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Clarifications on Last Month's Porgy and Bess Article

Apr. 01, 2006

We would like to take a moment to clarify two items of “Gershwin's Porgy and Bess Restored to Original Production Form by the Nashville Symphony Orchestra” from last month’s News and Notes.

The first issue concerns the following excerpt:

Until February 24, when the Nashville Symphony Orchestra conducted by John Mauceri performed Porgy and Bess, over seventy years had passed since the work had been performed according to Gershwin’s revised specifications. In fact, the composer never saw any other version.

Some took issue with the assertion “the composer never saw any other version.” In fact, Gershwin had seen the unedited manuscript version during a prior tryout run in Boston. The issue becomes a question of semantics: the Boston tryout run indeed necessitated that performances were given, but, as the later first performance in New York was deemed the world premiere, the Boston trial run can be seen as part of the process of composition, not a representation of the final version Gershwin had trimmed and edited for the stage.

Secondly, we would like to acknowledge the work of Scott Dunn in the task of reviving the original production form of Porgy and Bess. We had written:

Under the scrutiny of John Mauceri, Charles Hamm, Wayne Shirley, and others, the scores used in the original production were exhaustively analyzed to properly represent Gershwin’s intentions.

Scott Dunn comprises the “others” and should have been duly credited. We would like to acknowledge the restoration work as follows:

Porgy and Bess Original 1935 Performing Edition
Restored by John Mauceri
with the assistance of Wayne Shirley, Charles Hamm and Scott Dunn

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