Notes for: July 26, 2005
Gershwin wrote this work in 1919, the year his first musical, La La Lucille, was produced on Broadway and ran 104 performances. In the preceding two years, in an effort to strengthen his musical skills, he had been studying harmony, counterpoint, orchestration and musical form with a Hungarian-American musician, Edward Kilenyi. He now wrote Lullaby for string quartet as a harmony exercise for Kilenyi.
In 1922, Gershwin used the piece’s opening theme as part of an aria, “Has Anyone Seen My Joe?”, in a one-act opera, Blue Monday. The opera was part of a show, George White’s Scandals, which was a failure and was withdrawn after a single performance. However, hearing the work persuaded Paul Whiteman to commission Gershwin to write a new work for an upcoming concert in New York City. That work turned out to be Rhapsody in Blue.
At Gershwin’s death, the Lullaby manuscript became the property of his brother Ira. Years later, Ira showed it to harmonic virtuoso Larry Adler, who transcribed it for harmonica and string quartet and presented it at the 1963 Edinburgh Festival. The work was finally premiered in its original form in October, 1967.