Brilliant and Serious

"How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree?" asks an old song. " 'Em" were primarily young American males of a formerly provincial disposition. Prior to 1917, European travel had been a kind of uncomfortable pilgrimage indulged in by wealthy American ladies, protesting spouses often in tow, for the cultural good of their souls. But World War I brought thousands of American doughboys from cities, villages, and farms willy-nilly to France. By then Paris was well behind the range even of the big guns and so became a place of choice for furloughs. The grape harvest had not been too seriously affected, French males were in short supply, and the Yanks were the last hope of France. Whoopee!

Between the wars Paris became what Italy had been to Renaissance Englishmen-the place to go for intellectual stimulation and forbidden pleasures. It was probably overrated on both counts, but it was (and is), thanks to Baron Haussmann (who was responsible for its present layout) and the incompetence of Kaiser Bill, arguably the most beautiful city in the world. Hundreds of American artists and intellectuals found their spiritual home there, and hundreds of thousands made the mandatory temporary escape from the strictures of bourgeois puritanism.

One such pilgrim was George Gershwin, age 28 and riding high. The Rhapsody in Blue, the Piano Concerto, and no fewer than 20 Broadway shows lay behind him, and he could afford to indulge himself. In 1926 he went to London and, because he wanted to see friends there, proceeded to Paris. Inevitably and immediately-as who has not?-he fell in love with the city. Soon the notion of writing a ballet about his impressions took hold of him, and he began jotting down themes in his room at the Hotel Majestic. He was especially taken with the road runner beeping of the taxi horns, and before he left he visited numerous garages and parts shops to acquire a matched set on the four proper pitches.

The ballet turned into a tone-poem and he finished it in 1928 after a return to Paris, doubtless to make sure the impressions were still valid. Walter Damrosch conducted the New York Philharmonic in the premiere on December 13. Two months later, thanks to house conductor Nat Shilkret, Victor Records saw fit to record it. When no celesta player turned up for the session, Shilkret impressed the composer into doing the honors.

It is a mark of the ambiguous place that Gershwin then held in music that Victor relegated the record to the black-label category usually reserved for pop songs and other ephemera. But the piece is a brilliant and serious composition. To be sure, it has an overlay of syncopated rhythms and blues progressions. By his own admission, Gershwin was also attempting a mix of French Impressionism and neoclassicism, which Sir John Pritchard brings out in his performance. Deems Taylor, in a program note, found the work erected on no fewer than five themes. Designating the chief three as "walking-themes," Taylor constructed an elaborate program involving a walk down the Champs Elysees in the spring, with pauses for various landmarks; but it seems to have been almost wholly Taylor's invention and you don't need to bother your pretty little head about it.

Porgy and Bess (now safely embalmed at the Met) puzzled everyone. It purported to be an opera, but it contained tunes you could dance to and hum. The New York Times play reviewer liked the hit numbers, but thought the musical continuity a bore; the music critic, on the other hand, thought the tunes a sop to vulgar taste and an impediment to the action. Perhaps for the likes of the former, the brilliant orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett put together an orchestral anthology of favorites, using, according to Arthur Fiedler, only what Gershwin had written. It includes, in order: the introduction, the street-cries, "Clara, don't you be down-hearted," "Summertime," "I got plenty o' nuttin' " (for banjo), the hurricane scene, "Bess, you is my woman," "Dere's a boat," "It ain't necessarily so," and "O Lawd, I'm on my way," Porgy's triumphant concluding spiritual.

It was Serge Koussevitzky's recording of El salon Mexico that established Copland as a popular composer and introduced thousands to his individual language. In essence the piece is a rhapsody on Mexican pop tunes-the kind that tourists would have heard in the nightclub for which the piece is named. These include El mosco, La Jesusita, and the lovely El palo verde. (And will someone tell me why Carlos Chavez calls his setting of this last song La paloma azul?)

"How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree?" asks an old song. " 'Em" were primarily young American males of a formerly provincial disposition. Prior to 1917, European travel had been a kind of uncomfortable pilgrimage indulged in by wealthy American ladies, protesting spouses often in tow, for the cultural good of their souls. But World War I brought thousands of American doughboys from cities, villages, and farms willy-nilly to France. By then Paris was well behind the range even of the big guns and so became a place of choice for furloughs. The grape harvest had not been too seriously affected, French males were in short supply, and the Yanks were the last hope of France. Whoopee!

Between the wars Paris became what Italy had been to Renaissance Englishmen-the place to go for intellectual stimulation and forbidden pleasures. It was probably overrated on both counts, but it was (and is), thanks to Baron Haussmann (who was responsible for its present layout) and the incompetence of Kaiser Bill, arguably the most beautiful city in the world. Hundreds of American artists and intellectuals found their spiritual home there, and hundreds of thousands made the mandatory temporary escape from the strictures of bourgeois puritanism.

One such pilgrim was George Gershwin, age 28 and riding high. The Rhapsody in Blue, the Piano Concerto, and no fewer than 20 Broadway shows lay behind him, and he could afford to indulge himself. In 1926 he went to London and, because he wanted to see friends there, proceeded to Paris. Inevitably and immediately-as who has not?-he fell in love with the city. Soon the notion of writing a ballet about his impressions took hold of him, and he began jotting down themes in his room at the Hotel Majestic. He was especially taken with the road runner beeping of the taxi horns, and before he left he visited numerous garages and parts shops to acquire a matched set on the four proper pitches.

The ballet turned into a tone-poem and he finished it in 1928 after a return to Paris, doubtless to make sure the impressions were still valid. Walter Damrosch conducted the New York Philharmonic in the premiere on December 13. Two months later, thanks to house conductor Nat Shilkret, Victor Records saw fit to record it. When no celesta player turned up for the session, Shilkret impressed the composer into doing the honors.

It is a mark of the ambiguous place that Gershwin then held in music that Victor relegated the record to the black-label category usually reserved for pop songs and other ephemera. But the piece is a brilliant and serious composition. To be sure, it has an overlay of syncopated rhythms and blues progressions. By his own admission, Gershwin was also attempting a mix of French Impressionism and neoclassicism, which Sir John Pritchard brings out in his performance. Deems Taylor, in a program note, found the work erected on no fewer than five themes. Designating the chief three as "walking-themes," Taylor constructed an elaborate program involving a walk down the Champs Elysees in the spring, with pauses for various landmarks; but it seems to have been almost wholly Taylor's invention and you don't need to bother your pretty little head about it.

Porgy and Bess (now safely embalmed at the Met) puzzled everyone. It purported to be an opera, but it contained tunes you could dance to and hum. The New York Times play reviewer liked the hit numbers, but thought the musical continuity a bore; the music critic, on the other hand, thought the tunes a sop to vulgar taste and an impediment to the action. Perhaps for the likes of the former, the brilliant orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett put together an orchestral anthology of favorites, using, according to Arthur Fiedler, only what Gershwin had written. It includes, in order: the introduction, the street-cries, "Clara, don't you be down-hearted," "Summertime," "I got plenty o' nuttin' " (for banjo), the hurricane scene, "Bess, you is my woman," "Dere's a boat," "It ain't necessarily so," and "O Lawd, I'm on my way," Porgy's triumphant concluding spiritual.

It was Serge Koussevitzky's recording of El salon Mexico that established Copland as a popular composer and introduced thousands to his individual language. In essence the piece is a rhapsody on Mexican pop tunes-the kind that tourists would have heard in the nightclub for which the piece is named. These include El mosco, La Jesusita, and the lovely El palo verde. (And will someone tell me why Carlos Chavez calls his setting of this last song La paloma azul?)