Editing Vernon Duke

{{Short description|Russian-American composer and songwriter (1903–1969)}}
{{more citations needed|date=August 2015}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=April 2025}}
{{Infobox musical artist  <!-- See Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians -->
| name                = Vernon Duke
| image               = Vernon Duke.jpg
| caption             = Duke in 1937
| image_size          = <!-- Only for images narrower than 220 pixels -->
| background          = non_performing_personnel
| birth_name          = Vladimir Aleksandrovich Dukelsky 
| birth_date          = {{birth date|1903|10|10|df=yes}}
| birth_place         = [[Pskov Governorate]], [[Russian Empire]] 
| death_date          = {{death date and age|1969|01|16|1903|10|27|df=yes}}
| death_place         = [[Santa Monica, California]], United States
| genre               = [[Broadway theater|Broadway]] [[Musical theatre|musicals]], [[Classical music|Classical]]
| occupation          = [[Songwriter]], [[composer]]
| years_active        =
}}

'''Vernon Duke''' ({{OldStyleDate|10 October|1903|27 September}}{{spaced ndash}} 16 January 1969)<ref name="LarkinGE">{{cite book|title=[[Encyclopedia of Popular Music|The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music]]|editor=[[Colin Larkin (writer)|Colin Larkin]]|publisher=[[Guinness Publishing]]|date=1992|edition=First|isbn=0-85112-939-0|page=743}}</ref> was a Russian-born American [[composer]] and [[songwriter]] who also wrote under his birth name, '''Vladimir Dukelsky'''. He is best known for "[[Taking a Chance on Love]]," with lyrics by [[Ted Fetter]] and [[John La Touche (musician)|John Latouche]] (1940), "[[I Can't Get Started]]," with lyrics by [[Ira Gershwin]] (1936), "[[April in Paris (song)|April in Paris]]," with lyrics by [[Yip Harburg|E. Y. ("Yip") Harburg]] (1932), and "What Is There To Say," for the ''[[Ziegfeld Follies]]'' of 1934, also with Harburg. He wrote the words and music for "[[Autumn in New York (song)|Autumn in New York]]" (1934) for the revue ''[[Thumbs Up! (musical)|Thumbs Up!]]'' In his book, ''American Popular Song, The Great Innovators 1900-1950'', composer [[Alec Wilder]] praises this song, writing, “The verse may be the most ambitious I’ve ever seen."  Duke also collaborated with lyricists [[Johnny Mercer]], [[Ogden Nash]], and [[Sammy Cahn]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.boosey.com/pages/cr/composer/composer_main.asp?composerid=3244&|title=Vernon Duke Snapshot|publisher=Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.|access-date=13 August 2008}}</ref>

==Early life==
'''Vladimir Aleksandrovich Dukelsky''' ([[Russian language|Russian]]: Владимир Александрович Дукельский) was born in 1903 into a [[Belarusians|Belarusian]]<ref>[[Vyacheslav Ivanov (philologist)|V. V. Ivanov]], [[Mikhail Gasparov|Gasparov M.]] (eds.) Музыка и незвучащее. Moscow: Nauka, 2000. ISBN 9785020115934. P. 219.</ref> noble family in the village of Parfyanovka, [[Pskov Governorate]], [[Russian Empire]].<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HXILEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT276|title = The Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music and Musicians|isbn = 9780674255722|last1 = Randel|first1 = Don Michael|date = 30 October 2002| publisher=Harvard University Press }}</ref><ref name="LarkinGE"/><ref>According to another source, his birthplace was a small railroad station in [[Minsk Governorate]]. At the time, his mother "happened to be traveling by train". See: Vernon Duke. ''Passport to Paris'', Boston-Toronto: Little, Brown and Co., 1955, p. 6.</ref>  His family was of the [[szlachta|small gentry class]]; the 1954 ''[[Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians]]'' referred to his paternal grandmother, née Princess [[Tumanishvili]], as having been "directly descended from the [[kings of Georgia]]". According to Duke, his mother also had some [[Austrians|Austrian]] and [[Spain|Spanish]] ancestry. The ''[[Jewish Standard]]'' lists him among [[Jewish]] musicians, for reasons unknown;<ref>{{cite web|title=How Many Famous Jewish Composers Can You Name? |url=https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com|website=Jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com}}</ref> composer Jack Gottlieb denies this claim.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_VqNbDvC5XgC&pg=PA221|title = Funny, It Doesn't Sound Jewish: How Yiddish Songs and Synagogue Melodies Influenced Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood|isbn = 9780791485026|last1 = Gottlieb|first1 = Jack|date = February 2012| publisher=State University of New York Press }}</ref>

The Dukelskys resided in [[Kiev]], and Vladimir's only visit to [[Saint Petersburg]] and [[Moscow]] occurred in the summer of 1915. The impressions of that summer were later echoed in Dukelsky's [[oratorio]] ''The End of St. Petersburg'' (1931–37).{{citation needed|date=August 2015}} The title is a reference to the film [[The End of St. Petersburg]], directed by [[Vsevolod Pudovkin]].

At the age of eleven, Dukelsky was admitted to the [[Kiev Conservatory]],<ref name="LarkinGE"/> where he studied [[composer|composition]] with [[Reinhold Glière]] and [[musical theory]] with [[Boleslav Yavorsky]]. In 1919, his family escaped from the turmoil of [[Russian Civil War|civil war]] in Russia and spent a year and a half with other refugees in [[Constantinople]]. In 1921, they obtained American visas and sailed steerage class on the SS ''King Alexander'' to [[New York City|New York]].

He underwent his immigration inspection at [[Ellis Island]]. On the passenger list, the [[purser]] of the ''King Alexander'' recorded his name as ''Vladimir Doukelsky,'' in the [[France|French]] fashion. In 1922 in New York, [[George Gershwin]] befriended the young immigrant. Gershwin (born Jacob Gershwine) suggested that Dukelsky truncate and Americanize his surname, taking Vernon as his given name. Dukelsky's first songs published under his [[pen name]] were conceived that year, but he continued to write classical music and Russian [[poetry]] under his birth name until 1955.<ref name="LarkinGE"/>

==Career==
In 1924, Dukelsky returned to Europe. In [[Paris]], he received a [[commission (art)|commission]] from [[Sergei Diaghilev|Serge Diaghilev]] to compose a [[ballet]].<ref name="LarkinGE"/> Dukelsky's first theatrical production, ''Zephyr and Flora'', was staged in the 1925 season of [[Ballets Russes]], with [[choreography]] by [[Léonide Massine]] and [[scenography]] by [[Georges Braque]], to great critical acclaim. In a review of musical novelties of the season, [[Sergei Prokofiev]] described it as full of "superior melodies, very well designed, harmonically beautiful and not too 'modernist'."{{citation needed|date=August 2021}} Prokofiev was as impressed with the young talent as Diaghilev was, and soon the composers became close friends. They frequently saw each other until Prokofiev returned to the [[Soviet Union]] in 1938; they continued to correspond until 1946. Dukelsky's First Symphony was premiered by [[Sergei Koussevitzky|Serge Koussevitzky]] and his orchestra in 1928 in Paris on the same bill as excerpts from Prokofiev's ''[[The Fiery Angel (opera)|The Fiery Angel]]''. Some of Dukelsky's and Prokofiev's compositions of the 1930s bear evidence of their musical dialogue.{{citation needed |date= September 2022}}

In the late 1920s, Dukelsky divided his time between Paris, where his more classical works were performed, and [[London]], where he composed numbers for musical comedies under his pen name Vernon Duke.<ref name="LarkinGE"/> In 1929, he returned to the United States with the intention of settling in the country permanently.<ref name="LarkinGE"/> He composed and published much serious music, but devoted greater efforts to establishing himself on [[Broadway theatre|Broadway]]. Duke's songs "[[April in Paris (song)|April in Paris]]" (1932), "[[Autumn in New York (song)|Autumn in New York]]" (1934), "I Like the Likes of You" (1934), "Water Under the Bridge" (1934), and "[[I Can't Get Started]]" (1936) were 1930s hits.<ref name="LarkinGE"/>

The support and devotion of Serge Koussevitzky, who published Dukelsky's [[chamber music]] and conducted his orchestral scores, helped him develop his classical works. Dukelsky's [[concerto]] for [[piano]], orchestra, and [[soprano]] [[obbligato]], titled ''Dédicaces'' (1935–1937), was premièred by Koussevitzky and the [[Boston Symphony Orchestra]] in January 1939 in New York. His oratorio, ''The End of St. Petersburg'', was premiered a year earlier by [[MacDowell Club#MacDowell Chorus|Schola Cantorum]] and the [[New York Philharmonic]] under [[Hugh Ross (musician)|Hugh Ross]]. In 1937, the composer was asked to complete Gershwin's last score, a [[Film score|soundtrack]] to a [[Technicolor]] extravaganza ''[[The Goldwyn Follies]]'', to which he contributed two [[parody]] ballets choreographed by [[George Balanchine]], and the song "Spring Again". In 1939, Dukelsky became an American citizen and took Vernon Duke as his legal name. Duke's greatest success came a year later, with the Broadway musical ''Cabin in the Sky'' (1940), choreographed by [[George Balanchine]] and performed by an [[African American|all-black]] cast at the [[Martin Beck Theater]] in New York.<ref name="LarkinGE"/>

===Military service===
Between 1942 and 1944, he served in the [[United States Coast Guard|US Coast Guard]]. While in service, he discovered [[Sid Caesar]], a [[saxophone]] player in the Coast Guard Band, and wrote a touring show for the Coast Guard called ''[[Tars & Spars]]''. He also conceived some of his finest music in the classical tradition, including a Cello Concerto (commissioned by [[Gregor Piatigorsky]]) and a Violin Concerto.

===Third Symphony===
His Third Symphony (1946) was dedicated to the memory of Koussevitzky's wife, Natalie. Over the years, Serge and Natalie Koussevitzky, Dukelsky's devoted supporters, had become his surrogate family. When Dukelsky's mother died, in 1942, the composer took the conductor's refusal to commission the work with great bitterness. The dedication was revoked and the relationship soured.

In 1946, Duke left the United States for France, where he continued his double career of being a classical composer and a songwriter (now setting to music the texts of French lyricists).<ref name="LarkinGE"/> By 1948, the composer was back in America. He moved from New York to [[California]], where he spent his last decades writing songs, film and theater scores, chamber music, poetry in Russian and polemical articles and memoirs in English.<ref name="LarkinGE"/> On October 30, 1957, he married singer Kay McCracken. His final appearance on Broadway came less than two weeks later with the two songs and incidental music he wrote for the [[Helen Hayes]] show, [[Jean Anouilh]]'s ''Time Remembered'' (1940) (French title: ''[[Léocadia]]'') which ran for 247 performances. He continued to try to mount Broadway musicals during the last decade of his life, including two shows that closed during tryouts, and one that was never produced.

===Later works===
As a classical composer, Dukelsky used the same musical language as his modernist contemporaries [[Sergei Prokofiev]], [[Arthur Lourié]], and, to a lesser extent, [[Igor Stravinsky]]. His harmonies, however, were highly original. As a songwriter and author of theatrical and film music, his work was close to [[George Gershwin|that of George Gershwin]] and [[Harold Arlen]], but he developed an idiosyncratic voice of his own.

==Death==
Duke died in [[Santa Monica, California]] on 16 January 1969,<ref name="LarkinGE"/> during surgery for [[lung cancer]]. His numerous papers—musical and literary manuscripts and correspondence in English, French, and Russian—are stored in the Musical Division of the [[Library of Congress]].

==Works==
{{Div col}}

===As Vladimir Dukelsky===
* ''Zéphyr et Flore'' 1925; Ode ''Epitaphe'' 1931 poems by [[Osip Mandelstam]] in memorial to Diaghilev. Sung in Russian Ilma Achmadeeva (soprano), Netherlands Theatre Choir, [[Residentie Orchestra|Residentie Orchestra of the Hague]]. [[Gennady Rozhdestvensky]] Chandos. 1999
* ''Cello Concerto''  1946; Samuel Magill, Cello. ''Piano Concerto''  Orchestrated by Scott Dunn. Scott Dunn, Piano. Dmitri Yablonsky, Conductor. Russian Philharmonic. Naxos. 2007

===As Vernon Duke===
*1931 – ''[[Tarnished Lady]]''
*1932 – ''[[Walk A Little Faster]]'' (lyrics by [[E.Y. "Yip" Harburg]])
** "[[April in Paris (song)|April in Paris]]"
** "A Penny for Your Thoughts"
** "Off Again, On Again"
** "Speaking of Love"
** "Where Have We Met Before?"
*1934 – ''[[Ziegfeld Follies]] of 1934'' (music also by others – Duke lyrics by [[E.Y. Harburg]])
** "I Like the Likes of You"
** "What Is There To Say?"
*1934 – ''[[Thumbs Up! (musical)|Thumbs Up!]]'' (music also by others – Duke lyrics by Vernon Duke)
** "[[Autumn in New York (song)|Autumn in New York]]"
** "Words Without Music" (lyrics by Ira Gershwin)
*1936 – ''[[Ziegfeld Follies]] of 1936'' (lyrics by [[Ira Gershwin]])
** "[[I Can't Get Started]]"
** "He Hasn't a Thing Except Me"
** "Words Without Music"
** "Island in the West Indies"
*1938 – ''[[Spring Again]]'' (lyrics by [[Ira Gershwin]])
*1940 – ''[[Cabin in the Sky (play)|Cabin in the Sky]]'' (lyrics by [[John La Touche (musician)|John Latouche]])
** "[[Taking a Chance on Love]]"
** "Cabin in the Sky"
** "Honey in the Honeycomb"
** "Love Me Tomorrow"
*1941 – ''[[Banjo Eyes]]'' (lyrics by [[John La Touche (musician)|John Latouche]] and [[Harold Adamson]])
** "We're Having a Baby"
** "Who Started the Rhumba?"
** "A Nickel to My Name"
*1942 – ''[[The Lady Comes Across]]'' (lyrics by [[John La Touche (musician)|John Latouche]])
** "Summer Is A-Commin' In"
** "You Took Me By Surprise"
** "This Is Where I Came In"
** "Lady"
*1944 – ''[[Jackpot (musical)|Jackpot]]'' (lyrics by [[Howard Dietz]])
** "What Happened"
** "Sugarfoot"
** "I've Got a One-Track Mind"
** "I Kissed My Girl Goodbye"
*1944 – ''[[Sadie Thompson (musical)|Sadie Thompson]]'' (lyrics by [[Howard Dietz]])
** "The Love I Long For"
** "Poor as a Church Mouse"
** "When You Live on an Island"
*1946 – ''[[Sweet Bye and Bye (musical)|Sweet Bye and Bye]]'' (lyrics by [[Ogden Nash]]; book by [[S. J. Perelman]] and [[Al Hirschfeld]])
*1949 – "Ogden Nash's Musical Zoo", for voice and piano
*1952 – ''[[Two's Company (musical)|Two's Company]]'' (lyrics by [[Ogden Nash]] and [[Sammy Cahn]])
** "It Just Occurred to Me"
** "Roundabout"
** "Out of the Clear Blue Sky"
** "Haunted Hot Spot"
** "Just Like a Man"
*1956 – ''[[The Littlest Revue]]'' (music also by others – Duke lyrics by [[Ogden Nash]])
** "I Want to Fly Now (and Pay Later)"
** "Summer Is A-Comin' In"
** "Good Little Girls"
** "Love Is Still in Town"
** "You're Far from Wonderful"
** "Madly in Love"
*1963 – ''[[Zenda (musical)|Zenda]]'' (lyrics by Lenny Adelson, Sid Kuller, and [[Martin Charnin]])
{{Div col end}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
{{commons category}}
*{{Discogs artist}}
*{{IMDb name|0241216}}
*{{IBDB name}}
*{{Find a Grave|7670529}}
*[https://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/shows/songbook/multimedia/bio_duke.html Duke biography], pbs.org 
*[http://www.boosey.com/pages/cr/composer/composer_main.asp?composerid=3244& Vernon Duke profile], Boosey.com
*[https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.music/eadmus.mu005004 Vernon Duke Collection] at the [[Library of Congress]]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Duke, Vernon}}
[[Category:1903 births]]
[[Category:1969 deaths]]
[[Category:People from Dokshytsy district]]
[[Category:People from Vileysky Uyezd]]
[[Category:White Russian emigrants to the United States]]
[[Category:American musical theatre composers]]
[[Category:American male musical theatre composers]]
[[Category:Ballets Russes composers]]
[[Category:United States Coast Guard Band musicians]]
[[Category:20th-century American composers]]
[[Category:Burials at Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery, Santa Monica]]