8th September 2007 10:00am

Dr. Ilya Levinson

Director of Chamber Music and lecturer in music, University of Chicago.

Systematic Gershwin: evidence for the Schillinger System in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

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After George Gershwin's death, Joseph Schillinger claimed that a large part of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess was written according to a system of composition he developed and taught to Gershwin. According to Schillinger, Gershwin was at a "dead end" when he came to him as a student, and only his system enabled Gershwin to develop further as a composer. Gershwin's family responded to this claim by maintaining that Schillinger's influence on Gershwin was minimal, and that Gershwin's success as a composer was due to his talents alone. This paper will adopt the position of some of Gershwin's biographers as well as several independent observers, and suggest that studying with Schillinger expanded Gershwin's resources. In order to prove this, I will illustrate how several aspects of Schillinger's system are manifested in Porgy and Bess. I will analyze a section of Scene 3 from the Third Act of the Porgy and Bess, music that has not been discussed at any length by previous analysts or commentators. I shall argue that places in the opera where Gershwin writes not in his usual style, but in a more systematic and self-conscious way reflect the influence of Schillinger's teaching.



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