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I love the song Summertime and now that my teenaged daughter has also chosen this as her favorite song to perform I thought it would be fun to share some of the history behind the song.Gershwin wrote the song, from the Opera "Porgy and Bess" before he turned 35 years old. He had several sources for the lyrics, including the old folk song "All My Trials" from which he adapted the wordsHush lil baby, don yo cryHush lil baby, don yo cryYo mudder and fadder are born to die.He also borrowed from the novel,  Porgy, written by DuBose Heyward and his wife, Dorothy Heyward. He was a poet...

Why Do I
Compose for Electronic Instruments?

By Jerry Gerber

    Thirty years ago, when I was 18 years of age, I decided to devote my life to music composition and so began my commitment to this sublime art. The tools of my trade were paper, pencil, piano, metronome and, of course, my imagination.

    Today, however, my music studio
hosts a 24 channel mixing board, several synthesizers, two
digital samplers with numerous orchestral libraries on CD-ROM,
and a computer with software for a number of capabilities:
Sequencing music, digital audio recording, music education and CD
mastering. There is also a compact disc recorder, several signal
processors, a sound booth and microphone and my illegible
hieroglyphics are obsolete as I produce my scores with music
notation software. Though imagination is still the essence of
what I do, there are undeniably profound changes in the way I
approach my art. What has happened? Why am I doing it this way?

    In the past, the orchestral
composer, unlike the painter, poet or novelist, could not be the
sole interpreter of his own work. A score was labored over,
sometimes for years, with the result being a symbolic
representation of music, not the musical experience itself. To
transform this score into living music the composer would have
had to organize many musicians, sometimes up to 100 people or
more.

    Like many composers, I find it
difficult to get orchestras to take the time to learn, rehearse
and perform music written for today’s general public.
Approximately 85% of the music programmed by American orchestras
is composed by dead European composers. Where does that leave the
orchestra in regard to a living, creative musical culture? There
are economic, social and aesthetic reasons for this clinging to
the artistic past, and, frankly, at the risk of sounding like I
am betraying the "champions" of new music, I...