Gershwin project english - Katharina Micada

How did sound the Gershwin songs in the 1920s and -30s, when they were written?

At this time in the USA, there wasn't yet jazz singing. The vocal style of stage singing was characterized by European music of the end of the 19th and early 20th century: Verisme (Puccini, Verdi), Late Romanesque (Mahler) and Impressionism (Debussy, Ravel).

Gerswhin wrote his songs (for women's voices) in high pitch. For example for Gertrude Lawrence, who in 1926 sang the lead role in his first musical "Oh, Kay!" Lawrence sang with charming ease, with a copious late-romantic gesture and with portamenti, as in Puccini. Recording with Gertrude Lawrence "Someone to watch over me" by George Gershwin

Helen Morgan was also an important singer at this time. She sang the leading role in the world premiere of the first musical play "Showboat" (Hammerstein / Kern, 1927). Recording with Helen Morgan "Maybe" by George Gershwin.

There were various reasons why women sang in such high pitch back then. On the one hand, a female voice in a high register simply came across better over an orchestra without amplification. On the other hand, when recorded using the recording technology of the 1920s, low voices sounded too dull, which is why high voices were particularly in demand for the shellac record market at the time, such as the tenor Enrico Caruso. Only with the further development of microphone technology in the 1930s did it become possible for women's and men's voices to sing in lower registers. They did this in dance music and film recordings. Since then, songs by Gershwin and other composers of his time have mainly been sung in a much lower register, the speed was sometimes reduced enormously and arrangements were made in the style of the time. This gave rise to a singing style that we now call jazz singing.

This project aims to free Gershwin's songs from the dust of the past decades and make them audible in their original freshness.

As a source, in addition to theoretical considerations served also gramophone recordings, which has been published shortly after the songs were written.