Sonic Asymmetry

George Gershwin: “Porgy and Bess”

ジョージガーシュイン：「ポーギーとベス」

TIME COMMITMENT: 22 minutes

The composer’s dedication to kinetic leitmotifs is subverted here with the nonchalance of the continent’s heatwaves.  Gershwin incorporates extemporization, ragtime and jazzy phrasing on an orchestral scale but delivers this ratatouille with an emphatically theatrical lethargy.

The classic ballad celebrates warmer days and is reprised in the second video by Kronos Quartet (from the 9^th minute).  Alas, their strident statement makes use of a distinctively Texan vocabulary, extinguished by heroin overdose in 1970.

MUSIC

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porgy_and_Bess

A REFLECTION

The wild bee reels from bough to bough

With his furry coat and his gauzy wing.

Now in a lily-cup, and now

Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,

In his wandering;

Sit closer love: it was here I trow

I made that vow.

Oscar Wilde: “Her Voice”