An American in Paris
George Gershwin 

[1928]

In 1928, at the urging of Maurice Ravel, George Gershwin traveled to Paris to study composition with famed French pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. Boulanger insisted she had nothing new to teach him. Rather than return to New York City, Gershwin opted to remain in Paris for several months, turning the sights and sounds of the city into a new “tone poem for orchestra”: An American in Paris.

According to Gershwin, the work begins with a depiction of a stroll down the bustling Champs-Élysées, complete with the traffic sounds of the Place de la Concorde at rush hour. He used real Parisian taxi horns to achieve the effect; after visiting Gershwin in his Paris apartment, the pianist Mario Braggiotti recalled nearly twenty differently pitched taxi horns perched atop the piano; he had to find just the right combination!

Known as the “walking themes,” these light-hearted passages give way to the sight of the Seine River—perhaps recalling New York’s Hudson River—Gershwin described this as creating in the protagonist “a spasm of homesickness.” He suggested the wobbly violin solo connecting the two blues themes in this section displays the effect of too much “French wine.” The work ends with a return to the initial “walking themes,” depicting the swarming city streets as a cure to the American homesickness. As Gershwin said of the ending, “Home is swell! But after all, this is Paris—so let’s go!”

Piccolo, three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, celesta, strings