About the George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition

About the Edition

A Unique Partnership

The George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition is a unique partnership between the Gershwin Initiative at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance and the Gershwin family that brings the works of George and Ira Gershwin to performers, scholars, students, and general audiences worldwide. The Edition creates, publishes, and distributes new scholarly editions of the Gershwins’ works and enables educational opportunities for University of Michigan students and the community to appreciate and proliferate the Gershwins’ artistry.

Marc George Gershwin (nephew of George and Ira Gershwin, majority member of the Marc George Gershwin LLC, and trustee of the Arthur Gershwin Testamentary Trust) writes: “Preserving the legacy and sharing the genius of George and Ira Gershwin is a primary goal of creating critical editions of their works. The University of Michigan, with research and performance disciplines that parallel the Gershwins’ creativity, provides an ideal home for this project. Our partnership enables the art of George and Ira Gershwin to take its place, for generations to come, among the preeminent artistic achievements of the twentieth century, and to spark the imagination of musicians young and old.”

This groundbreaking partnership was initiated by Todd Gershwin, a University of Michigan alumnus, the grandnephew of George and Ira, and the son of Marc George Gershwin. The project is spearheaded by Mark Clague, professor of musicology at the University of Michigan, who serves as editor-in-chief of the edition. The Gershwin Initiative is made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The Need for a Critical Edition

Until now, the Gershwins’ works never have received the benefit of scholarly editing, partially due to the abrupt and tragic death of George Gershwin from a brain tumor at age 38. Although many of his works have been readily accessible in print and recordings, a great number of scores and instrumental parts still circulate as hard-to-read photocopies of handwritten notation that contain significant errors and inconsistencies. Even Rhapsody in Blue and Porgy and Bess—by many considered America’s greatest opera—have been performed and recorded using problematic scores and parts that diminished performances with errors and materials that wasted rehearsal time—until now.

This edition is long overdue and rightly places the Gershwins’ work on library shelves and music stands alongside the pantheon of America’s greatest composers, including Stephen Foster and Charles Ives, and among such canonic European masters as Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.

The Scope of the Edition

The George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition is the first scholarly edition series of all the extant music and lyrics of George and Ira Gershwin. It provides conductors, musicians, performers, scholars, students, and general audiences profound new insights into the Gershwins’ works, and in many cases offers the first performance materials to accurately reflect the vision of the creators. In addition to the great American opera Porgy and Bess, important works included in the series include Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris, Concerto in F, and Cuban Overture, along with over two dozen Broadway and Hollywood musicals. The result of George and Ira’s collaboration resulted in many of the most beloved songs in American music, including “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” “Someone to Watch over Me,” “Embraceable You,” “I Got Rhythm,” “Fascinating Rhythm,” “Oh, Lady Be Good,” “Love is Here to Stay,” “The Man I Love,” “Nice Work if You Can Get It,” “They Can’t Take That Away from Me,” “’S Wonderful,” and many others.

Editorial Methods

The George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition combines cutting-edge historical research with meticulous editorial accuracy to produce volumes that represent the Gershwins’ work in rigorously definitive publications. These editions differ from previously-available standard performing editions or anthologies because they examine all available source materials and explain all editorial decisions, resulting in versions of the works that best capture the conception of the creators. Each critical edition includes a contextualizing essay appropriate for general readers as well as experts, a thorough elucidation of editorial methods, and explanatory notes that invite users to intimately comprehend the artistry of the Gershwins.

The Gershwins’ works require careful editing because they combine the genres of classical music, jazz, blues, and popular song—artistic traditions with distinctive conventions of musical notation. For example, in an art form such as jazz, based on improvisation, notation is often extrapolated not by the performer but by a transcriber long after the performance. For instance, a recording of a solo by bebop saxophonist Charlie Parker would be recognized by his idiomatic phrasing and musical gestures, but notation of that solo onto a page of score would not have been extrapolated by Parker but by a transcriptionist. Some of George Gershwin’s most well-known works, including the piano part for Rhapsody in Blue, were not originally performed from notation but were improvised or performed from memory and only notated after their premiere. Such music requires expert scholarship to elucidate.

Moreover, George Gershwin frequently composed quickly and created multiple versions of his works for a variety of ensembles and contexts. Before this critical edition, previous publications of his works contained substantial notational errors and even lacked large sections of music. The scholars behind the George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition seek to determine precisely what notation to include and correct to best represent the creators’ work.