Digging into the psychology behind a composer's beloved works

Jul. 29—details

—Richard Kogan: "The Creative Genius of Gershwin"

—Santa Fe Distinguished Lecture Series

—7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 4

—United Church of Santa Fe, 1804 Arroyo Chamiso Road

—Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at door; 505-920-7771, santafedls.org; masks required

Had composer George Gershwin been born in 1998 and not a century earlier, he might well have been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder as a child and prescribed medication, pianist and psychiatrist Richard Kogan says.

And had that happened, Gershwin might never have discovered an even more powerful grounding force in his life: creating enduringly popular and increasingly complex works that became fixtures in the American musical vocabulary.

That's but one of many notable ways in which psychological issues shaped Gershwin's creative output, says Kogan, who will deliver a performance and talk titled "The Creative Genius of Gershwin" on Thursday, Aug. 4, at United Church of Santa Fe. It's part of the Santa Fe Distinguished Lecture Series, and Kogan will both perform Gershwin's songs and discuss the psychology behind their creation.

Kogan is a graduate of The Juilliard School of Music Pre-College, Harvard College, and Harvard Medical School. He gives about 40 concert-lectures a year; other musicians he focuses on are Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Bernstein, Joplin, Mozart, Chopin, Schumann, and Rachmaninoff. He has a private psychiatry practice and lives in New York City.

Gershwin heard the ambient sounds of everyday life as a symphony of notes, not a collision of noises, Kogan says.

"When [Gershwin] was a youngster, he grew up in very crowded streets of immigrant-laden New York City," Kogan says. "I don't think he heard much quiet, and I think those sounds sparked his imagination."

The noises made by taxis in Paris when Gershwin visited in 1926 famously resonated with him; Gershwin returned to the United States with four Parisian taxi horns and used them in his landmark work, An American in Paris, Kogan says.

"He had this remarkable ability to extract music out of what others would probably have considered to be merely noise," Kogan says. "With Rhapsody in Blue, he was inspired to write it during a train ride. He said he paid attention to the various sounds of the train, and if he concentrated on them, he said, the entire structure of Rhapsody in Blue revealed itself to him."

Such sounds might well have replaced traditional notes in Gershwin's head early in life, Kogan says.

"He grew up in a home that was really without music," he says. "He was introduced to music at a relatively late age for someone as accomplished as he was."

That late introduction came via a classmate's violin recital when Gershwin was 10, Kogan says. Around the same time, Gershwin's parents bought a piano for his older brother Ira — but George played it more often.

As George Gershwin began studying music seriously, he cast his net wide as he looked for inspiration, Kogan adds.

"I think all of the multiplicity of musical styles that were vibrant in America when he was growing up, he embraced all of them," Kogan says. "Rather than narrowly picking a style and pursuing it, he developed a palate that incorporated everything."

Gershwin was born Jacob Gershwine — accounts of the original spelling of his last name vary — in September 1898 in Brooklyn, New York, to Russian-Jewish immigrants. He changed his last name to "Gershwin" around 1913, when he became a professional musician, and the rest of his family followed his lead.

Gershwin got his start in the music profession as a "song plugger" on Tin Pan Alley, a Manhattan neighborhood block that housed sheet music publishers in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Pluggers worked for publishers, performing their songs in public settings to increase interest. Gershwin composed his first published song, "When You Want 'Em, You Can't Get 'Em," in 1916.

Gershwin, a first-generation resident of this country, heartily embraced being an American.

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"That is an important part of his identity and his music-making," Kogan says. "He said his goal as a composer was to capture the soul of America in sound."

The New Yorker created one of his best-loved works while visiting a very different part of America: Folly Island, about 25 miles south of Charleston, South Carolina. He contacted DuBose Heyward, the author of the 1925 novel Porgy and expressed interest in creating an opera from the Charleston-based book. While on Folly Island, a palm tree-covered strip of land overlooking the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean, Gershwin was inspired to write the music for his genre-bending opera Porgy and Bess. The opera was premiered in Boston on Sept. 30, 1935.

Gershwin enjoyed commercial success but not always critical raves, at least during his lifetime. Porgy and Bess in particular has been criticized through the years for appropriating Black culture — it's a story about Black Americans' lives, created by white artists — as well as some of its ethnic stereotyping. It also received flak for its use of soaring choruses and bold orchestration, neither traditionally associated with opera.

Writing in The New York Times on Oct. 20, 1935, Gershwin defended his work against the latter criticism.

"Many of the most successful operas of the past have had songs," he wrote. "Nearly all of Verdi's operas contain what are known as 'song hits.' Carmen is almost a collection of song hits. And what about 'The Last Rites of Summer,' perhaps one of the most widely known songs of the generation? How many of those who sing it know that it is from an opera?"

Kogan credits Gershwin for getting to know a culture before writing about it.

"He lived among the characters" while on Folly Island, Kogan says. "He went to prayer meetings and supper clubs and immersed himself in the sound of the community. Without doing that, he never could have written anything like [Porgy and Bess]. After being there six weeks, he felt he got it. He understood the sounds."

Ira is famed in his own right for his keen understanding of wordplay as a lyricist. He also collaborated on many of his brother's works. Kogan describes both Gershwins as creative geniuses who somehow emerged from a previously nonmusical family.

"Sibling rivalry is not an uncommon phenomenon," Kogan says. "In the case of Ira and George, there was almost no trace of that. They adored each other. They were really occupying different niches.

"Ira outlived him by close to 50 years. Even though he continued to write lyrics for other composers, he was in mourning for the rest of his life." Ira Gershwin died in 1983.

The last song the brothers wrote together: "Our Love is Here to Stay," for the 1938 film The Goldwyn Follies.

Early in 1937, George began experiencing brutal headaches and detecting bizarre smells. On July 9 of that year, he collapsed and fell into a coma, during which doctors discovered he had a brain tumor. He died following surgery two days later, on July 11, 1937. He was 38.

Historians and music lovers are left to wonder what might have been.

"His greatest work was Porgy and Bess," Kogan says. "It represented enormous growth over anything he'd done earlier. When you consider the trajectory of his development as a composer, it boggles the imagination to contemplate what he might have written had he lived a normal life."

A few months before Gershwin's death, Kogan says, he told his sister, Frances, he had plans to write music for symphonies and string quartets. He also planned to write a set of 24 preludes and completed three.

"The title was going to be The Melting Pot," Kogan says. "He wanted to capture all of the various styles of American music making."

Sadly, an unknown number of works never emerged from the planning stages.

"I think for Gershwin, when you think about what might have been, we just have to be grateful for what he left us," Kogan says.