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TLS, one page, 8.25 x 10.75, personal letterhead, May 16, 1935. Letter to Joseph Schillinger, his music teacher, about his progress on the opera Porgy and Bess. In full: "I've been wanting to write you for some time since I came back from Florida but so many things are happening that it's difficult to write a letter these days. I have finished the music for the opera and also the orchestrations of the first act and am now working on the second act scoring, but it goes slowly. Would like to see you one of these days and perhaps continue to take some lessons as I am planning to stay in New York all summer. I would like to clear up the amount outstanding on the organ loan and perhaps we could work this out in lessons. Am leaving town today and will be back Monday. I will call you then." In very good to fine condition, with a couple of short edge tears.
Joseph Schillinger, the recipient of this letter, was a composer and music teacher who collaborated with many of the era’s leading musicians, including Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and George Gershwin. From 1932 to around 1936, Gershwin frequently studied composition, music theory, and orchestration with Schillinger whenever his schedule permitted. Scholars still debate the extent of Schillinger’s influence on Porgy and Bess.
In Gershwin: His Life and Music, biographer Charles Schwartz observes: 'Even though the completed scores of all of Gershwin's orchestral pieces written after the Rhapsody…are in his hand, there is a good chance that they were orchestrated with some help…The orchestrated score for Porgy and Bess is a case in point. All three acts of the opera, beautifully written and well orchestrated, are in Gershwin's hand. Solely on the basis of the finished product one would assume that he had not been helped in any way. Yet there is evidence that he was aided in his orchestration by Joseph Schillinger. According to Vernon Duke, he and George, as well as Ira… all shared a house on Fire Island during the summer of 1935. All summer long, Duke claims, Gershwin saw Schillinger three times weekly for help in orchestrating the opera.'
Schwartz goes on to quote this exact letter, though he notes that 'though one might easily infer from this letter that Gershwin sought Schillinger's help in orchestrating Porgy and Bess, presumably the second and third acts of the opera if not the first act too, there is nothing in the finished score that would substantiate that inference…Schillinger himself, after Gershwin's death, alleged that he supervised the entire writing of the opera over a period of a year and a half…in defense of his brother and in answer to such a claim, Ira stated in 1944 that 'lessons like these…unquestionably broaden musical horizons, but the don't inspire an opera like Porgy.''
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