In Search of the Lost Generation (II)

In my last blog post, I introduced some of the concepts covered in my dissertation about the connections between musical and literary forms in Gershwin’s Concerto in F and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. One aim of the study was to demonstrate how interdisciplinary research can serve as an aid in the process of solving questions concerning interpretation in musical performance. From a music pedagogy point of view, the paper could serve as an example of addressing musical mastery through associative thinking. For example: how do both Gershwin and Fitzgerald depict their generation’s attitudes towards life though their art? What formalistic and stylistic similarities are there between the two works, and what can that tell us about the 1920s in America? Most importantly, how can knowledge of Fitzgerald’s unique and honest portrayal of the Jazz Age, the American Dream, and the Lost Generation inspire performers in their interpretative process when learning Concerto in F? As George Gershwin once said: “Music must reflect the thoughts and aspirations of the people and the time. My people are American. My time is today.”[1]

The Great Gatsby was written in multiply-directed linear time, which sways from the classic Aristotelean structure of Western Drama in which events are organized in a plot that accumulates tension until the climatic resolution. During the nineteenth century, novels usually followed the chronological events of the plot, but in The Great Gatsby, events are revealed through flash-backs. While there is indeed still a build-up of tension, climax, and a resolution in the novel, it just does not occur in typical chronological order.

How does this apply to the Gershwin concerto? Just like in The Great Gatsby, each movement of the Gershwin concerto is filled with rising tension and an obvious climax/resolution, but the road there feels like musical episodes are added on without adding up, not seeming to achieve a totalizing structure of meaning until the very end. In a classical concerto, the first movement usually goes something like: orchestral tutti (serves as an introduction of some sort), soloist entrance/exposition (usually repeating what the themes that the orchestra just played), development (which contains variations and fragments of the themes), and after a climatic moment, the recapitulation, which can serve as falling action. This can be compared to a novel in which events are revealed in chronological order, accumulating into some sort of climax/resolution. 

The first movement of the Gershwin concerto begins with a bold and almost jittery orchestral opening. The first couple of measures of the orchestral opening of Concerto in F give the sense of interruptions because of the scattered dialogue between the different instrumental sections of the orchestra. Instead of analyzing the opening in a strictly linear way, one could think of the orchestral opening as four distinct motifs that interrupt each other at seemingly random moments. The orchestral opening includes themes and motifs that will eventually come back, but the piano soloist enters with completely different material than anything that was introduced by the orchestra. Suddenly, the music is nocturnal and introspective in nature; the mood, character, and key signature of the music serve as a constantly changing light which shines above a sea-change of different faces, voices, and colors. From the introspective piano melody, listeners are led through a landscape of the blues, Charleston-like dance sections, moments of introspect juxtaposed with moments that are lively and celebratory in nature, filled with rhythmic patterns inspired by the dances of the Jazz Age. These contrasting characteristics continue to define the rest of the concerto. 

To me, the expressive meanings in Concerto in F can be understood metaphorically, because the musical events of the concerto reflect the patterns of the intellectual, emotional, imaginative, and kinesthetic lives of Americans during the Jazz Age. The sudden interruptions of melodic and rhythmic inertia are audio representations of the ever-changing landscapes of the emotional lives of youths during this exciting decade. In the A section of the first movement of Concerto in F, there are many instances of long, drawn-out ascensions, only to be resolved in an instant with some sort of sudden downward spiral. For example, look at this downward chromatic passage that seems to come in out of nowhere in the first movement after a series of ascending, melodic lines and sudden caesura:

This passage comes out of nowhere, and immediately resolves into the completely unrelated key of C Major, ushering in sections of dance and fun. While the first movement of the Gershwin concerto has an overall functional plan of rising tension-climax-resolution, this is just a single example of the many detours and interruptions along the way. In this way, just like The Great Gatsby, the Gershwin concerto was also written in multiply-directed linear time, reflecting the ever-changing and unpredicatable landscape of excitement and spontaneity in the Jazz Age.

[1] Alan Dashiell, Forward to George Gershwin: A Study in American Music by Isaac Goldberg, (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1931), xvi.