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George Gershwin Quotes

George Jacob Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known. Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris as well as the opera Porgy and Bess .

Gershwin studied piano under Charles Hambitzer and composition with Rubin Goldmark, Henry Cowell and Joseph Brody. He began his career as a song plugger, but soon started composing Broadway theatre works with his brother Ira Gershwin and Buddy DeSylva. He moved to Paris intending to study with Nadia Boulanger, who refused him, where he began to compose An American in Paris. After returning to New York City, he wrote Porgy and Bess with Ira and the author DuBose Heyward. Initially a commercial failure, Porgy and Bess is now considered one of the most important American operas of the twentieth century.

Gershwin moved to Hollywood and composed numerous film scores until his death in 1937 from glioblastoma multiforme, a malignant brain tumor.

Gershwin's compositions have been adapted for use in many films and for television, and several became jazz standards recorded in many variations. Many celebrated singers and musicians have performed his songs.



✵ 26. September 1898 – 11. July 1937
George Gershwin photo
George Gershwin: 12 quotes5 likes

Famous George Gershwin Quotes

“Life is a lot like jazz - it's best when you improvise.”

George Gershwin

“Not many composers have ideas. Far more of them know how to use strange instruments which do not require ideas.”

George Gershwin

Page 386
The Composer in the Machine Age (1933)

“The composer does not sit around and wait for an inspiration to walk up and introduce itself…Making music is actually little else than a matter of invention aided and abetted by emotion. In composing we combine what we know of music with what we feel.”

George Gershwin

Isaac Goldberg Tin Pan Alley (New York: John Day, 1930) p. viii.

“My people are American, my time is today…music must repeat the thought and aspirations of the times.”

George Gershwin

Quoted in Merle Armitage Accent on America (New York: E. Weyhe, 1944) p. 292.

“When jazz is played in another nation, it is called American. When it is played in another country, it sounds false. Jazz is the result of the energy stored up in America.”

George Gershwin

Page 387
The Composer in the Machine Age (1933)

“I frequently hear music in the heart of noise.”

George Gershwin

Letter to Isaac Goldberg; published in Joan Peyser The Memory of All That (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993) p. 80.

“The European boys have small ideas but they sure know how to dress 'em up.”

George Gershwin

Remark quoted in Vernon Duke "Gershwin, Schillinger and Dukelsky: Some Reminiscences", The Musical Quarterly vol. 33 (1947).

“An entire composition written in jazz could not live.”

George Gershwin

Page 388
The Composer in the Machine Age (1933)

“A skyscraper is at the same time a triumph of the machine and a tremendous emotional experience, almost breath-taking. Not merely its height but its mass and proportions are the result of an emotion, as well as of calculation.”

George Gershwin

Page 387
The Composer in the Machine Age (1933)

George Gershwin Quotes about music

“Modern European composers…have very largely received their stimulus, their rhythms and impulses from Machine Age America. They have a much older tradition of musical technique which has helped them put into musical terms a little more clearly the thoughts that originated here. They can express themselves more glibly.”

George Gershwin

Page 386
The Composer in the Machine Age (1933)

“I like to think of music as an emotional science.”

George Gershwin

Page 388
The Composer in the Machine Age (1933)

“Jazz I regard as an American folk music; not the only one, but a very powerful one which is probably in the blood and feeling of the American people more than any other style of folk music.”

George Gershwin

"The Relation of Jazz to American Music", in Henry Cowell (ed.) American Composers on American Music (1933); reprinted in Gregory R. Suriano (ed.) Gershwin in His Time (New York: Gramercy, 1998) p. 97.

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