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Rhapsody in Blue

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Cover of the original sheet music of the two piano version of Rhapsody in Blue.
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Cover of the original sheet music of the two piano version of Rhapsody in Blue.

Rhapsody in Blue is a musical composition by George Gershwin for solo piano and orchestra or band written in 1924 which combines elements of classical music with jazz-influenced effects. The piece received its première on 12 February 1924 in New York by Paul Whiteman and his band and has since become one of the most popular American concert work.

As the most famous classical composition by Gershwin, it established his reputation as a serious composer.Schiff back cover

Contents

History

Commission

After the success of an experimental classical-jazz concert held with French-Canadian singer Eva Gauthier at Aeolian Hall on 1 November 1923, band leader Paul Whiteman decided to attempt something more ambitious.Schiff p. 53 He asked Gershwin to contribute a concerto-like piece for an all-jazz concert he would give in Aeolian Hall in February 1924. Whiteman became interested in featuring such an extended composition by Gershwin in the concert after he had collaborated with Gershwin in the Scandals of 1922, impressed by the original performance of the one-act opera Blue Monday, which was a commercial failure. Gershwin was not too enthusiastic on it as his musical Sweet Little Devil was due to open in New York on 21 January and there was to be a tryout in Boston on 7 January. There would certainly be call for revisions to the score and he felt that he would not have enough time to compose the new piece.Wood p. 81

Late on the evening of 3 January, at the Ambassador Billiard Parlor at Broadway and 52nd Street in Manhattan, while George Gershwin and Buddy De Sylva were playing billiards (George lost), his brother Ira Gershwin was reading the 4 January edition of the New York Tribune. Jablonski, Edward (1999) "Glorious George," Cigar Aficionada Jan/Feb 1999 [link] An article titled as "What Is American Music?" about the Whiteman concert caught his attention, which the final paragraph claimed that "George Gershwin is at work on a jazz concerto, Irving Berlin is writing a syncopated tone poem and Victor Herbert is working on an American suite."

In a phone call to Whiteman next morning, Gershwin was told that Whiteman's rival Vincent Lopez was planning to steal the idea of his experimental concert and there was no time to lose.Greenberg pp. 64-65 Gershwin was finally persuaded to compose the piece.

Composition

For there was only five weeks left, Gershwin hastily set about composing a piece, and on the train journey to Boston, the ideas of Rhapsody in Blue came to his mind. He told his first biographer Isaac Goldberg in 1931:

It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang, that is so often so stimulating to a composer—I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise... And there I suddenly heard, and even saw on paper—the complete construction of the Rhapsody, from beginning to end. No new themes came to me, but I worked on the thematic material already in my mind and tried to conceive the composition as a whole. I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness. By the time I reached Boston I had a definite plot of the piece, as distinguished from its actual substance. Cowen, Ron (1998), "George Gershwin: He Got Rhythm" The Washington Post Online: [link] (Quotation re inspiration on the train)Howard, Orrin, "Rhapsody in Blue" (program notes for Los Angeles Philarmonic) [link].
Gershwin began to work on 7 January as dated on the original manuscript for two piano. After few weeks, Gershwin finished his composition and passed the score to Whiteman's arranger Ferde Grofé. He finished the orchestration on 4 February, only eight days before the première. Greenberg p. 69

Première

Rhapsody in Blue premièred in an afternoon concert on 12 February 1924 held by Paul Whiteman and his band Palais Royal Orchestra entitled An Experiment in Modern Music, which took place in Aeolian Hall in New York City.Downes The event has since become historic specifically because of its première of the Rhapsody.

The purpose of the experiment, as told by Whiteman in a pre-concert lecture in front of many classical music critics and highbrows, "is to be purely educational." It would "at least provide a stepping stone which will make it very simple for the masses to understand and therefore enjoy symphony and opera." The program was long, including 26 separate musical movements divided into 2 parts and 11 sections, bearing titles such as "True form of jazz" and "Contrast: legitimate scoring vs. jazzing". Gershwin's latest composition was the second last piece (before Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1).Schiff pp. 55-61 As many of the numbers sounded similar and the ventilation system was broken, audience was losing their patience until the clarinet glissando which opened Rhapsody in Blue was heard.Greenberg pp. 72-73

The Rhapsody was performed by Whiteman's band with an added section of string players, and George Gershwin on piano. Gershwin decided to keep his options open as to when Whiteman would bring in the orchestra and he did not write out one of the pages for solo piano, with only the words "Wait for nod" scrawled by Grofé on the band score. Gershwin improvised some of what he was playing. As he did not write out the piano part until after the performance, we do not know exactly how the original Rhapsody sounded.

Responses

The piece received mixed reviews from mainstream critics. Olin Downes, reviewing the concert in The New York Times:
This composition shows extraordinary talent, as it shows a young composer with aims that go far beyond those of his ilk, struggling with a form of which he is far from being master... In spite of all this he has expressed himself in a significant and, on the whole, highly original form.... His first theme... is no mere dance-tune... it is an idea, or several ideas, correlated and combined in varying and contrasting rhythms that immediately intrigue the listener. The second theme is more after the manner of some of Mr. Gershwin's colleague. Tuttis are too long, cadenzas are too long, the peroration at the end loses a large measure of wildness and magnificence it could easily have had if it were more broadly prepared, and, for all that, the audience was stirred and many a hardened concertgoer excited with the sensation of a new talent finding its voice... There was tumultuous applause for Gershwin's composition.Downes
But other critics, and some concertgoers, gave it a tepid response, believing it nothing more than "Negro music". Another reviewer, Lawrence Gilman, wrote in the New York Tribune on 13 February 1924:
How trite and feeble and conventional the tunes are; how sentimental and vapid the harmonic treatment, under its disguise of fussy and futile counterpoint! ... Weep over the lifelessness of the melody and harmony, so derivative, so stale, so inexpressive!Slonimsky, Nicolas (2000). Lexicon of Musical Invective. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 039332009X. (Gilman's unfavorable review, "weep over the lifelessness", p. 105)
Some critics described the piece as formless, and what Gershwin had done is only gluing his melodic segments together into one piece. Pitts Sanborn wrote that the music "runs off into empty passage-work and meaningless repetition".Greenberg pp. 74-75 In an article in Atlantic Monthly in 1955, Leonard Bernstein wrote:
The Rhapsody is not a composition at all. It's a string of separate paragraphs stuck together. The themes are terrific - inspired, God-given. I don't think there has been such an inspired melodist on this earth since Tchaikovsky. But if you want to speak of a composer, that's another matter. Your Rhapsody in Blue is not a real composition in the sense that whatever happens in it mush seem inevitable. You can cut parts of it without affecting the whole. You can remove any of these stuck-together sections and the piece still foes on as bravely as before. It can be a five-minute piece or a twelve-minute piece. And in fact all these things are being done to it every day. And it's still the Rhapsody in Blue.

Music

Orchestration

Gershwin had agreed that arranger Ferde Grofé was the key figure in enabling the piece to be successful, and critics have praised for the orchestra colour. Grofé confirmed in 1938 that Gershwin did not have sufficient knowledge of orchestration by the time of 1924.Greenberg p. 66 After the première, Grofé took the score and made new orchestration in 1926 and 1942, each time for larger orchestra.Greenberg p. 76 The latter is the arrangement we commonly heard of today.

The 1924 orchestration for Whiteman's band of 23 musicians calls for flute, oboe, clarinets (E-flat soprano, B-flat, alto and bass), heckelphone, saxophones (E-flat soprano, B-flat soprano, alto, tenor and baritone), 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 flugelhorns, euphonium, 2 trombones, bass trombone, tuba, 2 pianos, celesta, banjo, drums, timpani, traps, violins, string basses and accordion.Schiff p. 5-6 Many musicians were playing more than two instruments.

The 1942 orchestration is scored for solo piano, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 B-flat clarinets (both doubling A clarinets), bass clarinet in B-flat, 2 bassoons, 3 horns in F, 3 trumpets in B-flat, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, "drums" (percussions include crash cymbal, snare drum, bass drum, gong, triangle, bells and cymbals), piano, 2 alto saxophones in E-flat, tenor saxophone in B-flat, banjo, and strings (violin, viola, violoncello and bass).Gershwin, George; & Grofé, Ferde (1924, 1942). George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue miniature orchestra score. Warner Brothers.

The 1942 version is based on the 1926 arrangement, with single flute, oboe and bassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and trombone.

Recordings

Two audio recordings exist of Gershwin performing the piece with Whiteman's orchestra: an acoustic recording made in June 1924, and an electrostatic recording made in April 1927, the latter of which was actually conducted by Nathaniel Shilkret after an argument between Gershwin and WhitemanGreenberg pp. 75-76 A 1925 piano roll captured Gershwin's performance in a two piano version.Schiff p. 64 Whiteman's orchestra also performed the piece in the 1930 film The King of Jazz featuring Roy Bargy on piano.

Since the mid-20th century, the 1942 version has usually been performed by classical orchestras playing the expanded arrangement. In this form, it has become a staple of the concert repertoire. It has direct popular appeal while also being regarded respectfully by classical musicians. However, the piece was never performed by the top pianists of the time, but only either by Gershwin specialists or pianist/conductors.

In the 1970s, interest in the original arrangement has revived. Reconstructions of it have been recorded by Michael Tilson Thomas and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1975 which featured a ghost appearance of Gershwin by using the 1925 piano roll, and by Maurice Peress with Ivan Davis on piano as part of a reconstruction of the entire 1924 concert.Sniff pp. 67-68

Notable recordings

Trivia

  • The piece was originally titled as "American Rhapsody" during composition. The title Rhapsody in Blue was suggested by Ira Gershwin after his visit to a gallery exhibition of James McNeill Whistler paintings, which bear titles such as Nocturne in Black and Gold and Arrangement in Gray and Black (better known as Whistler's Mother).Schiff p. 13
The famous clarinet opening of Rhapsody in Blue.
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The famous clarinet opening of Rhapsody in Blue.

  • The opening of Rhapsody in Blue is originally a clarinet trill followed by a tied rising 17-notes scale. Whiteman's virtuoso clarinetist, Ross Gorman, turned the last half of the scale into a capitavating glissando in a rehersal. Gershwin heard it and insisted on incorporating the glissando into the performance.Greenberg p. 70 An American Heritage columnist called it the "famous opening clarinet glissando... that has since become as familiar as the start of Beethoven’s Fifth."Schwarz, Frederick D. (1999) Time Machine: 1924 Seventy-five Years Ago: Gershwin’s Rhapsody. American Heritage 50(1), February/March 1999[link]
  • In any event, by the end of the year 1924, Whiteman’s band had played the Rhapsody eighty-four times and its recording sold a million copies. Whiteman later adopted the piece as his band's theme song, and opened his radio programs with the slogan "Everything new but the Rhapsody in Blue".
  • An excerpt of Rhapsody in Blue is known to many as the theme for United Airlines, and has been in use by the company since 1987. The company agreed to pay an annual fee of US$300,000 for the rights to use the piece in its advertisement.Schiff p. 1
  • The band The Toasters did a ska version of the Rhapsody entitled "Rhapsody in Bluebeat" on their album Ska Killers.
  • Brian Wilson was reportedly heavily influenced by this music, and the SMiLE project can almost be thought as a direct offshoot of the concept, with its use of recurring themes and unmistakably American song structures.#redirect [[Template:Fact]] During the film "Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of SMiLE" Brian Wilson is shown playing the introduction of Rhapsody in Blue on the piano, then directly segueing into the SMiLE song "Heroes and Villains"

Notes

References

  • Downes, Olin (1924). "A Concert of Jazz". The New York Times, February 13, 1924: p. 16.
  • Wood, Ean (1996). George Gershwin: His Life & Music. Sanctuary Publishing. ISBN 1960741746.
  • Schiff, David (1997). Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521550777.
  • Greenberg, Rodney (1998). George Gershwin. Phaidon Press. ISBN 0714835048.

 

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