Gershwin

George Gershwin lived between September 26, 1898 and July 11, 1937. He is considered to be a twentieth century composer.

If you hate homework but like roller skating, you have something in common with American composer George Gershwin. Born in Brooklyn, New Yord to Russian immigrant parents, George loved to play street hockey, ‘cat’, and punch ball. He didn’t even have an interest in music until his family got him a piano when he was twelve. Nine years later he had his first hit, “Swanee”, with lyrics written by Irving Caesar. No one else in the Gershwin family was musical, but George was fascinated by music. When he heard a schoolmate play the violin, George struck up a friendship with the boym who introduced him to the world of concert music.

Gershwin’s American in Paris and Rhapsody in Blue (featured in Disney’s newly released Fantasia 2000) proved that jazz was powerful enough to combine will with symphonic music. Gershwin was only 26 years old at the time when he composed Rhapsody in Blue. No matter how you hear it, “Rhapsody in Blue” will remain the signature of one of the most influential of composers, songwriters and pianists in American music history.

His play Porgy and Bess has been produced as both a film and an opera.

Gillespie

Dizzy Gillespie has been credited with being a co~founder (with Charlie Parker) of ‘bebop’ music and wrote many jazz numbers (“Salt Peanuts”, “Night in Tunisia”). Gillespie also created the ‘afro~cuban’ sound in jazz music. A few of the disciples who preached Dizzy’s gospel of bebop were Thelonious Monk, Earl ‘Bud’ Powell, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.

Glass

Phillip Glass was born in 1937. He is considered to be a minimalist composer because his music has less melody and more rocklike rhythm. He is an opera composer whose music has also been played on TV and in the movies. He is the composer of the current hit, Dracula.

Glière

Reinhold Moritsevich Glière lived from 1875 until 1956 and was a Russian composer. A pupil at the Moscow Conservatory of Hrimaly and Taneyev, Arensky, Konyus and Ippolitov-Ivanov, Glière continued the romantic Russian tradition, winning immense popularity for his Soviet ballets The Red Poppy and The Bronze Horseman, where he is also able to demonstrate his interest in wider Slavonic musical traditions.

Glinka

Mikhail Glinka lived from 1804 until 1857. He was greatly influenced by Russian folk music. Glinka’s operas mark the beginning of musical nationalism in Russia and he became known as “The Father of Russian Music”.

Gluck

Christopher Willibald Gluck, 1714 to 1787, was a pioneer reformer of opera. In his operas all the music served the drama, rather than interrupting the action so that singers could only display their voices.

Godowsky

Leopold Godowsky lived from 1870 until 1938. He was born in what was then Poland and was one of the greatest virtuoso pianists of his time, taking American citizenship in 1891. As a composer, he wrote demanding music for the piano, with arrangements and studies that offer considerable technical challenge. His Waltz Masks and music for two pianists give a sample of his style.

Goldmark

Karl Goldmark lived from 1830 until 1915. Hungarian by birth, Karl Goldmark made his principal career in Vienna, after earlier years during which he earned his living as a violinist in theatre orchestras and as a teacher. Largely self-taught as a composer, he had his first success with his String Quartet, Op. 8, in 1860. He joined in the establishment of a Wagner Society in Vienna and gradually assumed a position of great importance in the musical life of the city.

Goldmark’s opera Die Königin von Saba (The Queen of Sheba) enjoyed considerable popularity also in Italy, its musical idiom influenced to some extent by the music of the synagogue with which the composer was familiar from his childhood. Other operas were less successful, although his opera based on Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale exemplified a form of stage work more familiar from Humperdinck. Orchestral Music In addition to two symphonies and two violin concertos, Goldmark wrote a series of concert overtures and the popular Rustic Wedding Symphony.

Goldmark wrote a series of works for conventional chamber ensembles, duos, trios, quartets and quintets, the later compositions showing signs of other contemporary influences, within the prescribed forms.

Goldovsky

Boris Goldovsky was born in 1908 born in Moscow, Russia. He is a pianist, conductor and opera producer who was trained in Germany. He soloed on piano with the Berlin Philharmonic at the age of 13. In 1930 he came to the U.S.A. to concertize and teach but by the end of the decade he had diverted his talents and energies to producing operas. He ran the opera program at Tanglewood from 1942 until 1962, founded the New England Opera in 1946 and the Goldovsky Opera Institute in 1963. Both the New England Opera and the Goldovsky Opera Institute are Boston-based. In 1977 he became head of the opera department at the Curtis Institute. He was well known to a broad public as a commentator for the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts but to several generations of American opera singers he was known for promoting opera in English and for demanding that singers be truly able to act their roles.

Goodman

Benny Goodman was essentially the pioneer of swing. The jazz clarinetist and bandleader re-wrote the book on jazz music by speeding up the tempo and placing accents and emphasis on notes between the beats, earning him the nickname “the King of Swing”. Not only was he a world-class clarinetist, responsible for reviving the popularity of the instrument, but also an excellent arranger and composer. He was one of the first bandleaders to break the color barrier by hiring black musicians.

Benny was born Benny David Goodman in 1909. He was raised in the poverty of a Jewish ghetto in Chicago, growing up with the sounds of New Orleans jazz greats like King Oliver, Freddie Keppard, and Louis Armstrong in his home. Benny began playing the clarinet at the age of twelve, and formed his first band at the age of sixteen, “The Benny Goodman Trio”, which became one of the very first interracial jazz ensembles. He went on to play with many groups, including “Doc Cook and His Dreamland Orchestra”.

However, by 1934, it was time for a change. That year, he put together his own big band. Using the compositions and arrangements of fellow swing pioneer Fletcher Henderson, he almost single-handedly gave birth to the “swing era” of the thirties and forties. He would go on to spread his music to all corners of the globe, travelling to places such as the Soviet Union, Europe, and the Far East, playing both jazz and classical music along the way.

Aside from his success in music, Goodman was also a superstar personality, if not to his co-workers, to the American public, receiving roles in films, and radio and television programs. He also made the clarinet one of the most popular instruments to play after it had been nearly absent in music since ragtime. Goodman died in 1986.

Gould

Glenn Gould was a Canadian pianist.

Grainger

Percy Aldridge Grainger was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. In the course of a long and innovative career he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th century.

Gregory

Pope Gregory lived from 590 until 604 and he improved greatly on Bishop Ambrose’s chants. Gregorian chants became very popular during his lifetime and are being sold on CD today.

Grieg

Edvard Hagerup Grieg lived between 1843 and 1907. He is considered to be a romantic composer.

Grieg was a staunch patriot and one of the first of Norway’s composers to write truly national Norwegian music. He set Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt to music as well as many other Norwegian plays, poems, folk songs and dances.

Grieg became known as the “Chopin of the North” thanks to his typically Scandinavian Piano Concerto. He was only 25 when this Concerto was composed in 1868.

Grofé

Ferde Grofé (Ferdinand Rudolph von Grofé) was a composer/arranger who was born in New York City in 1892. He died in 1972. An arranger for Paul Whiteman’s “symphonic jazz” orchestra, Grofé orchestrated Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and composed orchestral suites expressing American locales, notably the Grand Canyon Suite (1931). The modern-style orchestra based upon saxophones rather than strings is attributed to him.

Grout

A History of Western Music. An older version of this book is available for loan in the O’Connor Music Studio.