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50 free George Gershwin trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
George Gershwin left school at 15 to plug songs on Tin Pan Alley for $15 a week, and by 25 he had written Rhapsody in Blue in five weeks for a concert he had initially turned down. He wanted lessons from Ravel and Nadia Boulanger and was refused by both, on the grounds that classical training would ruin what made him Gershwin. He played tennis with Schoenberg, spent a summer on a South Carolina island writing an opera, and died of a brain tumor at 38 while scoring a Hollywood musical. These 50 questions follow that arc: the Brooklyn childhood and the piano bought for Ira, Swanee and Al Jolson, the Aeolian Hall premiere and the clarinet wail that began as a joke, the Broadway shows with Ira, An American in Paris and its taxi horns, Porgy and Bess from Boston try-out to the Houston Grand Opera revival and the 1959 film, and the final months in Beverly Hills. Easy questions cover the famous works; the expert tier asks about pseudonyms, piano rolls and the neurosurgeon fetched by Coast Guard cutter. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and comes with a short explanation. Play solo or print it for a music night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which song was the hit of Gershwin's 1935 opera Porgy and Bess?
Summertime
The lyric was written by the librettist rather than Ira, and the song has become one of the most recorded in the American songbook.
Q 02Rhapsody in Blue blends classical music with effects drawn from which genre?
Jazz
The piece is credited with defining the Jazz Age and inaugurating a new era in American concert music.
Q 03In which US state did Gershwin spend the summer of 1934 gathering material for his opera?
South Carolina
He was invited to Folly Island by the author of Porgy, and soaked up the local music before writing the opera.
Q 04In which year was George Gershwin born?
1898
He was born on September 26, 1898, two years after his brother Ira, and had no middle name.
Q 05In which New York borough was Gershwin born?
Brooklyn
The family lived at 242 Snediker Avenue in East New York, and moved constantly as his father changed businesses.
Q 06Which of Gershwin's brothers was his main lyricist?
Ira
Ira was the elder brother; younger brother Arthur also became a composer, and sister Frances was the first in the family to earn a living from music.
Q 07Which Broadway star heard Gershwin play 'Swanee' at a party and put it in his show?
Al Jolson
Jolson turned the 1919 song into Gershwin's first big national hit.
Q 08Which unusual instruments did Gershwin bring back from France for An American in Paris?
Taxi horns
The four horns were labelled A, B, C and D, which later caused decades of confusion about which pitches he actually wanted.
Q 09In which city is the opera Porgy and Bess set?
Charleston
Gershwin spent the summer of 1934 on nearby Folly Island soaking up the locale and its music.
Q 10How old was Gershwin when he died in 1937?
38
He collapsed while working on the score of The Goldwyn Follies and died two days later.
Q 11What caused Gershwin's death in July 1937?
A brain tumor
Doctors only suspected the tumor after he fell into a coma; a glioblastoma was removed hours before he died.
Q 12Which Woody Allen film has a soundtrack made entirely of Gershwin compositions?
Manhattan
The 1979 film opens with a monologue about a town that 'pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin'.
Q 13What job did 15-year-old Gershwin take on Tin Pan Alley after leaving school?
Song plugger
He demonstrated sheet music for Jerome H. Remick and Company, a Detroit publisher with a New York office.
Q 21In which city did Porgy and Bess have its world premiere in 1935?
Boston
The Colonial Theatre try-out ran four hours; Gershwin cut it heavily before the Alvin Theatre opening on Broadway ten days later.
Q 22Which Porgy and Bess song had lyrics by Ira rather than the librettist?
It Ain't Necessarily So
Most of the other lyrics came from the author of the original novel, who also wrote the libretto.
Q 23In which New York venue did An American in Paris premiere in December 1928?
Carnegie Hall
Gershwin disliked the conductor's dragging tempo so much that he walked out of a later matinee.
Q 14Which instrument plays the famous opening glissando of Rhapsody in Blue?
Clarinet
American Heritage called the wail as instantly recognisable as the opening of Beethoven's Fifth.
Q 15Gershwin went to Hollywood in 1936 to score a film starring which dance partners?
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
The RKO score runs over an hour and took him months to compose and orchestrate.
Q 16Which European capital inspired Gershwin's 1928 tone poem?
Paris
He wrote it to portray an American visitor strolling the city and absorbing its street noises.
Q 17Who orchestrated the original 1924 scoring of Rhapsody in Blue?
Ferde Grofé
Whiteman's arranger scored it in ten days and later produced the 1926 pit and 1942 symphonic versions too.
Q 18Which bandleader commissioned Rhapsody in Blue?
Paul Whiteman
He later adopted the piece as his theme and opened radio shows with 'Everything new but the Rhapsody in Blue.'
Q 19What was the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama?
Of Thee I Sing
The 1931 prize went to the writers and Ira; as composer, George was not part of the award.
Q 20Porgy and Bess was adapted from a 1925 novel by which author?
DuBose Heyward
He and his wife Dorothy first turned the novel into a play before Gershwin proposed an opera in 1926.
Q 24In which year did Gershwin write his Concerto in F?
1925
It followed Rhapsody in Blue by a year and was commissioned by Walter Damrosch of the New York Philharmonic.
Q 25Which Paris teacher told Gershwin 'What could I give you that you haven't already got?'
Nadia Boulanger
She gave the same answer to all her accomplished master students; Gershwin used the trip to finish his French tone poem instead.
Q 26Which future film star sang 'Embraceable You' in the 1930 musical that introduced it?
Ginger Rogers
Girl Crazy also introduced 'I Got Rhythm' in the same season.
Q 27Gershwin gave 'Strike Up the Band' to which university as a football fight song?
UCLA
The school later created the George and Ira Gershwin Lifetime Musical Achievement Award in thanks.
Q 28Gershwin's only Oscar nomination was for a song from which 1937 film?
Shall We Dance
The nominated song was 'They Can't Take That Away from Me'; the nomination came two months after he died.
Q 29Who was the first recipient of the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize in 2007?
Paul Simon
The prize honours a lifetime of popular songwriting in the spirit of George and Ira.
Q 30Who wrote the words to Gershwin's 1919 hit 'Swanee'?
Irving Caesar
It was Gershwin's first national hit and the subject of his own first recording, with the Fred Van Eps Trio.