Empathy

George Gershwin, one of the greatest 20th Century composers, discovered that to be truly human you must “feel” yourself into the life of others, you must share their humanity with your own.

Oscar Levant once asked Gershwin, “Tell me, George, if you had it to do over, would you fall in love with yourself again?” In that sort of mood, Gershwin composed the light and airy jazz for which he became famous and wealthy—”Rhapsody in Blue,” “Concerto in F,” “American in Paris.”

But, at a party in his honor, one of the speakers pointed out that an important element was missing from Gershwin’s music: “The legacy of sorrow.”

“George, you never have experienced the note that springs from the deepest stirrings of the human race,” the speaker said. “You have never experienced the suffering in which the music of the really great composers is seeded. The long drip of human tears, my dear George . . . they fertilize the deepest roots of art.”

Gershwin…