George Gershwin: An Intimate Portrait

7. "That Long Drip of Human Tears"

seven “That Long Drip of Human Tears” By 1929, Gershwin was once again thinking about opera. Several recent events had made him feel ready. One was the reception given An American in Paris. Although the reviews had been mixed—Herbert Francis Peyser, writing in the New York Telegram, called the piece “long winded and inane”1 —it was favorably received on the whole. Leonard Liebling in the American described it as “merry, rollicking music.”2 In the New York Times, Olin Downes said he had enjoyed the piece and that it showed an improvement in technique and orchestration, although he warned that it was easier for Gershwin “to invent ideas than to develop them.”3 The Musical Courier said it was “in a class, atmospherically, with Berlioz’s Roman Carnival, Svendsen’s Carnival de Venise and Chabrier’s España.”4 Audiences had no reservations; they immediately loved the piece because it was pure Gershwin and they loved Gershwin all the more for having written it. Most important, Gershwin was satisfied with it, especially with the structure and orchestration. There was a complete sureness of touch. 35 “That Long Drip of Human Tears” Shortly after the premiere, there was a celebratory party at Jules Glaenzer ’s Park Avenue apartment at which Otto Kahn, Gershwin’s friend on the board of the Metropolitan Opera Company (and one of its prime benefactors ), raised his glass and in an emotional toast that was later reprinted as an article in the Musical Courier, compared George with Charles Lindbergh as a representative of the genius of American youth. Lindbergh and Gershwin, Kahn said, both had the “the same engaging and unassuming ways, the same dignity and dislike of show, the same absence of affectation, the same direct, uncomplicated, naïve, Parsifalesque outlook upon life and his task.” Kahn went on to quote a line from Thomas Hardy’s poem, “On An Invitation to the United States,” which talked about America as a young nation, free of ancient European miseries—free of, as Hardy put it, “that long drip of human tears.” Although Hardy—and Kahn—were conveniently forgetting a lot of tears, there was something about the exuberance of American life and culture in the 1920s that made it true. Kahn continued, cautioning Gershwin about the need, as an artist, to understand the value of tears. “They have great and strange and beautiful power,” he said. “They fertilize the deepest roots of art, and from them flowers spring of a loveliness and perfume that no other moisture can produce.” He then wished for George an “experience—not too prolonged—of that driving storm and stress of emotions, of that solitary wrestling with your own soul, of that aloofness, for a while, from the actions and distractions of the everyday world, which are the most effective ingredients for the deepening and mellowing and the complete development, energizing and revealment, of an artist’s inner being and spiritual powers.”5 Actually, George was trying to live a life free from tears. Whenever an unpleasant situation presented itself, his strategy was to quietly slip away. Although he told his first biographer, Goldberg, that as a youth he had itched like a terrier to get into street fights, and even though as an adult, he liked to keep himself in fighting trim—going so far as to mention to one reporter, “I have a forearm like a wrestler”6 —he was always doing his best to sidestep unpleasantness. That had been his way even as a teenager when, after quitting his job as a song plugger at Remick’s, he took on a job as a pianist in a vaudeville house—the City Theater on Fourteenth 36 george฀gershwin Street—accompanying the singers and dancers during the supper show. On his first—and, as it turned out, last—night on the job, he missed a cue, found himself playing one song while the chorus was singing another, and was then humiliated by the comedian who got a few laughs by throwing jibes at Gershwin from the stage, saying, “Who told you you were a piano player?” and “You ought to be banging the drums.”7 Gershwin remembered this as the most humiliating moment of his life. In response to the bullying comedian, he said nothing; rather, he simply stood up and walked away from the piano and the job. Now, past the age of thirty, he responded...