Again Gershwin

Three times now George Gershwin has set foot over the line that divides formal and informal music; three times taken his own jazz notions, compounded them seriously and presented them, not for any singing or dancing they might invoke, but for listening purposes only. First was the Rhapsody in Blue and with it much talk of "classical jazz" gospeled by Paul Whiteman. Then came the Concerto in F, but by that time Gershwin had become a creed with many and the Concerto had its premiere in Manhattan's Carnegie Hall with Walter Damrosch and his New York Symphony. The third came last week. This time the orchestra was the Philharmonic-Symphony, the composition An American in Paris. It was a picture with sound effects. Deems Taylor, Gershwin's friend, summarized the scenario:

An American arrives in Paris--presumably Gershwin himself, since he was there recently on the proceeds from his musical comedy tunes.* He leaves his hotel on a sunny spring morning, starts gaily down the Champs Elysees to the first walking theme. Taxis stop him first. Their horns amuse him, so four horns came back with him to the U. S. to make their debuts with the Philharmonic. ... On he goes, swinging his cane, past a cafe door where trombones are moaning measures of La Maxixe. On he goes, past a cathedral, or perhaps the Grand Palais, slackens his pace a bit, then passes by on the other side. On he goes over the bridge to the Left Bank and there he stops again, this time for an Anise de Lozo and following effects are appropriately blurred. A solo violin suggestive of charming broken English is first to clear away the haze. There comes a swift transition and Gershwin has the blues, bad blues, until he meets a friend, starts off again jauntily to a final noisy walking theme that foretells an hilarious evening.

Philharmonic subscribers were for the most part amused by Gershwin's pictures. They spied him, sleek and smiling, sitting in a box, and clapped him cordially. Gershwin's critical public is still a house divided against itself. To the extremists on the one hand he is making the most significant music of the day. To others he is out of place and ineffective away from Tin-Pan Alley. Certainly the Concerto, trying to be important, was unoriginal and dull. But with An American in Paris he has done better and dared to be himself in the presence of such betters as Wagner and Cesar Franck. Only Walter Damrosch seemed out of character at the concert last week. His conducting was kittenish, suggestive somehow of an old man out with a chorus girl who would like to make a whirl and does not quite know how.

*Recent shows with Gershwin music are Lady Be. Good, Oh Kay, Funny Face, Rosalie.