George Gershwin Analysis

Within Susan Neimoyer’s journal article George Gershwin and Edward Kilenyi, Sr.: A Reevaluation of Gershwin's Early Musical Education, she explains the inconsistency of literature written on the subject of Gershwin’s training. After reading, I’m convinced of the influence Edward Kilenyi, Sr. had as his private music theory teacher. The misconceptions written on the topic stem from music critic Issac Goldberg’s biography (which was later found to be ripe with inaccuracies) in which he writes about Gershwin’s immature, dilettantish persona, an apprentice by experience, saying he “knew no more about music theory than could be found in a ten-cent manual.” Other biographers of Gershwin gave credit to his piano teacher during his teenage years, Charles Hambitzer as well as his later studies in orchestration and counterpoint with Joseph Schillinger; however, few …show more content…
Whether for marketing purposes, or because he believed his training to be inferior to what his European schooled colleagues had, we will never know. Though it wasn’t only himself who depicted himself this way. In the memoir of Gershwin’s friend, Vernon Duke (a composer himself), he writes about his first impressions of Gershwin’s music, how dazzled he was at the intricacies of his pieces and how “pure Gershwin” they were. The “felicitous modulations, the economy and logic of the voice-leading, and the overall sureness of touch,” he goes on to describe the conversation he’d had with …show more content…
He studied Charlie Hambitzer, Rubin Goldmark, and his theory teacher, Edward Kilenyi Sr., who had lasting influence on his