The Washington times., 1925-12-07

Cershwin and Damrosch Wed
in Musical Meter Are
Food for Scandal
Rv JESSTE MacBRIDE.

america may be recorded in Wash
ington this week.
And then again, it may not.
It will all depend.
For a foremost maker Of jazz
brings US q symphonic composition.
And the gifted Gershwin, whose
Jazz wizardry also extends to his
own facile fingers as pianist, Will
play bis own concerto beneath the
baton Of the dean of American cen-
ductorg, Walter Damrosch.
Strange company, surely. Stranger
still is this expectation Of "Ameri-
can music'-whatever it may even
tually prove to beat the hands OF
George Gershwin! The comment Is
in no way derogatory. No one gets
more absolute glee from a compo-
sition than the writer from Mr..
Gershwin's delightfully."- clever
Rhapsody In Blue or from his
equally delightful tunes" and rich
orchestrations.
It'll now, Gershwin stands for
what is essentially New York" in
America, which-as we are fast
learning in drama as well as music
is not America at all, but a very
foreign>imbued, sophisticated metro
polls.
But while we wait for our own
verdict, 1t is interesting to read
some very inspiring deductions,
made by one OF the most cultivated
writer's on things musical in New
York today, Lawrence Gilman, music
critic for the New York Herald
Tribune.
Cinderella and the Prince
Doctor Damrosch picturesquely
speaks of Gershwin's New York
/ Concerto as a Cinderella whom
the composer, as Prince Charming,
has dressed up in classic garb.
Mr.. Gilman writes:
1--WE shall venture to amend Mr..
Damrosch's engaging metaphor.
Mr.. Gershwin. has Of course been
keeping company with the lady
whom we may call, not Cinderella,
but Jazzerella, for quite a while.
But now, desfrous of moving in
rather more genteel musical circles,
and abetted by the excellent Mr..
Damrosch, he seems to have slowed
Jazzerella away in flat in, One
Hundred and Thirty fifth street,
and to have sued successfully for
the hand of more patrician damsel
further downtown-Euterpe, no less;
and, unles we are a very poor re-
riage with this lady that we were
privileged to witness yesterday.
ITO be sure, Jazzerella had left
her mark on Mr.. Gershwin (they
usually do, the Jazzerellas Of this
learning in drama as well as music
world).'
He goes on to prophecy-in such
uplifting thought for the music that
must come out of America, il we
are to take our individual place In
the creative genius of the world, that
| he defies our musical possibilities
! trenchantly.
| I've listened" he continued, still
+, referring to the Gershwin Concerto,
| with uncomfortably strained ears
to catch a hint of that self confident
and untrammeled Young America
/ which should long since have been
| striding over the hill. We wanted
! to hear a new sort of melodic line
| far flung. daring, individual, full Of
/ tang and SAVIOR. We wanted to
| find an harmonic texture, ricn in
| new colors, fresh significations.
ExhOrtatiOn and a Guide
| 1--WE wanted, in short, to hear a
| young American composer talking
confidently, bravely, progressively,
| Of himeslf. Instead, we heard a
facile and anxiously conformist
| youth talking the stale platitudes OF
the symphonic concert hall-retail-
/ ing exhausted cliches which were
none too fresh when Rachmaninoff
| used them; remembering Tschai-
| kowslxy; remembering, discreetly,
| Stravinsky; not scrupling TO relapse
upon harmonic banalities, Offering
us the common coin of sentimental
melody; using the old jazz meters in
the familiar ways; and scoring all
! this for an orchestra singIlarly
blatant, thick and inexpensive.
What Mr.. Gershwin needs Is to
forget what other respectable COM
posers have said before him in the
conventional forms. Let him for
get to be polite, conformist. Let
him build q cabin on some distant
hilltop and soak his spirit in :he
wind and sun and rain, renOuncing
the way of sophisticates and rou-
timers, listening for the voice thai
may, some day, speak to him out
of the loneliness-his own voice,
using his own idiom, which we Ike
to think would be clear, and racy,
and perturbing. and altogether well
come and reassuring."
And here Mr.. Gilman doubtless
went back, in his image of the
music young America must evoke
to rightly mirror the New World,
/ to that most stalwart and most
gentle of American composers, Ed
ward Mcdowell, who combined all
the culture of the world Of music
yet who sang of his native things
that are warp and woof Of our
American spirit, his crags or silent
woods, a meadow flower, a SHIN
mering brook-or the great epic
| spirit that expresses something of
the immensities that lie hidden in
the soil and the soul of our Amer
lea, in, as Gilman says. that self
confident and untrammeled young
America which should long since
have been striding over the hill"