He begged the world's greatest teachers to train him. They refused. Then he created a masterpiece that proved they were right to say no.
Paris, spring of 1928.
George Gershwin sat in a café, twenty-nine years old and already famous beyond measure. Four years earlier, he had composed Rhapsody in Blue—a piece that exploded across America like nothing before it. Broadway producers fought for his music. Concert halls sold out when his name appeared. Wealth and acclaim surrounded him.
Yet inside, he felt hollow.
Because despite writing some of the most celebrated American music ever created, Gershwin had never received the training that "serious" composers possessed. No conservatory degree. No European education. Just piano lessons as a teenager and some composition study with teachers in New York.
He was a song plugger from Tin Pan Alley who wrote catchy tunes that happened to sound sophisticated. That's what he feared critics whispered. Worse—that's what he sometimes believed about himself.
So Gershwin came to Paris with a desperate plan: study with the masters. Gain the classical credentials he lacked. Transform himself into a legitimate composer.
He sought out Nadia Boulanger—the most influential composition teacher alive. She had trained Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson. Future legends like Philip Glass and Quincy Jones would study under her. If anyone could grant Gershwin the validation he craved, it was Boulanger.
He asked if she would accept him as a student.
She refused.
Not because he lacked talent. Not because of his age or his success or his American background.
She refused because she believed formal classical training would destroy what made him extraordinary.
Boulanger saw his jazz-infused melodies, his ability to blur the line between art and entertainment, his gift for writing music that moved both scholars and everyday listeners. That fusion was his genius. Rigorous classical training might teach him the rules—and in learning them, he might lose the courage to break them.
She wouldn't teach him because teaching him might ruin him.
Gershwin was devastated. He had crossed the ocean seeking the approval of European classical music's gatekeepers. Instead, he'd been told his lack of formal training was actually his strength.
Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps he needed to find someone else.
He approached Maurice Ravel—composer of Boléro, master of orchestration, one of the greatest living musicians in the world.
Gershwin made his request. Ravel listened thoughtfully, then asked an unexpected question:
"How much do you earn in a year?"
Confused, Gershwin answered honestly: around $250,000—an astronomical sum in 1928, equivalent to roughly $4 million today.
Ravel smiled.
"Then I should be studying with you."
Then came the words that would echo through music history: "Why become a second-rate Ravel when you're already a first-rate Gershwin?"
Two rejections. Two masters refusing him. Both delivering the same message: What you have cannot be taught. Don't let anyone, including us, change it.
Gershwin returned to his Parisian apartment, probably confused, probably still doubting himself, probably wondering if they were simply being kind.
Then he started writing.
He composed An American in Paris—a symphonic poem that opens with the rhythm of footsteps, an American wandering through French streets. He incorporated actual Parisian taxi horns into the score. Blues melodies expressed homesickness. Jazz rhythms danced through classical orchestration. Popular music sensibility merged with sophisticated composition.
It was everything he was. Everything those teachers told him not to suppress with formal training.
The piece premiered in New York on December 13, 1928, conducted by Walter Damrosch. Audiences erupted. Critics celebrated it. It became one of the most performed American orchestral works of the twentieth century.
Gershwin had been rejected by Europe's classical establishment.
In response, he composed a masterpiece that validated their rejection.
Because what made George Gershwin irreplaceable couldn't be learned in any conservatory.
He had grown up as Jacob Gershwine, born September 26, 1898, to Russian Jewish immigrants in New York City. At fifteen, he became a song plugger in Tin Pan Alley, playing piano in music stores to demonstrate new songs. He absorbed everything—jazz, ragtime, blues, classical pieces, popular songs. He learned harmony by feeling how chords moved, not by memorizing textbook rules.
At twenty-five, he composed Rhapsody in Blue in barely five weeks. It premiered February 12, 1924, and instantly became iconic. Was it jazz? Classical? Popular music? All of those. None of those. Something entirely new.
That's why teaching Gershwin was dangerous. His genius lay in ignoring the walls between "serious" and "popular," between jazz and classical, between art and entertainment.
Formal training would have taught him to respect those boundaries. Would have made him self-conscious about crossing them.
Boulanger and Ravel understood: his lack of credentials wasn't a weakness. It was his superpower.
After An American in Paris, Gershwin composed Porgy and Bess with his brother Ira and author DuBose Heyward—an opera blending jazz, blues, spirituals, and classical traditions. Critics initially dismissed it as neither opera nor musical theater.
Today it's recognized as one of America's most important operas. "Summertime" became one of the most recorded songs in history.
In 1936, Gershwin moved to Hollywood, composing film scores at the height of his creative powers.
Then in early 1937, headaches began. Behavioral changes. Memory problems. Coordination difficulties.
Doctors found nothing. Some suggested psychological causes.
On July 9, 1937, he collapsed. They discovered a brain tumor—glioblastoma, advanced and inoperable.
George Gershwin died July 11, 1937. He was thirty-eight years old.
In just fourteen years—from Rhapsody in Blue to his death—he created an enduring American musical legacy. Countless Broadway shows, film scores, concert works, standards still performed worldwide.
He did all of this without the formal training he thought he needed.
Because Boulanger and Ravel were right: classical training would have taught him the rules. And Gershwin's genius was breaking them without knowing they existed.
When Gershwin approached those masters in Paris, insecure about his credentials, seeking validation from European musical tradition, he was asking the wrong question.
He asked: "Can you teach me to be legitimate?"
They answered: "You already are. Don't let anyone—including us—change that."
The rejection was the greatest gift he ever received.
It forced him to stop seeking external approval and trust his own voice.
The result was An American in Paris. Porgy and Bess. Everything else he created in his final nine years.
George Gershwin died tragically young. We'll never know what he might have composed with another thirty or forty years.
But we know what he composed in thirty-eight years.
And it's more than enough.
He didn't become a second-rate anyone.
He was a first-rate Gershwin.
And the world is richer for it.
On the tribulations of an expatriate in Europe
Thursday, February 05, 2026
George Gershwin didn't need a degree to be great
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