Reflections upon the Gershwin - Berg Connection by Allen ForteIn the introduction to the Verse of "A Foggy Day," a very late Gershwin song (1937), the "Big Ben chimes" prepare the specific movie setting for the music that follows, which refers, retrospectively, to London (Example 1). Example 1 But the chimes also illustrate a special way in which Gershwin integrated the chordal and melodic materials of the song: components of these “chimes” chords reappear as significant parts of the melody of the refrain. Example 2 Example 3 As one of many instances, Example 2 shows the melody of the release of "A Foggy Day.” with the beamed succession of the four notes that form the pillars of the descending configuration, E-C-A-F (a major seventh chord). As shown in Example 3 these notes derive from the two upper parts of the first two chimes: E-C and A-F. Moreover, the descending fifth from A to D at the end of the release (bracketed), expressively setting “lost its charm," clearly refers to the same interval, formed by the same pitches in the middle voice at the end of the chimes. Such musical processes are typical of the works of Alban Berg, and are especially evident in his opera, Wozzeck. Was Gershwin's usage influenced by Berg's music in this respect? Did Berg's music influence Gershwin’s in other ways?? Although definitive answers to these intriguing questions must be placed in abeyance, I will deal with certain specific musical connections between works by the two composers, connections that at least suggest ‘more specific answers to the question of influence. But first T would like to deal with the personal connection between the two men and its subsequent impact upon Gershwin, beginning with a key document, Example 4 This is the item shown in Example 4, from the Gershwin Collection of the Library ofCongress. It consists of a photograph of Berg, to which is attached some music notation and a handwritten inscription that reads (I translate from the German): "Mr. George Gershwin in friendly remembrance of [the music reproduced below], of the fifth of May, 1928 and of Alban Berg."3 1 will have more to say about the music reproduced there, which is in Berg's handwriting ‘The occasion upon which Berg gave Gershwin this unusual memento was recorded in the diary that Ira Gershwin kept during the Gershwins’ trip to Vienna in the spring of 1928. ‘The relevant entry, dated May 5, 1928, reads as follows: Kalman came up, then half an hour later George and Josie from Kolisch's where they had heard Alban Berg's string quartet with Berg one of the auditors.4 The “string quartet" was of course Berg's Lyric Suite (composed in 1926), which the Vienna Quartet had premiered on January 13, 1927, not his String Quartet, Opus 3, from 1910. Edward Jablonski writes that after this historic meeting with Berg in Vienna, Gershwin returned to the elegant Hotel Bristol “with an autographed excerpt from the Lyric Suite and a pocket score of the quartet."> Jablonski tells us that later, in New York, Gershwin acquired a recording of the Lyric Suite made by the Galimar Quartet, an acquisition that confirms more than a passing interest in Berg's extraordinary music. Indeed, Gershwin was interested in music by Berg other than that of his Lyric Suite. ‘The score of Berg's atonal opera, Wozzeck, was published in 1926, and, according to Oscar Levant, Gershwin owned a copy of that score. Moreover, he attended one of the performances of the opera in Philadelphia in 1931, its American premiere, played by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Stokowski. See Note 6. The Library of Congress owns a letter of thanks from Gershwin to the person who provided the complimentary tickets he had received for that performance of Berg's Wozzeck.Going beyond the anecdotal, it is tempting to speculate upon the possible influence of the music of Wozzeck upon Gershwin's music, and I will do so. For example, the lullaby from Wozzeck (Act I, scene 3, in which Marie sings to her child) and Gershwin's lullaby in Porgy and Bess, in which Clara rocks her baby while she sings the beautiful aria, "Summertime", share certain characteristics. Of these, perhaps the most apparent are the two-chord oscillation and the contour similarity of the opening melodic figures that set "Summertime" and "Miidel was," respectively. Moreover, the voice-leading of the oscillating chords is similar: those of Gershwin progress by parallel whole-steps, while Berg's are connected by half-step, the two upper parts moving in contrary direction to the lower two. ‘Example 5 Example 6 Gershwin would have been familiar with the two chords that accompany the Berg lullaby, since they belong to the harmonic vocabulary of American popular song of his era. ‘The first is an inverted major seventh chord, and instances of the second type occur twice as part of the pentatonic chimes sonority from "A Foggy Day" shown in Example 1 on the handout. Indeed, the second chord in the Berg lullaby when unfolded melodically as F#-G#-B- C# delineates the notes of Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm" (1930). No doubt these idiomatic features would have been very apparent to Gershwin, since the sounds were part of his harmonic language. This portion of Wozzeck, as well as others, may therefore have seemed both familiar and exotic to him, and may have been suggestive of the new musical directions in concert music in which he was so interested. This interest, which characterized his mature career, and the inspirational impact that the meeting with Berg had upon it is very clear from the interview with Gershwin that Hyman Sandow conducted on behalf of the periodical Musical America immediately upon Gershwin's return from his European trip in the fall of 1928.7 GG: "It was quite a paradox to me to find that, although I went abroad largelyto benefit my technic as much as possible from a study of European orchestral methods, much more attention is paid there to the originality of musical material than to the excellence of its technical development.” HS: "Did any aspect of music abroad particularly impress you?” GG: "One of the high spots of my visit," he said, as he walked across the room to a music cabinet from which he returned with a small pocket score, "was my ‘meeting with Alban Berg, an Austrian ultramodernist composer almost unknown in this country, who wrote this string quartet.” HS: He showed me the score, which bears an inscription from Mr. Berg, who is forty years old and a pupil of Schonberg. GG: "Although this quartet is dissonant to the extent of proving disagreeable to the average music-lover's consonant-trained ear, . . ., it seems to me that the ‘work has genuine merit. Its conception and treatment are thoroughly modern in the best sense of the word.” Perhaps Gershwin's phrase "in the best sense of the word” may be construed as an indication of the value he placed upon the conservation of traditional sonorities within a novel context, a feature of Gershwin's music as well. Indeed, the two-chord succession that accompanies the first part of "Summertime" is so familiar to us that we may not realize just. how unusual it is. Both chords are of the same type ("half-diminished sevenths"), and while the feel of the harmony is not "atonal" it is certainly unconventional and "atmospheric’~much like the the music of the Wozzeck lullaby. But there is an even more exact correspondence ‘between the two lullabies, and I have indicated that by placing the letter X on Examples 1a and 1b to mark the occurrences of the same notes, namely, those of the first chord in “Summertime” and the harmony that sets “du” in the Berg lullaby (B,D, F#,G#, plus C# in the Berg). Let us return now to the meeting of Gershwin and Berg in Vienna. This is alsodescribed by Erich Alban Berg, Berg's nephew: As is generally known, George Gershwin wanted to take theory lessons with Alban Berg. Nothing came of this, except for a visit of the American to Berg's residence in Hietzing. At the little reception arranged there in the spring of 1928 I was able to hear the premier performance of the Lyric Suite by the Kolisch Quartet, which Berg had invited in honor of his guest. Afterward, Berg wanted to hear Gershwin play American songs and spirituals on the piano. At first Gershwin modestly declined, saying: "Mr. Berg, how could my compositions please you?" Berg, however, persisted and was delighted with what he heard: "Music is music." He gave Gershwin a photo upon which he inscribed several measures of notes and the words: "Mr. George Gershwin, etc."8 I might point out here that, as far as I know, it is not "generally known” that Gershwin wanted to take theory lessons with Alban Berg. Certainly that was not Gershwin's intention in visiting Berg, as Erich Alban Berg apparently implies. It seems likely that Erich Alban Berg may have been thinking of the partly apochryphal Gershwin-Ravel encounter, which, like Berg's interview with Nadia Boulanger, came to naught. Also, Erich Berg's report contradicts the location of the event, as reported by Edward Jablonski in his authoritative biography, as well as by Ira Gershwin's diary entry. Both agree that the quartet was played at Kolisch's apartment, not at Berg's. All these litte "slips" render the nephew's account dubious with respect to detail As for the profound effect this meeting exerted upon Gershwin, we have very interesting testimony in Berg's letter to his wife, Helene, dated June 17, 1928, some six weeks after Gershwin's visit in Vienna. Berg reports to Helene:1 only] want to tell you of a very nice letter from Kolisch, who writes: 'I don't know how often we have played the ‘salon’ arrangement [which consisted of three of the five movements of the Lyric Suite: Il, IM, TV]. Berg then continues, in explanation of Kolisch's letter: Mainly as a result of Gershwin's publicity. Gershwin has been féted like a king in Paris, and he asked the Kolisch people to play my piece every day at the parties and receptions given in his honour. Berg concludes his report to Helene with "Next Year America,” presumably on the assumption that many Americans would be as enthusiastic about his music as Gershwin was, ‘an assumption that proved to be overly-optimistic.? What this letter tells us is very important to the topic at hand. It tells us that Gershwin very probably heard the music of the Lyric Suite played live many more times than at the one performance at Kolisch's apartment in Vienna.!9 This historical fact seems to be relatively unknown, at least among scholars in the academic community, probably because the Berg people are not interested in Gershwin, and the Gershwin people are not interested in Berg! I turn now to specific musical connections between the two composers. To begin, I want to return to the musical excerpt that Berg inscribed to Gershwin, shown in Example 4.11 ‘As many will have realized, this excerpt comes from the very beginning of the second movement of the Lyric Suite (1925-1926), which is one of the two movements of the six-movement work that are not 12-tone serial in orientation, but are still composed in what is ‘sometimes called the style of "free atonality,” that harks back to the earlier part of the century. Example 7 The music shown in Example 7, which Berg singled out to present to his famous ‘American visitor, is indeed a special kind of sonic object, and was no doubt regarded by its composer as representative of “state-of-the-art” modernism. The performance indication, “Andante amoroso” suggests an erotic extra-musical scenario, and the opening duet by the twointertwining violins confirms this. Although I do not intend to pursue that scenario very far, partly out of concern for audience sensitivities--especially here in our nation’s capital—the autobiographical aspect is inescapable. I refer to the second violin's first three notes, B-G-E, which are the musical letters of Berg's name, while the three B's in the same instrument clearly refer to the same succession of letters in the name of Berg's wife, HELENE)? This anecdotal information, although fascinating and perhaps even titillating to the atonally amorous, does not reveal much about the organization of the notes. That requires a bit more analysis within a theoretical framework. And that, with the generous indulgence of the reader, is now to be provided. Example 7 Example 7 shows the full notation of the opening music of the second movement of Berg's Lyric Suite that the composer inscribed to Gershwin. Example 8 then provides an analytical reading that displays its design, specifying the distribution of the notes over the instruments and their membership in specific scalar formations. ‘Example 8 For the benefit of those readers who are not music theorists I will attempt to give an ‘uncomplicated account of this organization. Briefly, the music is based upon melodic resources that are collectively known as "the octatonic". Represented as scales, there are three, and only three, forms of the octatonic, and these are shown in Example 9. Example 9 ‘The first form of the octatonic is called Collection I, the second Collection If, the third Collection 1.13 These abstractions, in which the ordered scale consists of a regular succession of half and whole steps (or the reverse), have been a remarkably fruitful resource in many different kinds of music! For the purpose of this brief talk, however, I am only concerned to show the octatonic as a resource, as an inventory of pitches, roughly analogous toa painter's pallette. I will not pursue more recondite topics, such as the non-scalar orderings that are represented in the actual music, but leave those, as they say, "for another time.” ‘Thus, the octatonic reading or interpretation of the opening music of the second movement of Berg's Lyric Suite shown in Example 8 reveals that the two violins are engaged in a vivid portrayal of octatonic eroticism. That is, the first six notes of first violin are drawn from octatonic Collection III. The second violin then completes the collection beginning on E in bar 2. Similarly, the second violin draws its first five notes from Collection I, and Violin I completes the collection beginning on B in bar 2. At the approach to the cadential gesture in bar three, the third and last octatonic collection represented in the passage, Collection II, comes into play, its notes cascading downward to the cello, presenting all of that collection except F#, which is the first note in first violin in the next phrase, and is not shown in Example 7. have introduced the idea of the octatonic in the Berg excerpt because it is there, in the octatonic universe, that the link between Berg and Gershwin becomes musically explicit and not merely anecdotal. To be more specific, a number of passages in Gershwin's music are octatonic in nature. There are also passages that exhibit pitch characteristics closely associated with non-tonal harmony that is more than reminiscent of the music of the avant-garde early 20th century composers, both of Berg and, as I will show, of Stravinsky.15 Example 10 Example 11 Let us consider the music that occurs in Act I, scene 2 of Porgy and Bess at the end of the wake section ("Overflow"), where the chorus intones "Gone, gone, gone. . . " for the final time. Example 10 provides the notation of this passage. Ostensibly in D minor, since it begins with a D-minor triad, the bass line of the passage lays out a regular pattern of alternating whole and half steps, ending on D# in the next-to-last bar--a curious destination fora D-minor scale. In fact, this is an ordered octatonic scale, in its entirety. For convenient reference, Example 11 shows the scale in its standard ascending form (as in Example 9). Although I regard the correspondence as coincidental, this is the same material from which Berg composed the opening of Lyric Suite IT. Berg's complex usage of the octatonic, moreove, is radically different from Gershwin's straightforward scalar presentation, principally with respect to the ordering of the pitches of the octatonic scale and their distribution over the instruments of the quartet. Gershwin's modest adaptation here is far more schematic and more closely associated with the musical technique of another famous composer whose name I have ‘mentioned in passing and to which I shall return below. The schematic character applies to the three upper voices of the chorus as well, with their unidirectional chromatic progressions Nevertheless, we see and hear what might well be regarded as an experimental passage based upon an essentially non-tonal structure derived from the octatonic. Before I leave this interesting passage, I should point out that it is not unique. Similar instances are to be found in Act I of Porgy and Bess at R165 and R170, and elsewhere. Example 12 Example 13 Example 12, a passage that occurs in Act I of Porgy and Bess at R30 as the music accompanying the dice game that follows the "Summertime" lullaby, consists of an elaborate instrumental melody above a repeated chord-pair.!6 The first of the chords is an f¥-minor triad, representing the prevailing key and key signature. The second chord, however, is an exotic chromatic configuration, which I have identified as the "Mystic chord” on Example 12. By "Mystic Chord" I refer to the famous chord used by Alexander Scriabin, the Russian atonalist, as a signature for his later (and almost exclusively octatonic) music. It is also a chord that pervades Berg's Wozzeck, where it is associated with the persona of the protagonist as a Ieitmotivic harmony. Here again is a Gershwin-Berg connection, albeit one that involves a harmonic detail. However, with the exception of the "mystic chord,” the music of the passage10 shown in Example 12 is pungently octatonic, and I have suggested that the strongest musical link between Gershwin and Berg resides precisely in the octatonic domain. Example 13, set out as a scale, clarifies the pitch organization of the remarkable music of Example 12, showing how the mystic chord fits into the octatonic context. The lower beam connects the notes of the mystic chord--which of course occurs as a vertical in the music— ‘while the upper beam connects the notes in the passage that belong to the octatonic, specifically, to Collection III. Only one note is missing from the complete octatonic Collection IIL, G, which, musicologically speaking, is fraught with implication. In addition, there are only two notes in the passage that do not belong to Collection III. Those are G# of the mystic chord and D, the passing note in the first bar of Example 12. ‘The external features of the passage are pure octatonic. Note especially the tritone leap in the bass, from Ff to C, which is an octatonic hallmark, and the major-minor sonority that results when the F# minor on the first beat of bar 1 changes to the F# major chord on the second beat. This formation is also very typical of the music of another famous 20th-century composer, whose name I will mention again ina moment. First, however, I wish to make a categorical statement. This excerpt from Porey and Bess, extracted from its familiar operatic context, could easily be identified as a specimen of early 20th-century avant-garde music. It would appear that Gershwin used some of the “incidental” music in Porgy and Bess as an occasion to experiment, and perhaps to draw upon some of the sounds he had heard in the music of composers of avant-garde concert works. Example 14 Example 15 Example 14 is a short transitional passage from Gershwin's An American in Paris. The title page, in Gershwin's hand, reads: "An American in Paris." / a Tone Poem for Orchestra./ Composed and Orchestrated by, / George Gershwin. {his signature]." At the bottom of the page: "Begun early in 1928./Finished November 18, 1928." Because this time-qi span brackets the May 5, 1928 meeting with Berg and the composer's exposure to the Lyric Suite, we might expect some sign of Berg's influence. That expectation, however, is disappointed, and in a very surprising way. Instead of a Berg presence we find evidence of Igor Stravinsky.!7 The link, however, again derives from the octatonic harmonic sphere, through a harmony often called the "Petrouchka Chord" because of its occurrence in Stravinsky's ballet, Petrouchka (1911), where it depicts, so they say, the schizoid personality of the Moor (Example 15). The sonority is often described as "bitonal,” since it is notated as. the amalgam of F# and C triads. However the chord may be described, it is basically an ‘octatonic sonority. Its prototype first occurs in the Coronation Scene of Musorgsky's great opera, Boris Godunov, when the orchestral bells alternate two chords ("dominant sevenths") that coalesce to form that sonority.18 Returning to the Gershwin passage from An American in Paris in Example 14, we can see that the first chord replicates Stravinsky's "Petrouchka Chord,” even to the notational separation of C major on the upper staff and F¥ major on the lower staff. Gershwin must have been very attached to this sonority, because he repeats it six times, transposing it up for the second chord, down for the third, and down again for the last chord.!9 These shifts cause the transposed chords to occur within an octatonic collection that differs from that of the first chord. As I have indicated below the lower staff of Example 14, the first chord belongs to octatonic Collection III, while the second, third, and fifth chords belong to Collection II. Each collection is represented by two chords, and in each case the two chords present the complete collection. There are no notes left over. Did Gershwin know this? Given the highly structured nature of the passage, about which I will say more in just a moment, he almost certainly did fully comprehend the design. To say that he did not would be tantamount to saying that he did not understand his own music! Example 16 Example 1712 Example 16 shows that the upper and lower melodic voices of the extraordinary chordal passage in Example 14 operate within yet another structural dimension. The notes connected by beams are segments of an octatonic scale. To show the scalar origin of these outer-voice segments, Example 17 normalizes them by omitting repetitions and by placing them in ascending order. This procedure also reveals that the arrangement of the notes in the outer voices of the actual passage (Example 16), is appoximately a reversal of the order of the notes in the schematic scalar ordering (Example 17): reading line A of Example 16 from right to left and skipping repeated notes yields Eb-F-F#-Gf, which is the reverse of line A in Example 17. And of course the same applies to line B in Example 16 compared to line B in Example 17. The reason I have related this in such detail is that the presence of these ordered patterns strongly reinforces the idea that Gershwin knew the octatonic scale, and they provide evidence that he may well have recognized the overwhelming presence of the octatonic in the second movement of Berg's Lyric Suite. Finally, and just for the record, Example 18 shows lines A and B in the context of an ordered octatonic scale representing Collection I in its entirety. As I have indicated, I believe that the design of this passage clearly demonstrates Gershwin's consciousness and comprehension of its octatonic components, whether or not he understood, or was even interested in, their theoretical ramifications. That he must have Known the octatonic "source chord” from Stravinsky's Petrouchka perhaps goes without saying, although we have no direct evidence that he knew the score of that work. At the same time we must leave open the possibility that he knew about octatonic matters from direct contact not with actual music by a famous Russian composer, but rather from his studies with a not-so-famous Russian theoretician, namely, Joseph Schillinger, an almost exact contemporary of Gershwin. We know that Gershwin was always trying to find someone to study with who would13 teach him techniques he thought he should learn in order to become a composer of concert music. His abortive studies of 16th-century counterpoint with Henry Cowell come to mind. However, the best known of the influences upon the later Gershwin were those that came from his studies with Schillinger during the years from 1932 to 1936. We know a good deal about those studies, not least from Schillinger's efforts to exploit his relation with his famous student. An amusing account of Gershwin's intense involvement is provided by the famous actress and singer Kitty Carlisle, a close friend of Gershwin in her maiden days and later Moss Hart's wife: George was a perennial student, and he was always trying to improve his craft. He studied harmony and composition with Joseph Schillinger in New York, and he would strew the floor in Mother's apartment with bits of paper, explaining to me what he'd learned that day. Even though I didn't understand the complicated twelve-tone scale, I knew that he was reviewing for himself what he'd been over with Schillinger.20 Although there is no hard evidence for what I am about to assert, I suspect that Gershwin hoped his studies with Schillinger might bring him closer to the kind of modern concert music he so obviously admired in the works of Berg. His encounter with Berg's Lyric Suite may well have provided an additional stimulus to study Schillinger's "systematic" methods. Those methods, which often involved arcane language, may have seemed attractive and “learned” to Gershwin, as they did to a number of other musicians, many of whom were also eminent, but not as eminent as Gershwin, a circumstance whose opportunities were not lost on the enterprising Schillinger. The complex of interactions of Gershwin and Schillinger is discussed in detail by Gilbert, who emphasizes the role of the pentatonic and the theme of "I Got Rhythm" in Schillinger's theories and in Gershwin's music. As an interesting commonality, I might14 ‘mention that the pentatonic is also a component of Berg's music, as in the 12-tone row of the first movement of his Lyric Suite. But, in addition to paying considerable attention to pentatonic configurations, Schillinger also includes the octatonic scale in that part of his treatise entitled Theory of Scales.? It first appears in that book as the "Hungarian major or Blue.” Moreover, the "Petrouchka Chord” in different pitch-notational forms occurs three times under the rubric “Scales of the Third Group." Schillinger constructs the octatonic scale by “artificial” means, that is “theoretically.” He appears to have no idea of its properties or of its history . either giving it the odd name "Hungarian major or Blue” or not naming it at all. This is odd because he must have been familiar with the scale from Rimsky-Korsakov's music, where it is exposed in the most simplistic way. In Russia, Schillinger's native land, it is known as the "Russian scale” or the "Rimsky scale. "22 Thave discussed the Berg connection and its implications at some length.23 But since Berg was only one member of what has become known as The Second Viennese School, what of a possible Schoenberg Connection?.24 According to Joan Peyser's biographical study, Gershwin attended a performance of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire in New York in 1920, under the auspices of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM).?5 She also describes meetings between Schoenberg and Gershwin at the Ansonia Hotel in New York in 1933, as documented by Gershwin's chauffeur, Paul Mueller, and refers to "lessons."26 The Schoenberg Connection came only later, after Schoenberg's emigration to the United States and after he had settled in Los Angeles. As it happened, he lived not far from the Gershwin residence. The two men became acquainted and were tennis buddies, tennis being an obsession of Schoenberg's from his European days.27 Schoenberg probably had some acquaintance with Gershwin's music, though exactly what it was I do not know. At any event, he wrote a short essay for the famous Merle15 Armitage collection.28 At the end of this encomium, which is not without its Schoenbergian ironies, the author writes: 1 do not speak here as a musical theorist, nor am Ia critic, and hence I am not forced to say whether history will consider Gershwin a kind of Johann Strauss or Debussy, Offenbach or Brahms, Lehar or Puccini. But I know he is an artist and a composer; he expressed musical ideas; and they were new--as is the way in which he expressed them.28 Gershwin's 1937 portrait of Schoenberg is suggestive of his interpretation of that composer's persona, but although the Schoenberg painting is indicative of respect and admiration, there is no evidence that he knew or admired Schoenberg's music in the same way he did Berg's. There is, however, reliable anecdotal evidence that Gershwin paid for the recordings of the Schoenberg string quartets that were made in Hollywood. It is now time to venture some conclusions. I will make these as succinct as possible. First: Gershwin's strong desire to be regarded as a composer and not only as a songwriter is well documented. His contact with Alban Berg and with Berg's music testifies to this, but it also testifies to a deep interest in the avant-garde music of his time, music of the hybrid atonal-serial type that Berg had composed in his Lyric Suite. Second: There is musical evidence that Gershwin understood certain features of Berg's music, at least in some very specific, but perhaps partly in an aurally and intuitive way. I refer, in particular, to the pentatonic aspect of Berg's music, but, more significantly, to the ‘octatonic commonalities between the two composers I have attempted to document in the examples I have shown. Third: Gershwin's interest in the avant-garde music of the post-World War I period gives strong hints of the paths he might have taken had he lived to pursue his career. As we16 reflect upon this possibility, it is important to bear in mind that Gershwin was a modernist in every positive sense of that current catchword. His remarkable collection of 20th-century paintings and his beautiful art deco apartment in New York testify to his deep interest in 20th- century culture, to which he certainly saw himself as a significant contributor. 1 do not think that Gershwin would have become a composer of 12-tone music (after Schoenberg), but I do believe that he would have adapted harmonic procedures of free tonality (after Berg) and perhaps linear features of modified serialism (after Stravinsky), but without sacrificing either his tonal roots or his commitment to music that was accessible to a large public. It is mind-boggling to imagine how Gershwin's later career might have affected the course of modern music, not only in the United States but also in many other parts of the ‘world, had he lived a full life. We would be celebrating his 100th anniversary in quite a different way had that happy event taken place.Notes I delivered the first version of this paper at the Library of Congress centennial celebration, "The Gershwins and Their World" on March 15, 1998. I wish to thank William Bolcom for suggesting the topic, Robert Kimball for his encouragement, Mark DeVoto for informative suggestions, and Steven E. Gilbert for his remarkable study of Gershwin's music (see Note 15). 1. [have also discussed this feature of "A Foggy Day" in my book, The American Popular Ballad of the Golden Era 1924-1950, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 166-71 Because the verse and introduction to "A Foggy Day" were written after the refrain, it would perhaps be more accurate to say that the introduction synthesizes significant elements of the refrain. See Ira Gershwin, Lyrics on Several Occasions, New York: Viking Press, 1973: 66. ‘This informative and charming book is organized in categories, including one that bears the cayeat "Not for a Musicologist.” 2. There are clear correspondences between Berg's Wozzeck and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess at salient dramatic moments. I refer to the four-bar ostinato rhythm that accompanies Serena's mournful aria, "My Man's Gone Now" in Act I, R191 of Porgy and Bess and the four-bar polka ostinato figure in Wozzeck, Act Il, scene 3. Another example is the extraordinary and “expressionistic” ascending choral glissando against the chromatic descending orchestral parts in Porgy and Bess at R201 of Act I, which may be compared to the drowning scene in Wozzeck at R284 of Act IIL, sc. 4. 3. Robert Kimball and Alfred Simon, The Gershwins, New York: Atheneum, 1973: 99. 4, Kalman was the Hungarian-born Emmerich Kalman(1882-1953), an eminent operetta composer. Rudolf Kolisch, founder and first violinist of the Vienna Quartet, which became the Kolisch Quartet, was Schoenberg's brother-in-law by Schoenberg's second marriage. “Josie” was the pianist Josefa Rosanska, the Gershwins' American friend and part of the touring group, later married Kolisch. As a frequent performer of the Berg Sonate, Opus 1, she was instrumental in effecting the meeting between Gershwin and Kolisch by inviting him tohear the Lyric Suite at Kolisch's apartment. 5. Edward Jablonski, Gershwin, New York: Doubleday, 1987: 167. 6. "Gershwin treasured the piano score of Wozzeck and was deeply impressed by the opera when he journeyed to Philadelphia for the performance under Stowkowski in 1931. Oscar Levant, A Smattering of Ignorance, New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc., 1941, 189. 7. Hyman Sandow, "Gershwin 'Pariscopes': An American Abroad,” ‘Musical America, August 18, 1928: 12. For the record, Berg was 43 years old at the time he met Gershwin, not 40. At this time Gershwin was well along in the composing of An American in Paris. See the examples drawn from that work that follow. 8. Erich Alban Berg, Der unverbesserliche Romantiker: Alban Berg, 1885-1935, Wien: Oesterreichischer Bundesverlag, 1985: 156. My translation. 9. Bernard Grun, tr, Alban Berg Letters to His Wife, London: Faber & Faber, 1971: 363. 10. It is well to remember that commercial recordings of avant-garde music were rare in those days 11-10. At the Library of Congress celebration, "The Gershwins and Their World," where the first version of this paper was delivered, an excellent string quartet from University of Maryland performed the music of the second movement of the Lyric Suite just prior to the talk. Some of the quasi-humorous remarks that follow are to be attributed to the locus of the presentation. 12, Berg's predilection for musical representations of actual persons is well known. For instance, his references to Hannah Fuchs in the Lyric Suite have been identified by Douglass Green and George Perle. 13, The nomenclature of octatonic scales derives from Pieter C. van den Toorn, The Music of Igor Stravinsky, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983 14, The octatonic, as such, has not been recognized as a feature of Berg's atonal music, although adherents of cyclic theory would probably say that it is subsumed under "3-cycles.”See Dave Headlam, The Music of Alban Berg, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996: 257. Headlam writes there of a "twelve-note theme,” by which he means that the first violin theme contains all twelve pitch-classes, not that it is derived from a “twelve-tone” row. Headlam does not use the term "octatonic” in his extensive study of Berg's music. 15. Steven E. Gilbert was the first to identify Stravinsky's influence on the music of Gershwin, and I am indebted to some of his discussion and examples in the material that follows. Steven E. Gilbert, The Music of Gershwin, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995. 16. Also in Gilbert, The Music of Gershwin. 17. See Gilbert, The Music of Gershwin, 121 18, See Allen Forte, "Musorgsky as Modernist: The Phantasmic Episode from Boris Godunov" , Music Analysis, Vol. 9/1, 1990, 1-42. 19. The "Petrouchka Chord” in the "C-major/F#-major” arrangement closely resembles the "Mystic Chord” as it occurs in the passage from Porgy and Bess reproduced in Example 12, differing from it by only one note. 20. Kitty Carlisle Hart, Kitty, New York: Doubleday, 1988: 68-69. By "twelve-tone scale" the author refers to the chromatic scale, not to a twelve-tone row. 21. Joseph Schillinger, The Schillinger System of Musical Composition, Book II, Vol. I: Theory of Scales, New York: Carl Fischer, 1946. Posthumous publication of Schillinger's teaching materials. 22. The actual origin of the octatonic may be of ancient origin. However, its transmission to Europe may be impossible to trace. Liszt apparently thought the scale to be of "Hindu* origin, but where he obtained that idea is not known. But, in fact, the octatonic scale occurs several times as a raga in the classic Indian system of Karnatic ragas, but in a completely different cultural and musical context. ‘The subject of octatonicism is complex and cannot be given adequate treatment in the present context23. Apparently we can rule out a Webern Connection, perhaps because of the music of the three members of the "Second Viennese School," Webern's was not as well known as that of his two schoolmates at that time. It will probably be evident to many readers that I have avoided discussion of the Debussy Connection, which is a large topic that is appropriate for separate tratment. Many of the octatonic harmonies in Porgy and Bess and elsewhere in Gershwin's music can probably trace their lineage to the music of Debussy 24. Deena Rosenberg's book on the Gershwins includes an interesting discussion of Edmund ‘Wilson's 1929, I Thought of Daisy, a novel in which the character of the composer appears to have been inspired by Gershwin. In a passage that deals with the composer's inspirations, ‘Wilson refers to the names of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, a surprising association. Deena Rosenberg, Fascinating Rhythm: The Collaboration of George and Ira Gershwin, New York: Penguin Books, 1991: 71-72. 25. Joan Peyser, The Memory of All That, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993: 80. 26. Peyser, The Memory of All That, 200. These acuality of these meetings and "lessons" is not corroborated by any other source, nor did Gershwin study with Schoenberg at a later date. ‘The names of those students of Schoenberg whom he taught in Los Angeles over a period of time are well known; Gershwin's is not among them. Gertrud Schoenberg related an anecdote to me (in the late fifties) concerning one of those long-time students, Oscar Levant, who was a close friend of Gershwin. Had Gershwin studied with Schoenberg, the loquacious and excessively witty Levant would surely have referred to that circumstance in one of his, writings. 27. Sendrey's 1938 article describes, very amusingly, a tennis game between Schoenberg and Gershwin, "those two contrasting giants of modern music, George Gershwin and Arnold Schoenberg, united in one common thought to make a little ball scale the top of a net, as though nothing else mattered." Sendrey (né Aladér Szendrei) was a Hungarian-American (1884-1976) conductor. Albert Heink Sendrey, "Man and Musician,” in Merle Armitage, George Gershwin, New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1938: 102-12. Reprint edition: NewYork: Da Capo Press, 1995. 28. Amold Schoenberg, "George Gershwin,” in Metle Armitage, George Gershwin, 97-98. No doubt Schoenberg would have known that Gershwin had contributed to the financing of the recording of his quartets by the Kolisch Quartet.Ya f Va Vi fe TI Cexcluding £#) a I Coll.‘Coll_IIT lacks G) cam daca cana an