With every collaborator he was a consummate crafter of lyrical mosaics, performing that alchemy by which the art of words and the art of music are fused into the hybrid art of song.
Like so many other lyricists of his generation, Ira Gershwin was the son of Jewish immigrants. Moishe and Rose Bruskin Gershovitz married on 21 July 1895 and, after arriving in New York from Russia, they changed their name to Morris and Rose Gershwine. Their first child was born on 6 December 1896 at their apartment on the Lower East Side. Although his birth name was Israel, his parents always called him Izzy, and by the time he learned what his real name was, he had long since gone by Ira.
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