Too Busy for Heartbreak

A Journey to Greatness: The Life and Music of George Gershwin, by David Ewen. 384 pp. New York: Henry Holt and Company. $5.00

Before 1922, the words “American music” were more a courtesy than a reality. There were American-born composers, but they were either tunesmiths pure and simple, like Stephen Foster and Irving Berlin; or like Cadman and MacDowell they were still too overwhelmed by European tradition to write anything independently American in spirit or style. Of course, as we know now, there was an insurance executive named Charles Ives, who was writing some of the most original music of the century in his spare time; but none of it was being heard.

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Robert Phelps

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A Journey to Greatness: The Life and Music of George Gershwin, by David Ewen. 384 pp. New York: Henry Holt and Company. $5.00

Before 1922, the words “American music” were more a courtesy than a reality. There were American-born composers, but they were either tunesmiths pure and simple, like Stephen Foster and Irving Berlin; or like Cadman and MacDowell they were still too overwhelmed by European tradition to write anything independently American in spirit or style. Of course, as we know now, there was an insurance executive named Charles Ives, who was writing some of the most original music of the century in his spare time; but none of it was being heard.