![]() We Americans, however, have yet to make up our minds about Gershwin. In the papers the next day Viennese critics hauled out their usual clichés about American orchestras (too loud, too slick, too impersonal) and saved their praise for the Gershwin - the only kind of music we Americans, apparently, can really play well. The audience sat on its hands after the first three works, bursting into an ovation only after the Gershwin. Two years ago in Vienna I heard the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera, which many American critics have hailed as the finest orchestra in this country, perform Wagner's Rienzi Overture, Bartók's Miraculous Mandarin, Strauss's Don Quixote, and, almost as an encore, Gershwin's An American in Paris - a difficult program, chosen to show off the orchestra's technical prowess and stylistic range. Even today Gershwin's music exposes the gaps between European and American musical sensibilities and the ambivalence in our musical culture. To say, however elegantly, that Gershwin's identity might not survive such study was to assume that Gershwin was a freak of nature rather than a true artist. Almost all the great European modernists, Ravel and Stravinsky included, had received rigorous musical training, which did not prevent them from writing highly personal and innovative music. Stravinsky's alleged response made clear who was the master and who the Lower East Side parvenu. Although Gershwin may have thought he was being polite, an unsympathetic ear might have heard him saying that he could buy any composer, no matter how famous. Gershwin's request for lessons, usually made at some fancy party where he had dazzled everyone at the piano, may have seemed charming in an unpolished, American way, or annoyingly naive, or just insulting. A hundred years after Gershwin's birth and sixty-one years after his death, it is difficult to say just who was patronizing whom in these little dances of fake humility and silk-glove rejection. One Gershwin biographer, Charles Schwartz, tracked down the sources of these stories after finding that they all led back to the Gershwin family, he speculated that the composer had floated them himself. The dapper Frenchman declined, saying, "Why should you be a second-rate Ravel when you can be a first-rate Gershwin?" The Russian, notorious for his one-liners, supposedly asked Gershwin how much money he made when Gershwin told him, Stravinsky said, "Then I should take lessons with you." Stravinsky later insisted that the exchange never took place, and claimed that before he had even met Gershwin, he had heard the money story from Ravel. He is said to have requested them from Varèse, Schoenberg, Bloch, and Toch, among others, but the two legendary responses are attributed to Ravel and Stravinsky. ![]() For those interested in the latter, Songwriters on Songwriting: The Expanded Version (Da Capo, 1997), a collection of interviews between editor Paul Zollo and a variety of songwriters, including Webb, is the ticket.WHENEVER George Gershwin met a famous composer, so the stories go, he would ask for lessons. And Webb's nuts-and-bolts approach somehow undercuts every songwriter's need for that spark of absolute inspiration. While Webb's fans will revel in the behind-the-scenes details of his career and a candid view of his artistic process, others may wish that the asides, finger pointing (at arrogant co-writers) and Webb's own pet peeves (e.g., no-talent spouses who insist on songwriting credits on their partner's records) had been left out. Of greatest value, perhaps, are the exercises suggested for developing song ideas, which will help anyone stumbling through a period of writer's block. ![]() In addition to salient comments on today's music scene, Webb cites numerous examples from the past and includes sections on writing for the stage and film. Here he seeks to impart the tools of the trade to songwriters "who may be attempting the delicate transition from amateur to professional." Covering technical matters from basic chord theory and rhyme schemes to the protocol of pitching songs, Webb draws on a trove of personal anecdotes from a career spanning more than two decades. The only artist to receive Grammy Awards for music, lyrics and orchestration, Webb has written many of the most memorable songs performed by the Fifth Dimension ("Up, Up and Away"), Donna Summer ("MacArthur Park") and Amy Grant ("If These Walls Could Speak"), among others.
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