George Gershwin Quotes

George Gershwin offers witty, musical musings that celebrate American folk spirit and the spark of inspiration.

32 quotes

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

2. I frequently hear music in the heart of noise.

3. My people are American, my time is today:music must repeat the thought and aspirations of the times.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

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

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. An entire composition written in jazz could not live.

11. I like to think of music as an emotional science.

12. It was on the train,with its rattle-ty bang,that is often so stimulating to a composer that I suddenly heard the complete construction of the Rhapsody. Comment on his Blue Rhapsody composition.

13. The Rhapsody is not a composition at all. It's a string of separate paragraphs stuck together - with a thin paste of flour and water: I don't think there has been such an inspired melodist on this earth since Tchaikovsky:but if you want to speak of a composer, that's another matter.

14. Gershwin's tragedy was not that he failed to cross the tracks, but rather that he did, and once there in his new habitat, was deprived of the chance to plunge his roots firmly into the new soil.

15. If jazz should threaten to become a hampering stereotype, a 'tradition' in its turn, George would go forward to the next fresh impulse that arose in him. You may call him the King of jazz and associate his name with the lifting of jazz into musical artistry. Very well, and his best thanks. But not on that account is he to be thrust into a pigeonhole. George Gershwin did not begin as a jazzer; he will not end as one.

16. Gershwin's melodic gift was phenomenal. His songs contain the essence of New York in the 1920s and have deservedly become classics of their kind, part of the 20th-century folk-song tradition in the sense that they are popular music which has been spread by oral tradition (for many must have sung a Gershwin song without having any idea who wrote it).

17. George died on July 11, 1937, but I don't have to believe that if I don't want to.

18. Porgy is:an interesting example of what can be done by talent in spite of a bad setup. With a libretto that should never have been accepted on a subject that should never have been chosen, a man who should never have attempted it has written a work that has a considerable power.

19. Life is a lot like jazz... it's best when you improvise.

20. I didn't even start playing the piano until I was about 13 or 14. I guess I must have had a little talent or whatever-you-call-it, but I practised regularly, and that's what counts.

21. Out of my entire annual output of songs, perhaps two, or at the most three, came as a result of inspiration. We can never rely on inspiration. When we most want it, it does not come.

22. True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time.

23. It is always possible to create something original.

24. Jazz is the result of the energy stored up in America.

25. Why should I limit myself to only one woman when I can have as many women as I want?

26. I want to say at once that I frankly believe that Irving Berlin is the greatest songwriter that has ever lived… His songs are exquisite cameos of perfection, and each one of them is as beautiful as its neighbor. Irving Berlin remains, I think, America's Schubert.

27. All great composers of the past spent most of their time studying. Feeling alone won't do the job. A man also needs technique.

28. My people are Americans. My time is today.

29. Writing music is not so much inspiration as hard work.

30. When I'm in my normal mood, music drips from my fingers.

31. All these tales of people sitting down and composing symphonies just as though they were writing a letter are very much exaggerated; at least, it isn't that way in my work.

32. Jazz is one of the best things that you can find in your life, it can always be your friend.