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University of Michigan Announces Definitive Gershwin Project

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L to R – American music legends, George and Ira Gershwin are accorded posthumous honors by the University of Michigan as the school aims to create a definitive edition of their entire joint body of work, including such landmark pieces as “Rhapsody in Blue,” “Porgy and Bess,” and “An American in Paris.”
L to R – American music legends, George and Ira Gershwin are accorded posthumous honors by the University of Michigan as the school aims to create a definitive edition of their entire joint body of work, including such landmark pieces as “Rhapsody in Blue,” “Porgy and Bess,” and “An American in Paris.”
An agreement between the estates of George and Ira Gershwin and the University of Michigan is aiming to create the first definitive edition of the Gershwins’ entire joint body of work, including such landmark pieces as “Rhapsody in Blue,” “Porgy and Bess,” and “An American in Paris.”

The project, which is expected to require several decades of note-by-note and word-by-word analysis, will allow University of Michigan scholars unrestricted access to Gershwin scores, letters, and compositional drafts, which are at the Library of Congress and will remain there. From that material, at least 35 volumes are to emerge, in both book and electronic form, with the goal of cementing the Gershwins’ reputation as uniquely American geniuses and providing a reliable road map for future performances.

“George and Ira Gershwin are seminal figures in American culture, and their legacy remains stronger than ever as classical and popular forms become increasingly intertwined,” said Christopher Kendall, dean of the School of Music, Theater & Dance at the University of Michigan. “The Gershwins were at the cutting edge of that phenomenon, so there’s no question that this project is a singular opportunity for the university and the Gershwin legacy.”

The project will encompass the works that George, who died in 1937 at 38, and Ira, who died in 1983 at 86, wrote together, George’s orchestral works, and, conceivably, Ira’s work with other partners. Mark Clague, a music historian at the University of Michigan, said the objective was to adhere as much as possible to the authors’ original intent, as difficult as that may be to determine.

“For some works, there is more than one version, and we’ll definitely be exploring the intentions behind those changes,” he said. “Where the instructions are vague or seemingly contradictory, he continued, “you have to know what the composer was thinking. The idea is to intervene as little as possible, but provide something that musicians can play.”

Marc Gershwin, a nephew of George Gershwin who administers his copyrights, said the need for an authoritative critical edition had become increasingly obvious to the heirs in recent years. He remembers going to Bregenz, Austria, with Michael Strunsky, his counterpart on the Ira Gershwin side of the family, to see a new staging of “Porgy and Bess” and hearing complaints from the conductor of the production, Andrew Litton.

“He said, ‘Hey guys, you’ve got to do something about this score, there are so many things that have to be corrected all the time,’ ” Marc Gershwin recalled. “Because the precision just wasn’t there when these things were first done many years ago, there were always these big mistakes, and conductors became acutely aware that what was being given them was flawed.”

It is not clear in what order the Gershwins’ many orchestral works, operas and songs for Broadway musicals and Hollywood films will be re-examined or published, though Kendall, himself a conductor of Gershwin works, expressed a desire to get to “some of the epic and iconic works” early on. Nor is the source of financing for so ambitious a project, which he said could last up to 40 years, entirely clear.

It is highly unusual for composers who straddled the line between the European classical and American vernacular musical traditions to see their work gathered in a critical edition, a distinction more common for the likes of Beethoven and Mozart. Strunsky said that securing the Gershwins’ legacy “for the ages” was especially important in an era in which a growing number of people seem to know “Rhapsody in Blue” only from a United Airlines commercial and may be completely unfamiliar with classic songs like “Summertime,” “I Got Rhythm” or “They Can’t Take That Away From Me.”

“Go down on the corner and ask people, ‘Do you know who George Gershwin was?’ and I will bet you that you’ll get 1 out of 40,” Strunsky said. “With Ira it would be even less, so we have to keep getting our music out there.”

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