mike@alice.UUCP (Michael Hawley) (02/28/84)
I thought that "why be a second rate Ravel when you can be a first rate Gershwin" was just a line from the Robert Alda movie about GG. Gershwin did study formally with Joseph Schillinger, a composition prof at Julliard, and the author of a fat book detailing the Schillinger System for composition. Anybody know anything interesting about this?
smh@mit-eddie.UUCP (Steven M. Haflich) (02/29/84)
x I thought that "why be a second rate Ravel when you can be a first rate Gershwin" was just a line from the Robert Alda movie about GG. The story of the meeting between Gershwin and Ravel seems widely accepted, although I don't have a citation at hand. Gershwin did study formally with Joseph Schillinger, a composition prof at Julliard, and the author of a fat book detailing the Schillinger System for composition. This is surprising. <The Schillinger System> is indeed a rather substantial volume detailing a novel system of music theory. If I remember correctly, it is pretty much directed towards providing a system of composition. It is a very confusing book which, in the opinion of most music theorists, is an unfortunate exercise in pseudo-science and pseudo-mathematics. The book was reviewed long ago (by Wayne Slawson, if I remember correctly) in a fairly early volume of <The Journal of Music Theory>. The review has nothing good to say about the book and takes apart many of its more ridiculous assertions. None of this, of course, reflects upon Gerschwin in the slightest. In fact, it doesn't even reflect upon the *music* of Schillinger, with which I am, alas, unacquainted. Happy to serve as resident music theorist for Usenet, Steve Haflich, MIT Experimental Music Studio
simon@psuvax.UUCP (Janos Simon) (03/02/84)
[] I seem to remember that Gershwin and Stravinsky also talked to one another. Am I confusing things? js