Gershwin loved to study music seriously with Rubin Goldmark, a relative of Karl Goldmark (1830-1915).
At the age of 16, Gershwin composed his first hits, The co-operation with Paul Whiteman ("King of Jazz", born in Denver/Colorado on March 28, 1890) influenced Gershwin definitely and fruitful.
1924, the "Rhapsody in Blue" became a world hit. 1925, the "Piano Concerto in F" came into being - performed by George Gershwin himself under the baton of Walter D. Damrosch (1862-1950, Poland und USA).
More incredible successful compositions followed: "An American in Paris" (1928), "The Cuban Overture" (1932) and the "negro opera" "Porgy and Bess" (1935). Who doesn't know "Summertime" or " I ain't got no shame"?
A successful mixture of naivety, wizened jazz elements and spirituals standardized in an incredible music talent let many classical composers never stopped expressing their praises to Gershwin - like Igor Strawinsky or Maurice Ravel... .
His chosen path plunged the budding composer into an archetypal struggle, not only for financial survival but also for the acceptance of his artistic ideas, a task to which he would tirelessly devote all his creative and intellectual energy. And as you might well imagine, he was widely misunderstood in his own lifetime. Claude Debussy, as he was working on his own opera, Pelleas et Melisande, wrote “Berlioz was never, properly speaking, a musician of the theater.” This seems a rather strange comment on a composer whose work is from beginning to end intensely dramatic in character. For his critics, Berlioz was more successful as a dramatist in his symphonies than in his stage works. The dramatic brilliance of his orchestral writing, according to the argument, detracted from the theatrical effectiveness of his operas. Berlioz completed only five operas, but he contemplated or sketched many more and had at least one operatic project in mind throughout his life. 
Berlioz’s skill as an orchestrator lays not in the novelty of the instruments themselves as much as it is found in his skill of using and combining them. Before Berlioz, the functions of orchestral instruments associated melody and harmony mainly in the string choir, with winds used for occasional reinforcement and soloistic color. For Berlioz, as he comprehensively described in his treatise on orchestration and instrumentation, the invention of a particular tone colors for individual passages was part of the normal process of composition. Harmony and correct voice-leading become secondary elements, and melody and the color of the orchestral sound makes almost exclusive claims upon our attention. We know that Berlioz responded to a request from 
