Colloquium: Mark Clague

The Hidden Structure of An American in Paris and George Gershwin’s Ambition for Artistic Respectability

Mark Clague
Professor of Musicology and American Culture, Executive Director of University Arts Initiative, University of Michigan

An American in Paris has been treated more often than not as a musical bon bon with a meaning so obvious and clear as to discourage sustained scholarly attention. Its new critical edition, however, brings important information to light that suggest the work has more to say about George Gershwin as both artist and entrepreneur. 

The new edition not only restores Gershwin’s original, more modernist orchestration and identifies the precise pitches of its iconic taxi horns, revealing the sound effect to be part of the work’s compositional argument, but it also explores Gershwin’s inventive thematic counterpoint and structural argument, previously obscured by the deletion of 112 bars from Gershwin’s holograph. This cut material suggests that Gershwin intended An American in Paris to be not simply a work of musical narrative, but a hybrid form that combined both program and absolute musics.

Using an overlooked 1920 interview with the young composer as a point of departure, this paper argues that George Gershwin’s tone poem An American in Paris is a musical manifesto—a self-conscious statement of his artistic ambition to write accessible and commercially viable music that was also musically sophisticated. It examines Gershwin’s first work for orchestra alone from three perspectives: as a compositional synthesis of program and absolute music, as a case study of Gershwin’s economic strategies, and as a window into the composer’s artistic philosophy. 

About Mark Clague

Mark Clague, Ph.D. serves as Professor of Musicology at the University of Michigan with affiliate appointments in American Culture, Afro-American Studies, and Arts Entrepreneurship and Leadership. His research centers on music’s role in forging community and driving social change in the United States and addresses topics from musical institutions to American patriotism. His book O Say Can You Hear?: A Cultural Biography of “The Star-Spangled Banner” (WW Norton, 2022) was selected as an Editor’s Pick by The New York Times, while his other books include The Memoirs of Alton Augustus Adams, Sr.: First Black Bandmaster of the United States Navy and the Star Spangled Songbook: A History in Sheet Music. His articles appear in journals including American Music, the Black Music Research Journal, Journal of the Society for American Music, Opera Quarterly, Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, and Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts, among others. His two editions of George Gershwin’s An American in Paris were recently published by Schott Music, while other critical editions include music by Alton Adams and Dudley Buck. Professor Clague serves as editor-in-chief of The George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition (Schott) as well as for Music of the United States of America (A-R Editions), a series of scholarly editions organized by the American Musicological Society. A proud 2003 graduate of the University of Chicago, he currently leads the University of Michigan’s campus-wide Arts Initiative. Born during his dissertation work, his daughter Hannah graduated from the University of Chicago in 2023.