George Gershwin

George Gershwin was born Jacob Gershwine in Brooklyn on September 26, 1898, the second son of Russian Jewish immigrants — Morris Gershovitz, a leather cutter from Odessa, and Rose Bruskin, from Saint Petersburg. Nothing about him suggested music until he was ten, when a friend's violin recital caught his attention and he began monopolizing the piano the family had bought for his older brother Ira. His teacher, Charles Hambitzer, opened him up to orchestral concerts and European technique, but formal study ended at fifteen: in 1913 he left school for Tin Pan Alley, plugging songs for the publisher Jerome H. Remick at 15 dollars a week, playing other men's tunes on demand for anyone who walked in wanting to hear them.

Al Jolson's version of 'Swanee' made him a name in 1919; five years later, on February 12, 1924, Paul Whiteman's band premiered his Rhapsody in Blue at Aeolian Hall and made him a composer, not just a songwriter. With his brother Ira writing lyrics, the two turned out a run of Broadway hits through the 1920s — Lady, Be Good, Oh, Kay!, Funny Face, Girl Crazy — and in 1931 Of Thee I Sing became the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He kept pushing past Broadway anyway: An American in Paris for the concert hall in 1928, then Porgy and Bess in 1935, an opera set among Black residents of Charleston that flopped commercially and only later entered the standard repertoire. He closed out the decade writing film scores in Hollywood, Fred Astaire dancing to the results.

He spent ten years involved with the composer Kay Swift, who eventually divorced her husband for him; they never married, in part because his mother objected that she was not Jewish. Both Maurice Ravel and Nadia Boulanger turned down requests to teach him formal composition, afraid rigorous training would smooth out exactly what made his music his. In early 1937 he began having headaches and smelling burning rubber that was not there; that February he lost coordination and blacked out mid-performance playing his own concerto in San Francisco. He collapsed on July 9 at a borrowed house in Beverly Hills, working on a film score, and said as his last words 'Fred Astaire.' Doctors found a brain tumor and operated, but he died before dawn on July 11, two days later, at 38.

Otto Klemperer conducted a memorial concert at the Hollywood Bowl that September, and Gershwin was buried at Westchester Hills Cemetery. A posthumous Oscar nomination followed for 'They Can't Take That Away From Me.' The reputation only grew from there: Broadway's Uris Theatre was renamed the Gershwin in 1983, Congress gave him and Ira a Gold Medal in 1985, and the Library of Congress created an annual Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in 2007, first given to Paul Simon. Porgy and Bess, a commercial failure at its 1935 opening, is now a fixture of the American opera repertoire. In 2005 the Guardian called him the wealthiest composer who ever lived.

George Gershwin's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Swanee song
  His first national hit, sung by Al Jolson 1919
• Rhapsody in Blue other
  Premiered at Aeolian Hall under Paul Whiteman, orchestrated by Ferde Grofe 1924
• Lady, Be Good other
  First full Broadway score written with his brother Ira 1924
• An American in Paris other
  Orchestral tone poem written during a stay in the city 1928
• Of Thee I Sing other
  First musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama 1931
• Porgy and Bess other
  Opera set in Charleston — a commercial flop that outlived its reviews 1935

• 1908 aged ~10 A friend's violin recital sparks his interest in music
• 1913 aged ~15 Leaves school at 15 to plug songs on Tin Pan Alley
• 1919 aged ~21 'Swanee' becomes a hit after Al Jolson performs it
• February 12, 1924 aged 25 Rhapsody in Blue premieres at Aeolian Hall
• 1928 aged ~30 Composes An American in Paris after a stay in the city
• 1931 aged ~33 Of Thee I Sing wins the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
• 1935 aged ~37 Porgy and Bess opens and struggles at the box office
• February 11, 1937 aged 38 Loses coordination performing his own concerto in San Francisco
• July 11, 1937 aged 38 Dies hours after brain surgery, at 38

• Irving Berlin 1888–1989
  Songwriter whose vast catalog, from 'God Bless America' to Broadway standards, helped define the American popular songbook. Tin Pan Alley colleague
• Cole Porter 1891–1964
  Composer and lyricist of Broadway standards including Anything Goes and Kiss Me Kate. Broadway contemporary
• Duke Ellington 1899–1974
  Composer and bandleader who expanded the artistic ambition and vocabulary of jazz. crossed jazz into the concert hall alongside him
• Leonard Bernstein 1918–1990
  Conductor, composer, and educator who brought classical music to mass audiences and reshaped American musical theater. later conducted and championed his scores
• Aaron Copland 1900–1990
  Composer whose accessible modernist works created an enduring musical language associated with American landscapes and identity. fellow claimant to the American sound