiere featured in the first season of the newly merged New York Symphony Orchestra, led by Walter Damrosch, and the venerable New York Philharmonic. To mark Gershwin’s debut with New York’s foremost orchestra, a gathering in his honor followed at the home of Jules Glaenzer, where Gershwin was presented with a brass humidor engraved with the names of many admirers. An accompanying speech by Otto Kahn, widely reported in the press and published in January, likened the composer’s character and achievements to those of another heroic American from the same generation: Charles Lindbergh.
As for the critical response to the premiere performance, Edward Cushing of the Brooklyn Eagle praised Gershwin’s composition as something new,
received with a demonstration of enthusiasm, in contrast to the conventional applause which new music, good and bad, ordinarily arouses. . . . Here is music made of materials that are not threadbare, that have not been worn thin and defaced by centuries of careless usage, music that is spontaneous and fertile of ideas, whose energy is real and not the product of brain sweat, and whose expressive power in the use of a musical idiom peculiar to the present, and valid as art, cannot be seriously questioned.16
Herbert Peyser of the Telegram, however, found the American traveler boorish: “a familiar and deadly type” resistant to the cultural riches of a storied city. And as for the music, “Mr. Gershwin’s latest ‘effusion’ turned out to be nauseous claptrap, so dull, patchy, thin, vulgar, long-winded and inane that the average ‘movie’ audience would probably be bored by it into open remonstrance.”17 The review by Oscar Thompson of the Evening Post, however, took a more even-handed approach to music that had engaged the audience:
The honks have it. Four automobile horns, vociferously assisted by three saxaphones, two tom toms, rattle, xylophone, wire brush, wood block and an ensemble not otherwise innocent of brass and percussion, blew or thumped the lid off in Carnegie Hall last night. . . . For those not too deeply concerned with any apparently outmoded niceties of art, it was an amusing occasion. Audience, orchestra, the composer himself, smiled, chortled or laughed aloud as the work was being played. They found its musical buffoonery good fun in spite of, or perhaps because of, its blunt banality and its ballyhoo vulgarity. But after all, this is the twentieth century, and what is a little banality and vulgarity between friends?18
Other New York critics judged the new piece in the context of Gershwin’s previous classical compositions. Three in particular, who had attended the premieres of the Rhapsody in Blue in 1924 and the Concerto in F in 1925, command attention as contributors to a body of opinion taking shape around a unique figure on the American scene. W. J. Henderson of the Sun—a fierce champion of the Rhapsody as a statement of American modernism—credited the new work with a similar “rollicking spirit,” “engaging candor,” “much cleverness,” and a first walking theme that was “aptness incarnate.”19 According to Olin Downes of the Times, An American in Paris resembled the Rhapsody more closely than it did the concerto, which had struck him as a bit too conventional. He found the new work replete with modern influence, if still within the orbit of Broadway. Downes also believed that Gershwin had used his automobile horns to good effect and “in a really witty way.”20 As for Samuel Chotzinoff of the World, he judged the new work “harmoniously modern,” “alive in every way,” and “easily the best piece of modern music since the Concerto in F.”21 In fact, once he had read and digested the responses of a wide swath of his fellow critics, he devoted his next Sunday column to that subject.22
GEORGE GERSHWIN’S first instrumental composition had been inspired by a specific purpose of his own: to demonstrate that jazz music ranged beyond the strict dance rhythms that had vitalized the American vernacular in the years after World War I. In 1924 Paul Whiteman’s groundbreaking “Experiment in Modern Music” had introduced the Rhapsody in Blue to the public as an exemplar of home-grown artistry for an audience drawn to concert halls. His second instrumental work, 1925’s Concerto in F, was a sequel to the Rhapsody in that its origins also lay in the agenda of a conductor. Its perpetrator was Walter Damrosch, who, having witnessed the impact of the Rhapsody, commissioned the concerto so that he could claim the virtuosity and artistic brilliance of George Gershwin for his own orchestra, and for the concert-hall stage at large. As for An American in Paris, however, composed three years later, it was the composer’s own idea. Set in a foreign place that Gershwin knew firsthand, the music tells a good-natured story, as the composer put his growing command of the art of orchestration on public display.
The experience of a traveler’s walk is reflected—or traced, or implied, or signified, or hinted at—in a composition for symphony orchestra. The music’s unfolding creates an aural canvas reflecting what the traveler could encounter as he walks, responding now and then to what he sees and experiences. As a songwriter, Gershwin was practiced at inventing music to express or signify the feelings and doings of human characters. Moreover, as a composer he was engaged in a lifelong process of interweaving musical repetition and contrast over time in order to fashion musical structures balancing variety and coherence. An American in Paris offers listeners a story told in a succession of five themes, woven together by a gifted hand. But beyond the story too lay a more strategic goal. As he had explained to the librettist Meltzer that summer, with an opera in his long-term sights, he was determined to gain more experience as a composer of orchestral music to underlie dramatic scenes.
Adding An American in Paris to his repertory—his third major composition outside the theater, and the only one not to feature a piano soloist—also encouraged Gershwin to take up the art of orchestral conducting. Within a year of the piece’s completion, after coaching with New York musician Arthur Bodansky, the composer was including performances of An American Paris in his public career as a maker of music.