George Gershwin's New York Midterm

Year of the Founding of New York City (ie New Amsterdam)

1624

Years that New York City was the nation’s capital

1785-1790

Year of the official end of slavery in New York, through gradual manumission

1827

Year Central Park opened

1860

Year of the Consolidation of New York City

1898

Years of George Gershwin’s (b. Brooklyn, NY) life

1898-1937

Years of Ira Gershwin’s (b. New York, (ie. Manhattan) NY) life

1896-1983

Years of World War I

1914-1918

Fraunce’s Tavern

NYC tavern where George Washington said farewell to his troops

Battle of Harlem Heights

Revolutionary War battle that took place on site of MSM

Baseball

American sport invented in NYC

Frederick Law Olmstead Calvert Vaux

Architects of Central Park

St. Claire Pollack

Tomb of boy who died near MSM in 1797

Claremont Inn

Historic inn near MSM, build 1790, destroyed by fire in 1951

Germans, Irish

Two most prominent immigrant groups by mid-19th century

Draft Riots

1863 Civil War era anti-draft riot in NYC that devolved into a race riot, worst riot in US history

Gilded Age

Late 19th-early20th century period of increasing wealth in NYC

J.P. Morgan

Financier, White Star Line owner, created the first billion-dollar corporation, saved country during the banking crisis, founded the Morgan Library

John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick

Banked with J.P. Morgan, company headquarters in NYC, founded institutions in NYC: Carnegie Hall, Frick Museum, Rockefeller University

USS Maine

American battbleship sunk near Cuba, a cause of Spanish-American war

Spanish-American War

Late nineteenth century war between the US and Spain over Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. American victory made the US an international power and brought fame to Theodore Roosevelt

Progressive Era

Late 19th - early 20th century national movement to bring social change. In NYC, move to end Tammany Hall corruption

Carrie Chapman Catt

Leader of Women’s Suffrage movement

Ella A. Boole

Leader of the Prohibition movement

Emma Goldman

Leader in radical Left movements

Russians, Poles, Italians, Greek, Chinese, Jews

People emigrating en masse to the US in the late 19th century

Ellis Island

Federal immigration center near the Statue of Liberty, oversaw the entry of 12 million immigrants

Pale of Settlement

Area of Russia (now Ukraine and Poland) where Russian Jews were required to live.

Great Migration

African Americans leaving the rural south for the urban north, especially NYC, to find jobs in industry

Seneca Village

The first African American enclave in NYC

Flatiron Building, Park Row Building

Early, iconic skyscapers of the 1900’s decade

Scott Joplin

Having defined ragtime with his best-selling piano rags such as Maple Leaf Rag, Scott Joplin moved to NYC in 1907 to promote (unsuccessfully) his opera Treemonisha

Charles Ives

Composer Charles Ives served as an organist in NYC before becoming involved in the insurance business. After that he composed his many works on the side, most of which were not performed until his work became known (and in modernist circles, renowned) decades later

Vernon and Irene Castle

English husband and wife dance team centered in New York City who became an international sensation popularizing ragtime dance, and setting the standard for ballroom dancing both in Europe and America. In NYC they formed partnerships with James Reese Eruopes’s Clef Club orchestra and with Irving Berlin on Broadway (Watch Your Step, 1914)

Victor Herbert

Irish immigrant Victor Herbert moved to New York in 1886, where he established a career as a composer and conductor, becoming known especially for his operettas on the European model, such as Babes in Toyland (1903). In 1924 a work of his was premiered on the same concert as Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

Enrico Caruso

Famous operatic tenor who made his professional home at the Metropolitan Opera in NYC. Morris Gershwin had many Caruso records in the Gershwin household.

Carl Laemmle, Adolph Zukor, Samuel Goldwyn, Cecil B. DeMille

Major figures in HOllywood film history who got their start in New York City’s early film scene

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein

Prominent women writers connected to NYC in the early 20th century. Their styles contrasted with the 19th century New England writers.

“Gibson Girl”

Code word for women’s fashions at the turn of the 20th century, featuring attire more appropriate for women in the workforce

“S-Curve” style

Change in women’s fashion in the early 1900’s

Tuxedo and dinner jacket

Supplanted the formal tailcoat in men’s fashion

Monk Eastman

NYC gangster who became an unlikely war hero in World War I. The last of the old-time gangsters, who were associated with Manhattan neighborhoods

Consolidation of New York

Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, and Staten Island become Greater New York (1898)

Coney Island

Resort area in Brooklyn including Luna Park, the Gershwins lived on Coney Island in 1914

Charles Feltman

Inventor of the hot dog, first served on Coney Island

Leon Czolgosz

Anarchist assassin of President McKinley (1901), executed for his crime. Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first NYC-born president as a result.

Lower East Side

Area in Manhattan where many different immigrant groups settled at the turn of the 20th century. The Gershwins lived there for many years; neighborhood where George and Ira gew up for the most part

Eddie Cantor, Irving Berlin, Al Jolson, Jimmy Durante, Marx Brothers

Like the Gershwins, all these later entertainment stars grew up in the immigrant neighborhoods of the Lower East Side.

Interborough Rapid Transit Company

Private company that opened the first subway lines in Manhattan, with stops in Brooklyn and the Bronx (1904)

Anarchism, socialism, communism

Left-wing political ideologies that became prominent in the Lower East Side neighborhoods in the early 20th century

General Slocum (1904)

Excursion vessel that caught fire on the East River. The disaster cost over 1000 deaths and decimated the German-American population of NYC. Name of composition by Charles Ives

Gustav Mahler

Prominent Austrian-Jewish composer-conductor from Vienna who conducted the Metropolitan Opera and New York Philharmonic from 1907-1911. Represented the prominence of German patronage and influence in the classical sense of NYC.

1906 “Trial of the Century”

Murder of prominent architect Stanford White by Harry Thaw, husband of Evelyn Nesbit, actress and dancer who had been victim of the grooming predations of White and his cohorts in the Union Club.

Institution of Musical Art

One of the first endowed music schools in the US Founded by Frank Damrosch, it eventually moved to 120 Claremont Avenue. Though all the faculty were European, only American students were admitted.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

1911 NYC disaster that led to nationwide revisions to safety regulations for factory workers. More than 140 female workers died.

Pier 54 (1)

When the Titanic sank in April of 1912, the survivors arrived at Pier 54 on board the RMS Carpathia, many later taken to St. Vincent Hospital.

Advent of World War I

New York Stock Exchange closes for 42 months; New Yorkers split over their attitude to the war; strong anti-German feeling emerges.

Audrey Munson

First “super-model;” her image and form can be found in numerous locations across NYC. Caught-up in a murder scandal in which a doctor who had become infatuated with her murdered his wife. In later years, Audrey was committed to an asylum, where she died at age 104

Pier 54 (2)

The last voyage of the ship Lusitania began at Pier 54 where the doomed ship picked up its last passengers before being torpedoed six days later by a German U-boat, an incident that led to American involvement in World War I. Jerome Kern escaped the disaster by oversleeping, missing the boat.

Black Tom Island explosion

German saboteurs blew up munitions in Jersey City, NJ which were destined to help the Allied cause in World War I; the Statue of Liberty and many buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn were damaged (1916)

The Great Influenza (11917-1918)

Worst worldwide pandemic in history caused countless deaths in NYC after entering New York harbor via infected people aboard ships.

MSM Founded

1918 East 104th and 105th Street

The Birth of a Nation (1915)

Premiere of controversial film by D. W. Griffith about the Civil War that extolled the Ku Klux Klan is met by boos from NYC audiences.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Famed Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who moved to New York in 1918 to escape the Russian Revolution. Admired the Harlem stride pianists; Piano Concerto No. 4 shows signs of jazz influence.

Spencer Tracy. Humphrey Bogart, Buster Keaton, Ernest Hemingway, Irving Berlin, James Reese Europe, Vernon Castle.

Actors, comedians, writers, dancers, and musicians who took part in the US effort in World War I, and who would become major figures in their fields in the 1920’s and beyond. General John J. Pershing led the American Expeditionary force. Vernon Castle, already famous as a dancer, died during the war.

George M. Cohan

Song writer, lyricist, playwright, producer, dancer, singer, actor, “the man who owned Broadway,” Cohan challenged the British and Central European operetta dominance on Broadway by writing shows on idealized American themes. Breakthrough show: Little Johnny Jones (1904)

Irving Berlin

Poor Russian-American immigrant kid from the Lower East Side who became the most successful Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and musical film song writer of the era, from his ragtime beginnings on through the 1920's and into the post-World War II fifties. Notable for his activities as a performer and song writer in support of the war efforts of both world wars, and for his charitable contributions. Breakthrough hit: "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1910); most successful Broadway show: Annie Get Your Gun (1946); most notable film score: Top Hat (1935).

Jerome Kern

Born of Jewish parents in New York City, Jerome Kern, more than any other Broadway composer of his time, set the model for the American musical. Inspired by London experiments in music theater that combined operetta, music comedy and dance, Kern perfected this hybrid form while incorporating sophisticated harmony and rhythms in his songs. The Princess Theater shows established a new, smaller-scale type of musical based on contemporary social and political themes, with integrated plot, lyrics, and music. His Hollywood film musicals represent some of the finest of their type. Most successful musical: Show Boat (1927); most notable film score: Swing Time (1936).

James Reese Europe

Established the Clef Club orchestra, which made history as giving the first concert of an all-African American group at Carnegie Hall. Partnership with Vernon and Irene Castle brought him to national attention. During World War I he led his regimental band, and saw action in France. After the Armistice, he continued to tour France with the band; his regiment was given a parade in Manhattan on returning home. Murdered by an irate member of his band, he was the first African American to be given a public funeral.

Cultural Institutions

Giants of industry and finance (J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, John D. Rockefeller) establish libraries, museums, concert halls, and universities in their names.

Minstrelsy

Earliest form of definitively American muusic theater which included song, dance, comedy skits, variety acts, and short plays. Despite the traditioin of blackface and the distorted or condescending views of southern African American life on which minstrelsy was based, the form introduced elements of African American culture into the mainstream.

The Cakewalk

A dance-type from the minstral shows that became an international sensation, and helped to spread and promote the ragtime style.

Ragtime in New York

Originating in the cities of the Mississippi River valley, through composers such as Scott Joplin, ragtime came to New York via vaudeville and minstrel shows in the 1880’s. The ragtime craze, embraced by the young, also influenced composers of concert music such as Charles Ives.

Rag and “Animal” Dances

Dances that emerged in tandem with ragtime were the “animal dances” which purported to imitate the movements of animals, such as the Grizzly Bear, Bunny Hug, Turkey Trot, Kangaroo Hop, Duck Wattle, and Fox-Trot. Dances from south of the border also became popular.

Rag Songs

Rag songs, often sharing little with official piano ragtime beyond some syncopation, dominated the Tin Pan Alley lists in the early 1900’s. Irving Berlin was the most prominent figure of the rag song era.

Ragtime in Europe

Ragtime also created a sensation in Europe in the early part of the century, where composers such as Debussy, Rubens, Satie, and Stravinsky adapted the sounds of ragtime to their individual styles, which in turn created a cross-current among American composers who were attempting to adapt the new American style to European innovations

Tim Pan Alley

T. B. Harms, Witmark & Sons, Harry von Tilzer, Jerome Remick, Charles K Harris (his “After the Ball” was the first Tin Pan Alley hit.)

With the rise of affordable upright pianos in middle and working class homes, publishing companies found a new bonanza in the sheet music business, and a new market for simple arrangements of popular songs was exploited by a new breed of music publishers, many from immigrant backgrounds, who opened offices on West 28th street, soon dubbed Tin Pan Alley. Later, the publishers moved their offices to the 40’s to be closer to Broadway theaters.

Ethnic Songs

Due to the many ethnic minorities who came to the U. S. in the early 1900’s, the popular songs and music theater shows began to reflect this diversity. In addition, American song writers imitated the cultural elements of certain groups, including Asian imitations know by the French terms as “chinoiserie” and “japonaiserie.”

Music Theater ca. 1900

The theater scene in 1900 included opera, English operetta, and music theater, mostly for the upper classes; vaudeville, burlesque, and minstrel shows for the working class.

Vaudeville and Burlesque

While minstrel shows were still popular, a new family style of variety entertainment devised by impresario Tony Pastor, vaudeville, became prominent. For a more adult kind of theater, burlesque provided risqué humor and eventually, striptease among other diverse acts.

The Revue

A new kind of Broadway variety show that featured lavish productions and chorus girl routines. Florenz Ziegfield set the standard with his annual Follies beginning in 1907.

Operetta and Music Theater

Although European operetta continued to dominate the New York stage, new works on American themes by American composers began to turn the tide in the 1900’s.

Concert Music and Opera (concert, opera premieres)

Performances of classical music at the Metropolitan Opera and New York stage, new works on American themes by American composers began to rival those of Europe.

James P. Johnson, Eubie Blake, Jelly Roll Morton, Luckey Roberts, Willie “the Lion” Smith

The Harlem stride pianists. Unlike ragtime, jazz and blues, an east coast phenomenon. Classically trained, with roots in ragtime and Southern church styles. Influenced by Gershwin’s piano style.

Zez Confrey, Felix Arndt, Les Copeland, Mike Bernard, Ohman and Arden

The Novelty pianists. Stayed somewhat closer to ragtime than the Harlem pianists, though they developed special techniques of their own. Introduced ragtime to NYC vaudeville stages. Influenced Gershwin’s piano style.

Piano Rolls, Player-Pianos

Automatic piano in which the mechanism was triggered by air pushed through holes in a paper roll. Popular during the first quarter of the century, eventually losing out to analog recordings. Gershwin recorded many piano rolls.

The Blues arrive in NYC

Urban blues, based on the folk-blues of the Mississippi delta but with a more sophisticated harmonic style written for dance bands as in the work of W. C. Handy.

Jazz arrives in NYC

From its origins in New Orleans and later, Chicago, jazz began to be heard in New York in the early 1910’s, but did not become popular until the latter part of the decade, with performances by the Creole and Original Dixieland Jazz Bands. (Gershwin was, at first, not a fan)

Yakov and Sarah (Lipshitz) Gershovitz

The Gershwin children’s paternal grandparents, who had settled in St. Petersburg in the Russian Empire, where Morris Gershwin was born. The elder Gershovitzes never migrated to the US

Gershon and Mariaska (Dechink) Bruskin

The Gershwin children’s maternal grandparents, who emigrated from St. Petersburg, where Rose was born, to the US in 1892.

Morris Gershwin

Born in St. Petersburg in 1872. Emigrated to the US in 1890—losing his hat in New York Bay rushing to see the Statue of Liberty—and settled in NYC. After his marriage to Rose he worked in many different occupations and to Rose he worked in many different occupations and moved his family 25 times in as many years. Gentle, generous, humorous, with a quirky command of English, he was the most musical of the two parents. He died in 1932

Rose (Bruskin) Gershwin

Born in St. Petersburg in 1875. Emigrated to the US with her family in 1892. She married Morris Gershwin in 1895. According to her son George, “very loving” yet “nervous, ambitious, and purposeful,” Rose enjoyed poker, the racetrack, desgining clothes, and the theater. Her daughter thought her problematic. She died in 1948.

Arthur Gershwin

The third and youngest son of Rose and Morris Gershwin, born in Manhattan 1900

Frances (Gershwin) Goldowsky

The only daughter and youngest child of Rose and Morris Gershwin, born in Manhattan in 1906.

Anton Rubenstein’s Melody in F

Gershwin remembered his hearing of this piece as a boy, performed by a player-piano, as his first effectice musical experience.

Max Rosen

The revelatory musical experience that changed George Gershwin’s life was hearing his classmate, eight-year-old violinist Max Rosen (Rosenzweig), play Dvorak’s Humoresque. They became friends and shared their loved of music, which was the beginning of Gershwin’s vocation.

The Gershwin’s new piano

When the Gershwin family bought a piano for Ira’s lessons, they were amazed to discover that George was already competent on the instrument due to his secret practicing at a friend’s pianola and a local music store.

Charles Hambitzer

American composer, pianist, conductor, teacher, and multi-instrumentalist who was Gershwin’s first important piano teacher, starting in 1913. Hambitzer composed orchestra and chamber music, and operetta, most of it never published. He died of tuberculosis in 1918.

Edward Kilenyi

Hungarian composer and music scholar, Gershwin’s first theory and orchestration teacher (beginning in 1916). Eventually moved to Hollywood to write for films.

Ira at City College

Ira, voracious reader who had contributed to his high school news paper, entered City College in 1914 as an English major. Leaving college after two years, he worked for his father while continuing to write on the side.