Composers From The United States

"Tell me, George, if you had it to do all over, would you fall in love with yourself again?"

"There is no better way to spend an evening than listening to George Gershwin at the piano. Fortunately for his audience, he seldom was away from it. He played his own tunes to Ira's special lyrics and though his voice was pure gravel it was special entertainment."

"It certainly will be if you are still around."

"A skyscraper is at the same time a triumph of the machine and a tremendous emotional experience, almost breath-taking. Not merely its height but its mass and proportions are the result of an emotion, as well as of calculation."

"When jazz is played in another nation, it is called American. When it is played in another country, it sounds false. Jazz is the result of the energy stored up in America."

"An entire composition written in jazz could not live."

"Not many composers have ideas. Far more of them know how to use strange instruments which do not require ideas."

"The composer does not sit around and wait for an inspiration to walk up and introduce itself…Making music is actually little else than a matter of invention aided and abetted by emotion. In composing we combine what we know of music with what we feel."

"Jazz I regard as an American folk music; 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 folk music."

"I like to think of music as an emotional science."

"Modern European composers ... have very largely received their stimulus, their rhythms and impulses from Machine Age America. They have a much older tradition of musical technique which has helped them put into musical terms a little more clearly the thoughts that originated here. They can express themselves more glibly."

"The European boys have small ideas but they sure know how to dress 'em up."

"I frequently hear music in the heart of noise."

"My people are American, my time is today…music must repeat the thought and aspirations of the times."

"While the doctors were sawing away at Ira's midriff, I submitted a variety of ideas to George. One of the most successful was the title of the best song in the show, "Someone to Watch Over Me." I wrote and was credited with two songs: "Oh, Kay" and "Heaven On Earth." I wrote the verse for the spiritual number "Clap Yo' Hands" and a lyric called "That Certain Something You've Got," but Ira changed the lyrics and called it "Oh, Kay, You're O.K. with Me." It was the title song of the show and the least distinguished. Ira made me a present of the credit for it. It was the opposite of plagiarism; we call it donorism. George, realizing that any sum he paid me would have to come out of Ira's royalties, paid me next to nothing. It was decided that I was to get 1¢ for every copy of sheet music that was sold. When Ira sent me my first paycheck it was for 96¢. Some time shortly thereafter, Ira wrote asking if I minded canceling the arrangement which involved a lot of bookkeeping for such small sums. I said no, I didn't mind. I was proud to work with the great Gershwin. I would've done it for nothing, which I did."

"Gershwin's melodic gift was phenomenal. His songs contain the essence of New York in the 1920s and have deservedly become classics of their kind, part of the 20th-century folk-song tradition in the sense that they are popular music which has been spread by oral tradition (for many must have sung a Gershwin song without having any idea who wrote it)."

"[I]t's only good songs that last, not good rhythm, and in the first six years or so of his composing George was interested mainly in developing new rhythms."

"George died on July 11, 1937, but I don't have to believe that if I don't want to."

"If jazz should threaten to become a hampering stereotype, a "tradition" in its turn, George would go forward to the next fresh impulse that arose in him. You may call him the King of jazz and associate his name with the lifting of jazz into musical artistry. Very well, and his best thanks. But not on that account is he to be thrust into a pigeonhole. George Gershwin did not begin as a jazzer; he will not end as one."

"Well, if I were thus rationed in this article and could have but one adjective for George Gershwin, that adjective would be "ingenuous." Ingenuous at and about his piano. Once an occasional composer named Oscar Levant stood beside that piano while those sure, sinewy, catlike Gershwin fingers beat their brilliant drum-fire—the tumultuous cascade of the "Rhapsody In Blue," the amorous languor of "The Man I Love," the impish glee of "Fascinating Rhythm," the fine, jaunty, dust-spurning scorn of "Strike Up the Band." If the performer was familiar with the work of any other composer, he gave no evidence of it. Levant (who, by the way, makes a fleeting appearance in the new Dashlell Hammett book, under the guise of Levi Oscant) could be heard mutterIng under his breath, "An evening with Gershwin Is a Gershwln evening." "I wonder," said our young composer dreamily, "if my music will be played a hundred years from now." "It certainly will be," said the bitter Levant,"if you are still around.""

"The Rhapsody is not a composition at all. It's a string of separate paragraphs stuck together – with a thin paste of flour and water… I don’t think there has been such an inspired melodist on this earth since Tchaikovsky…but if you want to speak of a composer, that's another matter."

"Porgy is…an interesting example of what can be done by talent in spite of a bad setup. With a libretto that should never have been accepted on a subject that should never have been chosen, a man who should never have attempted it has written a work that has a considerable power."

"Gershwin's tragedy was not that he failed to cross the tracks, but rather that he did, and once there in his new habitat, was deprived of the chance to plunge his roots firmly into the new soil."

"It would have been better if you had died and Gershwin had written the elegy."

"When Sam Harris was preparing a Chicago company of Of Thee I Sing after it won the Pulitzer Prize, George, Ira, Harris and I were on the train to attend the opening. I thought it would be fun to ask Harris, with George sitting there, who his favorite composer was. Without hesitation Harris answered, "George Cohan," and began to sing Cohan songs and tell Cohan stories. George wasn't irritated at all, as anyone else might have been; he was just amused."

"He never raised his voice. When he asked for something, it was usually in an apologetic tone. I know he had this reputation for being brash, but that was just the way his music was. His death was a tragedy. When we were on tour, many times he would complain that he smelled garbage. Today, physicians will tell you that's a clue that you might have a brain tumor, but back then nobody knew. He often would be fighting depression, and when he went out on tour, it wasn't to make money. The whole point was to go out and get some quick adulation to boost himself up."

"Schnabel himself was an extraordinary composer, and actually thought of himself more as a composer than as a pianist. He wrote absolutely rhapsodic music, and endless pieces. All of his pieces, I think, are 45 minutes long! (laughs) Nothing of the little tidbit variety for him…"

"There are two things about Schnabel. I think he was certainly one of the most important influences of the twentieth century, pretty much on all music. But what was most striking was the level of inspiration every time his fingers touched the keyboard. It was a highly moving, almost kind of life-transformative experience. And one of the reasons was there was little caprice in his approach to music. ‘Because I feel it that way’ was never a sufficient reason to do something; that is arbitrary and it had no place in his lessons either. Everything that he did, he could point to the text, and the text - an urtext, an original text - was terribly important to him. His edition of the Beethoven sonatas is so instructive because his ideas and suggestions are in a different print than what Beethoven wrote; you can always distinguish between Beethoven and Schnabel. But that kind of dedication, that kind of musical integrity to the desires and instructions from the composer, gave it an authenticity that was irresistible, and that was combined with his level of inspiration. Very quickly, it became impossible to distinguish between Mozart and Schnabel, Beethoven and Schnabel, or Schubert and Schnabel; he became the musical personification of the composer, which is why it was so irresistible what he did."

"I know two kinds of audience only – one coughing, and one not coughing."

"Applause is a receipt, not a note of demand."

"The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes – ah, that is where the art resides."

"I am attracted only to music which I consider to be better than it can be performed. Therefore I feel (rightly or wrongly) that unless a piece of music presents a problem to me, a never-ending problem, it doesn't interest me too much."

"Children are given Mozart because of the small quantity of the notes; grown-ups avoid Mozart because of the great quality of the notes."

"Soon enough you can say we made it up just for fun I guess to make a mess cause what’s more fun than other people’s hell"

"You can tell By the laugh in the dark at the sound of the bell You can tell It's the nucleus burning inside of the cell…"

"Everybody’s got their differences too bad here’s a circumstance in which the stakes are high everybody’s got their secrets out so sad go around the room and see who doesn’t cry Soon enough you’ll be free to write it off you don’t know enough to call a bluff and the one who does will never ever tell"

"You lie so well I could never even tell what were facts in your artful rearranging But I came back for more and you laughed in my face and you rubbed it in cause I’m a Labrador and I run when the gun drops the dove again"

"When we first met I was glad to be your pet like a Lab I once had that we called Maisie but fetching sticks was the best I had for tricks you got bored you got mad then you got crazy"

"I could almost shed a tear but let’s shine in the time we have remaining you’re a tough old gal but a dog is just a pal and believe me, my dear, I’m not complaining"

"I thought my life would be different somehow I thought my life would be better by now But it's not, and I don't know where to turn"

"Little tornado You and the hurricane Close your eyes and go campaign Make it go faster Baby go faster Make it go twice the speed of you and me"

"When you’re a charmer people respond they can’t see the hidden agenda you got going on"

"You know it I know it Why don't you Just show it You got a lot of money but you can't afford the freeway"

"I'll tell you a secret I don't even know. Baby, there's something wrong with me Baby, there's something wrong with me Baby, there's something wrong with me That I can't see."

"Tell me why I feel so bad, honey Fighting left me plenty of money But didn't keep the promise of memory lapses Like a building that's been slated for blasting I'm the proof that nothing is lasting Counting to eleven as it collapses"

"When you’re a charmer the world applauds they don’t know that secretly charmers feel like they’re frauds When you’re a charmer you hate yourself a victim of sideshow hypnosis like everyone else."

"You struck me dumb, Like radium Like Peter Pan, or Superman, You have come... to save me. Come on and save me... Why don't you save me? If you could save me, From the ranks of the freaks, Who suspect they could never love anyone, Except the freaks, Who suspect they could never love anyone, Except the freaks, Who could never love anyone."

"I can't do it, I can't conceive You're everything you're trying to make me believe 'Cause this show is too well designed Too well to be held with only me in mind And how, how am I different? How, how am I different?"

"I can't do it, and as for you Can you in good conscience even ask me to? 'Cause what do you care about the great divide As long as you come down on the winner's side?"

"You look like a perfect fit For a girl in need of a tourniquet."