James Zehm wrote:

>In the piano concerto, anyway (Gershwin) didn't know what he was doing.

George Gershwin was certainly way over his head in attempting "serious"
music, as with the Concerto in F, but he certainly knew what he was
"trying" to do, if not "what" he was doing.  Gershwin came to writing the
concerto with a number of themes already in his head.  To set these themes
inside an orchestral context, he hired a full symphony orchestra to work
with him as he composed the work, attempting to integrate his material into
some kind of coherent form as he went along.  The result is a very episodic
piece of music, with not very consequential connective tissue, or sometimes
none at all.  At the same time, some of the music that Gershwin produced
from his themes in all of this "learning by doing" is s'wonderful.

John Dalmas
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