Gershwin & Counterpoint: Jazzing It Up
Intent on studying the art of composition, Gershwin sought out lessons in harmony, orchestration, and counterpoint from some of the renowned composers of his time. What did some of those lessons really look like?
George Gershwin may have been determined to develop into a well-rounded composer, but his path was by no means easy. His early career in popular songwriting and explorations of jazz made learning the notoriously strict rules of counterpoint and harmony tedious at best. Gershwin’s one-time teacher Henry Cowell recalled that the young composer “thought the rules of counterpoint were just about the silliest things he had ever come across, and was far too annoyed with them to devote himself to perfecting the counterpoint.” In the same statement, however, Cowell noted that George was adept at the exercises; he would merely be “side-tracked” by “juicy 9th and altered chords that he liked better”—all in context of Palestrinian-style motets! While George was capable, he certainly wasn’t at home in the world of Renaissance and Baroque music. Nonetheless, his solutions must have been ear-catching; would that we could hear those renditions of sixteenth-century counterpoint…
Further Reading:
Pollack, Howard. George Gershwin: His Life and Work. Berkeley, US: University of California Press, 2006.
I can’t believe that Schillinger is still being left out of the Gershwin history so many years later. On the same page you reference Schillinger is mentioned. Gershwin himself and his notebooks to prove it, Schillinger was an influence on Gershwin’s later works.
I remember reading — probably in Pollack — that George was fond of the figured bass exercises he did with Edward Kilenyi to the point that he might do his homework not once but several times for fun. Cowell’s statement that Gershwin would get “sidetracked” by interesting musical effects seems concordant with this in that 1) Gershwin’s passion for composition and excitement at discovery comes to the fore and 2) that he was a devoted student of composition (so he wasn’t self-taught) but that he didn’t have a natural deference to received wisdom (which is where is personal artistic voice comes to the fore so strongly). Thanks for a stimulating post…
Hi Mark,
You should checkout Gershwin’s notebooks that he made when he studied with Joseph Schillinger. They are very interesting.
Hi, Philip. (By the way, thanks for all your comments on the blog!)
I’ve actually looked through those notebooks, and they are interesting. There’s a lot to be unpacked. I secretly dream of a published edition of all of his study notebooks.
Hi Jessica,
Lou Pine has done years of research on Gershwin’s Schillinger Studies. In fact “I Got Rhythmi var. is an exercise of Schillinger techniques.