Gershwin Finds His Calling

Nine-year-old George Gershwin was playing ball outside New York’s Public School 25 when he discovered his passion for music.

Through an open window, he heard a violinist playing Antonin Dvorak’s “Humoresque.” The performer was a classmate of Gershwin’s — an eight-year-old prodigy named Maxie Rosenzweig, who was playing in a school program.

Years later, Gershwin described the music as “a flashing revelation of beauty.” He decided then and there to get acquainted with the violinist. He waited outside the school for an hour and a half, hoping to see him. “It was pouring cats and dogs,”

Gershwin recalled, “and I got soaked to the skin.” Somehow he had missed the young violinist. He found out where Maxie lived and trekked dripping wet to his house, where he introduced himself as an admirer. Maxie had already been home and left, but his parents were so amused that they arranged for Gershwin to meet him.

The two became best friends although their houses were a hundred blocks apart. Maxie introduced Gershwin to the music of the great composers and explained to him the elements of a musical composition. Gershwin began experimenting on the piano at a friend’s house on Seventh Street, trying to recreate familiar tunes with his right hand while improvising a harmonic background with his left. Then he tried making up his own tunes.

Two years later Gershwin’s mother bought a piano for his older brother Ira to play, but lra quickly gave up on the dry exercises that his teacher assigned, and from then on the piano belonged to George.