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Misunderstanding Gershwin - The Atlantic

theatlantic.com · 3,842 words · saved by 1 readers

The composer mixed popular and classical idioms like no one before or since, and performers are still baffled

WHENEVER George Gershwin met a famous composer, so the stories go, he would ask for lessons. He is said to have requested them from Varèse, Schoenberg, Bloch, and Toch, among others, but the two legendary responses are attributed to Ravel and Stravinsky. The dapper Frenchman declined, saying, "Why should you be a second-rate Ravel when you can be a first-rate Gershwin?" The Russian, notorious for his one-liners, supposedly asked Gershwin how much money he made; when Gershwin told him, Stravinsky said, "Then I should take lessons with you." Stravinsky later insisted that the exchange never took

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