New Books on the Gershwin Brothers
Reviewed by Phillip D. Atteberry
This material is copyrighted and was originally published in The Mississippi Rag.
Philip Furia. Ira Gershwin: The Art of the Lyricist. New York. Oxford University Press, 1996. $25.00.
The Music of Gershwin is for serious jazz buffs. Steven Gilbert is a music professor who prefers classical music to jazz. As a graduate student, however, he fell in love with Gershwin's melodic gift. This book explains in musical terms what those gifts are.
Gilbert divides Gershwin's career into four phases: the "early" phase (1916-24) includes the songs before Rhapsody in Blue; the "developing" phase (1924-30) includes material from Rhapsody in Blue to Girl Crazy; the "mature" phase begins with Of Thee I Sing and culminates in Porgy and Bess. The final period, which Gilbert sees as an epilogue, comprises the late songs of 1936-7.
Gilbert analyzes dozens of songs and includes plenty of score excerpts. Even though I came away with new ways of thinking about Gershwin--and about song structures generally--I must admit that I found the book difficult. My formal musical training is modest, and Gilbert's technical terminology often sent me scampering to my musical dictionary. Trained musicians will find this book intriguing; others, however, will still benefit more from Edward Jablonski's 1987 biography Gershwin, which, in my view, remains the single best book on George Gershwin.
On the other hand, Philip Furia's Ira Gershwin: The Art of the Lyricist, is one of the most informative books I've ever read on popular music. Mr. Furia's first book, The Poets of Tin Pan Alley, is far and away the best book on popular lyricists ever written. Ira Gershwin is equally readable and insightful, but an elaborate study of one lyricist rather than a comparative analysis of several.
Furia traces Ira's developing talent from his early love of light verse and Gilbert and Sullivan through his apprentice work in Tin Pan Alley to his emergence as a prominent Broadway lyricist in the 1920's. After analyzing Ira's Hollywood successes, Furia follow's his career after George's death through such collaborations as Lady in the Dark with Kurt Weill, Cover Girl with Jerome Kern, and A Star is Born,with Harold Arlen.
The book gives us a good feel for Ira Gershwin's life and personality, but its excellence lies in the interesting, intelligent analysis of so many lyrics. Furia is an English professor at the University of Minnesota and understands the subtleties of words. His skill at revealing Ira's art goes a long way toward dispelling the popular notion that he was "the other Gershwin."