Porter writes engagingly, as an artisan, about the business of putting on a show. He writes minimally about his own creative process for the same upper-crust reason that he writes minimally about his suffering—only second-rate people go on and on about their inner lives. Analyzing is the same as complaining, and self-analysis is the twin of self-promotion.
Clues about his creativity shine through the workmanlike surface, though. Porter still wrote in a revue style where the characters were hardly worth dramatizing. In fact, Abe Burrows wrote a couple of deft, diplomatic letters asking Porter to please wait to write the songs until they knew what the story was.
The songs were the stories. He constructed songs so that each one is a drama in itself, with an allusive, erudite verse leading to a simpler storytelling refrain. A Waldorf salad! Cohan spoof , and that gift for creating idioms may be a clue to the quiddity of his genius. Porter is one of the three great lyricists of invented American speech, with only Chuck Berry in the fifties and Robert Hunter of the Grateful Dead in the seventies his equal in this respect.
Hart heard a world; Porter made one up—a New York of penthouses and night clubs and hangovers which still resonates as another kind of American myth. It gave him license to invent a vernacular. Perelman on an Aladdin musical for television. Before that, Porter is Astaire and elegance; after that, he swings and can become anything more. Yet Porter lives on in such recordings of single songs more than in the spasmodic revival of shows that often need heavy rewriting to exist onstage at all. His dramatic songs are all the dramatic revival we need.
All art aspires to the condition of music, Walter Pater wrote; within music itself, all music dreams of becoming another kind of music. Art songs dream of becoming pop songs and pop songs dream of becoming folk songs, too familiar to need an author. He was a volcanic talent—but the future of classical music cannot consist in waiting for another telegenic superstar.
By Alex Ross. Adam Gopnik , a staff writer, has been contributing to The New Yorker since Enter your e-mail address. The Boards. He preferred the piano, and was soon practicing for two hours every day. At age 11, he wrote a song that his mother helped him publish. While an undergrad at Yale University, Porter wrote the fight song "Bulldog," as well as other pieces for student productions; his output during these years totaled approximately songs.
As his grandfather didn't want him to have a career in music, Porter was dispatched to Harvard's law school. However, he soon switched to studying music though his grandfather was told he continued to be a law student. After his first musical, See America First , made an unsuccessful appearance on Broadway in , Porter went to France the next year. World War I was still in progress, and he sent home untrue reports that he had joined the French Foreign Legion.
Porter was actually participating in an active Parisian social life. In , he married Linda Lee Thomas, a widowed socialite. Porter's life with Thomas featured travel around Europe. Porter didn't depend on music for an income; in addition to his wife's money, he received financial support from his family.
However, he continued to create songs, with his numbers appearing in some London shows. The song was a hit, and the beginning of a successful Broadway career that reached new heights in the s. In , Porter was in a riding accident; his horse fell on top of him, crushing both of his legs. He was also an authentically talented creator of original melodies.
Like George Gershwin, he frequently disregarded the accepted formulas of the conventional popular song usually a rigid measure framework and turned out pieces of charm and distinction. Reprinted by permission of The Gale Group. Cole Porter Born: June 9, Main ad Learn More. Shop PBS.
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