How did George Gershwin’s visits to Paris inspire An American in Paris?

George Gershwin’s An American in Paris was directly inspired by his travels to Paris throughout the 1920s. The composer intended the work to serve as a musical portrait of an American visitor strolling through the city, absorbing the French atmosphere, and experiencing the various street noises of the urban environment.1

To capture this sense of place, Gershwin incorporated elements of verisimilitude, most notably the inclusion of actual French taxi horns to evoke the city's busy streets. The composition functions as a "rhapsodic ballet" or a "tone poem," utilizing a kaleidoscope of musical impressions that transition from light-hearted melodies to melancholy, blues-inspired sections. While in Paris, Gershwin also sought advanced compositional training, and although he did not study with the major composers he encountered there, the experience helped him refine his ability to utilize orchestral color, resulting in what was his most orchestrally advanced score at the time.21