Overview

To the perennial question ""which comes first, the music or the words?"" Ira Gershwin always responded, ""the contract."" The jest reveals both Ira's consummate professionalism and the self-effacing wit with which he ducked the spotlight whenever possible. Yet the ingeniously inventive melodies George Gershwin composed for such classic songs as ""Someone to Watch Over Me,"" ""Embraceable You,"" ""Fascinating Rhythm,"" ""It Ain't Necessarily So,"" and ""Love is Here to Stay"" live on in no small part because of the equally unforgettable lyrics of Ira Gershwin, lines crafted with a precision that earned him the sobriquet ""The Jeweller"" among his Broadway peers. In Ira Gershwin: The Art of the Lyricist, the older and less flamboyant of the Gershwin brothers at last steps out of the shadows to claim his due as one of American songwriting's most important and enduring innovators. Philip Furia traces the development of Ira Gershwin's lyrical art from his early love of light verse and Gilbert and Sullivan, through his apprentice work in Tin Pan Alley, to his emergence as a prominent writer for the Broadway musical theater in the 1920s. Furia illuminates his work in satirical operettas such as Of Thee I Sing and Strike Up the Band, the smart ""little"" revues of the 1930s, and his contributions to the opera Porgy and Bess. After describing the Gershwin brothers' brief but brilliant work in Hollywood before George's sudden death--work that produced such classics as ""They Can't Take That Away From Me"" and ""Let's Call the Whole Thing Off""--Furia follows Ira's career through such triumphs as Lady in the Dark with Kurt Weill, Cover Girl with Jerome Kern, and A Star is Born, with Harold Arlen. Along the way, Furia provides much insight into the art of the lyricist and he captures the magic of a golden era when not only the Gershwins, but Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II, Gertrude Lawrence, Fred Astaire, and other luminaries made the lights of Broadway and the Hollywood screen shine brighter than ever before. From his first major success, the now-classic ""The Man I Love"" (1924) to his last great hit, ""The Man That Got Away"" (1954), Ira Gershwin wrote the words to some of America's most loved standards. In Ira Gershwin: The Art of the Lyricist, Philip Furia illuminates the craft behind this remarkable achievement to reveal how Gershwin took the everyday speech of ordinary Americans and made it sing.

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9780195115703

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Reviews

What does come across in Furia's book is the flavour of the golden era of songwriting, and the towering talent of Ira Gershwin, who worked at a tortoise-like pace and polished his lyrics until they gleamed. Sunday Times a fascinating and entertaining tribute to a witty, sophisticated lyricist. An extinct breed, alas. Charles Osborne, Daily Telegraph

Furia, who has already attempted a general survey of the great American lyricists (Poets of Tin Pan Alley, 1990), turns his attention to the works of a giant of the field. There have been numerous biographies of Ira's brother, George, but the shy, quiet older sibling has been given short shrift by music and theater historians. Ira was a retiring, private man, a slow-working perfectionist who was nicknamed the Jeweller by his more mercurial brother; that, and his uneventful private life, have undoubtedly contributed to his neglect by all but a few scholars of the American popular song. Furia's (English/Univ. of Minnesota) book attempts to combine academic analysis of Ira's writing with an alltoo-cursory recounting of his life. Granted, compared to the sexual shenanigans, relentless self-promotion, and sudden, tragic death of George, Ira's calm waters look like an unlikely place to go trolling for a good story. But as Furia points out in his introductory chapter, Ira Gershwin was not only one of our most prolific songwriters, working with almost every major American composer of theater music - Kurt Weill, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, and, of course, his brother - but one of the key figures in the field, a man who took the American vernacular and made it sing. Regrettably, Furia's focus is almost entirely on the lyrics, and his analyses, while interesting, will probably prove too technical for the casual reader and insufficiently rigorous for the professional. One yearns for more insight into this charming and clever man who chose to hide his own light under his brother's not inconsiderable bushel. Ira was a master at breathing new life into old formulas with an urbane wit; Furia, unfortunately, is unable to do the same. (Kirkus Reviews)

What does come across in Furia's book is the flavour of the golden era of songwriting, and the towering talent of Ira Gershwin, who worked at a tortoise-like pace and polished his lyrics until they gleamed. Sunday Times a fascinating and entertaining tribute to a witty, sophisticated lyricist. An extinct breed, alas. Charles Osborne, Daily Telegraph

Author Information

Philip Furia is Professor and Chair of the Department of English at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of The Poets of Tin Pan Alley.

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