143/365 Songs: Summertime – Porgy and Bess
I hope I’m not tempting fate by playing this song too early in the summer! This weekend we’ve had beautiful weather and it really feels like summer has arrived. I’ve recorded Gershwin’s Summertime from the musical Porgy and Bess, written in 1936 and, as I’ve just found out today, based on a Ukrainian folk melody which Gershwin had heard in New York!
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Really appreciate the relaxing music. With school, its nice and soothing to escape for about 5 minutes
Your parents must be so proud of you – all the talents that you are using to bless others.
I really enjoy your music, especially the Gershwin songs and other standards. I am so glad you share your gift with others. Thanks again!
Hallo Mark,
Summertime based on the Ukrainian song ‘A dream passes the window’ ? Well, they’re vaguely similar but no more so than dozens of others. Gershwin may have heard the Ukrainian song performed by a visiting Ukrainian group in NY in 1926 but he didn’t write Summertime until 1933, and he wrote it to fit Heyward’s existing words.
Gershwin’s much more likely to have borrowed from what he heard in Charleston where he deliberately went while working on Porgy & Bess to absorb the local music.
But he was quite capable of inventing wonderful melodies himself, a true original in American music !