Gershwin's greatest song

 The other night a bunch of us were lying around listening to Guy Boleri playing the piano and he got on a Gershwin kick. And he played "Of Thee I Sing."

What a dazzling song, I was thinking. The beauty and dignity of the melody! The song starts with those gentle chromatic notes and then rises. So beautiful and bittersweet.

When it was over, as if reading my mind, my brother George spoke up.

"Gershwin's greatest song," he said.

Agreed!

Ella Fitzgerald gives it a nice uptempo performance.



 But I like a more slow and dignified performance of this song. Maybe it is the title. The version by Sarah Vaughan up above is not bad. But she fools around with the song's opening which I do not like. Sing it the way Gershwin wrote it, you know? You are not going to improve on Gershwin even if you are Sarah Vaughan.

I am a Sarah Vaughan fan with a lot of Sarah Vaughan vinyl. But I don't like this performance as much as many of her others. Still on YouTube it is the best I can find.

Oh man, listen to this. Here are outtakes from Sarah Vaughan's "Of Thee I Sing."

"I'm not with it tonight," she says. And: "I don't feel like being here. I'm just tired."

And: "There's a lovelight .... sh--!"

Am I a perceptive listener or what?

I knew something was wrong!

Lost in la la land

Just a couple more thoughts on "Meistersinger" and then we will move on, I promise. I think what has happened is, I never saw this opera before in its entirety, and so it has been on my mind.

It is funny how sometimes you hear something that colors your life. You wake up in the morning feeling a little different because of it. One of these days I should list some of the music that has done this to me in the past.

I did finish watching the Glyndebourne production. As I shared yesterday, it took all kinds of doing including getting up that morning at 4 a.m. -- and being late for a party later that day. Yikes, I was almost an hour late because I had to finish watching the thing before Glyndebourne pulled the plug on it.

Howard ended up watching the last scene over my shoulder. We had it on full screen. Howard always kills me. As Beckmesser was making his sorry attempt at singing the Prize Song, Howard said, "I don't know, he sounds all right to me." By the way what I wrote the other day about the name Sixtus Beckmesser, I was wrong. Beckmesser was a real actual Mastersinger, I have learned.

When the opera was over I had to scramble to explain away the last scene, the one that always gets quoted, about keeping German art sacred and pure. Awkward!

I said, "Howard, I don't want you to think I am watching Nazi opera, or anything." I explained "Meistersinger" premiered in 1868 (was it? I am in a hurry right now) and furthermore there was that speech Hans Sachs makes earlier condemning man's inhumanity to man.

Also I tried to tell him how it is supposed to be set in the Middle Ages and these Mastersingers, you know, they are these provincial tradesmen striving for something greater. They are gently comic figures. This opera is bittersweet in a kind of Mozartean way -- there was one instance where I am sure Wagner is quoting Mozart -- but it is not meant to be serious as a heart attack.

Also, I did not say this to Howard but face it, no German opera is complete without crowds of people shouting "Heil" to something. It just has to be done. I mean, look at "The Magic Flute."

OK, time to put this all to bed. But it is not easy!

This morning I realized it was time to snap out of it so while I was drinking my coffee, I looked into this new memoir that came my way, by Katherine Weber, the granddaughter of Kay Swift, who had the long affair with George Gershwin.

And there "Meistersinger" was again!

I could not get away from it!

Apparently Gershwin went with Kay Swift to see "Die Meistersinger." The book said, "He was enamored of the score."

That is fascinating! It is fun to look at "Meistersinger" through Gershwin's eyes and wonder what he took away from it.

But it is time for me to stop thinking about this.