How Gershwin captured the not-so-simple essence of summer in a lullaby

GWEN IFILL:

Finally tonight, on this the last day of summer, we put away our white shoes, straw bags and sunglasses to say goodbye.

Jeffrey Brown caught up with composer and musician Rob Kapilow recently at the Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia, to deconstruct the iconic Gershwin song "Summertime."

JEFFREY BROWN:

Summertime, and the living is easy, except we know it isn't somehow, right?

ROB KAPILOW, Composer:

One of the things that's great is Aaron Copland, when he talked about Martha Graham, who did the choreography for "Appalachian Spring," he said about her that she is seemingly, but only seemingly, simple.

And the same thing's true with Gershwin. It is seemingly, but only seemingly, simple. This is supposed to be just a simple lullaby, but, in fact, there's craft everywhere. Take even the beginning of this piece.

I mean, everybody knows this piece as just starting with just one bar of introduction, because normally we just sing it as a song. And the voice already comes in, and you barely even notice that there was an introduction.

JEFFREY BROWN:

Yes.

ROB KAPILOW:

But, in the opera, there's eight fantastic measures before this that transition us into the world of Catfish Row in a fantastic way, and one note makes all the difference.

JEFFREY BROWN:

Musically, but one note is the key?

ROB KAPILOW:

One note is the key.

I mean, you hear this little figure that starts and ends on the same note. You hear it one more time down low. Everyone expects this. He changes only the last note. That one note brings us into the world of Catfish Row. It's amazing, the power of a single note.

JEFFREY BROWN:

The music changes, the landscape changes, and the mood changes.

ROB KAPILOW:

One of the central requirements for any great Broadway composer is the ability to create atmosphere in an instant.

(MUSIC)

ROB KAPILOW:

Becomes…

(MUSIC)

ROB KAPILOW:

We're in Catfish Row.

JEFFREY BROWN:

And then the song begins and becomes a lullaby, yes.

ROB KAPILOW:

It's just a lullaby. But it is a lullaby in a place.

And the way he establishes that place is so beautiful and economical. We have got Catfish Row. Then she's supposed to be rocking her baby back and forth.

JEFFREY BROWN:

Right.

ROB KAPILOW:

So he does it with two notes, rock left, rock right, and add bells in the middle, left, right, right. Now we put chords around it. Those two notes become part of rocking chords.

JEFFREY BROWN:

Of course, this is the — this is what the song is about too, right? Summertime, the living is easy. But we're watching people for whom it's not easy.

ROB KAPILOW:

The living is anything but easy.

JEFFREY BROWN:

Yes.

ROB KAPILOW:

But in Gershwin's imagination, somehow, it wasn't easy, but it was filled with all the things that make community great.

Now, he could easily have written a short note on time, and there would have been no summertime. It could have sounded like this.

(singing):

Summertime, and the living is easy.

JEFFREY BROWN:

Right.

ROB KAPILOW:

But watch that one long note on time totally takes you into the world of it, summertime. That one long note…

JEFFREY BROWN:

Slows everything down.

ROB KAPILOW:

Slows everything down. And then here.

(CROSSTALK)

JEFFREY BROWN:

That's the languor you were talking about.

ROB KAPILOW:

That's the languor in one note.

Then he could have done:

(singing):

And the living is easy.

But it’s:

(singing):

Easy.

The lengthening of those few notes totally makes Catfish Row come alive for us.

JEFFREY BROWN:

It's the trick of the composer, right? I mean, not trick in a pejorative sense, but…

ROB KAPILOW:

It's artless art. It's art that hides its art. It just sounds like a simple lullaby, but there's so much art going on.

In fact, everywhere you look, take what comes next. Then he has fish are jumping. Well, how do you make fish jump? That one little short note, and the fish are jumping right in front of your eyes. And then even the accompaniment, he could have just written this. But listen to these wonderful slithery chords in between. Only Gershwin would have done that.

It's also amazing how much he took from those black spirituals he heard down in South Carolina.

JEFFREY BROWN:

In fact, this is a Northerner, it's a Jewish composer looking at the South, at a black community in South Carolina.

ROB KAPILOW:

Yes. It's, in fact, two white guys speaking for the black community.

And, in fact, there was an enormous amount of controversy when this piece came out about it. In fact, Virgil Thompson, the music critic of The Times, said in a very provocative way, who is George Gershwin to be speaking for this community that could speak for themselves?

And I think there's certainly a valid point there. But I think what's wonderful about it is, he sort of took the world that he went and saw there and translated it to the best of his abilities into his own language.

JEFFREY BROWN:

He used some of the music from there…

ROB KAPILOW:

Well, actually, he was very specific about saying he didn't want the use anyone else's spirituals. He wanted to invent his own.

Even the street vendor cries that he used, he wanted to write his own. So, he was very particular saying that even though he was influenced by it, he wanted nothing in there to actually be a quotation. So, even when he uses blues notes like:

(MUSIC)

ROB KAPILOW:

Believe me, that chord is not a chord that you ever heard in the blues down there.

JEFFREY BROWN:

That's his version of the blues, yes.

ROB KAPILOW:

That's his version.

And I think that's what a great artist does. He takes what's out there in front of him, but he translates it ultimately into his own language. And that's the difference between influence and imitation.

I think of Gershwin, there was this belief that he could create an imaginary world that would be authentic to his imagination, if not to the reality of Charleston, South Carolina.

JEFFREY BROWN:

All right, "Summertime," a great song to get us through the winter, right?

ROB KAPILOW:

Absolutely.

JEFFREY BROWN:

Rob Kapilow.

ROB KAPILOW:

Thanks so much for having me.

JEFFREY BROWN:

Thanks so much.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

Another way to think about "Summertime."