![[GERSHWIN, George]. GOLDBERG, Ira. George Gershwin: A Study in American Music. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1931.](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2001/NYR/2001_NYR_09806_0126_000(034556).jpg?w=1)
Details
[GERSHWIN, George]. GOLDBERG, Ira. George Gershwin: A Study in American Music. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1931.
8o. Endpages featuring a photograph of Gershwin's Stadium Concert (26 May 1929), frontispiece reproduction of a self-portrait by the composer. Original publisher's blue cloth. Spine and extremities rubbed. FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST MONOGRAPH ON GERSHWIN, based on interviews and original sources, treating him as a serious composer, analyzing his compositions and defending his work within the jazz idiom. PRESENTATION COPY, inscribed by Gershwin in ink on blank recto of frontispiece "For Ruth From one artist? To another George Gershwin," with a large self-portrait above by Gershwin, drawn in fountain-pen ink.
An interesting association copy. The book, inscribed and with a self-portrait, was George's gift to Ruth Cugat, an artist, the wife of Cordal Cugat. The latter was a brother of the famed Cuban-American band-leader Xavier Cugat, a violinist who founded a Latin orchestra at the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles. It was the Cugat orchestra which was largely responsible for the Rhumba boom in the early 1930s. George apparently knew Ruth and Cordal from their association with the Westport, Connecticut art scene and may have known Xavier in Hollywood.
8o. Endpages featuring a photograph of Gershwin's Stadium Concert (26 May 1929), frontispiece reproduction of a self-portrait by the composer. Original publisher's blue cloth. Spine and extremities rubbed. FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST MONOGRAPH ON GERSHWIN, based on interviews and original sources, treating him as a serious composer, analyzing his compositions and defending his work within the jazz idiom. PRESENTATION COPY, inscribed by Gershwin in ink on blank recto of frontispiece "For Ruth From one artist? To another George Gershwin," with a large self-portrait above by Gershwin, drawn in fountain-pen ink.
An interesting association copy. The book, inscribed and with a self-portrait, was George's gift to Ruth Cugat, an artist, the wife of Cordal Cugat. The latter was a brother of the famed Cuban-American band-leader Xavier Cugat, a violinist who founded a Latin orchestra at the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles. It was the Cugat orchestra which was largely responsible for the Rhumba boom in the early 1930s. George apparently knew Ruth and Cordal from their association with the Westport, Connecticut art scene and may have known Xavier in Hollywood.