Notes for: August 8, 2017
Many European composers were inspired by American jazz, but none of them captured its essence as memorably as George Gershwin, the American composer who took classical music into the Jazz Age. Gershwin began his career in Tin Pan Alley, where his genius for melody had him spinning out song after unforgettable song – “Swanee,” “Lady Be Good,” “Fascinating Rhythm,” “S’Wonderful,” “The Man I Love,” “Summertime.” Gershwin had bigger dreams, though. In addition to being a gifted musical-theater entertainer, he was a serious student of 20th-century classical music. He studied the compositions of Stravinsky, Berg, and Ives, was friends with Ravel and Schoenberg, and eagerly absorbed their ideas.
Gershwin’s dream was to marry classical and popular music – to “make an honest woman out of jazz.” His first attempt to bring jazz into the concert hall was his most famous: Rhapsody in Blue. The work was a commission from the bandleader Paul Whiteman, who shared Gershwin’s ambition to elevate jazz by giving it a classical respectability, and who wanted a new orchestral work for an upcoming concert called “An Experiment in Modern Music.” The commission came at the last minute, and Gershwin wrote hastily. Whiteman’s own arranger, Ferde Grofé, scored the piece for jazz band. Gershwin was the soloist at the concert, which took place in February 1924 (two weeks after the first New York performance of The Rite of Spring, which “exercised a great influence” on Gershwin, as he told a friend). The hall was packed with musical celebrities, including Leopold Stokowski, Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kreisler, John Philip Sousa, Alma Gluck, and Rachmaninoff.
From the clarinet’s famous opening glissando, the audience sat rapt, and at the end of the performance they went wild. What they had heard was a brash, melodically rich, tonally daring composition featuring a brilliant opening, a dizzying series of harmonic modulations, propulsive rhythms, and of course the continuous use of flatted blue notes. Gershwin later wrote that when he began to work on the rhapsody, he “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.” It’s that vision, successfully carried out, that makes Rhapsody in Blue an iconic portrait of Jazz Age America in all its exuberance and dance-driven vitality.
It doesn’t take a full orchestra to capture Rhapsody in Blue’s multitude of charms. Over the years it has appeared in many guises, including a performance by 84 pianists at the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. As today’s performance shows, four hands are more than enough to convey the pleasures of a composition that has become probably the best-known American concert work of the 20th century.
Notes for: August 1, 2023
Many European composers, Ravel among them, were inspired by American jazz, but none of them captured its essence as memorably as George Gershwin, the American composer who took classical music into the Jazz Age. Gershwin began his career in Tin Pan Alley, where his genius for melody had him spinning out song after unforgettable song – “Swanee,” “Lady Be Good,” “Fascinating Rhythm,” “S’Wonderful,” “The Man I Love,” “Summertime.” Gershwin had bigger dreams, though. In addition to being a gifted musical-theater entertainer, he was a serious student of 20th-century classical music. He studied the compositions of Stravinsky, Berg, and Ives, was friends with Ravel and Schoenberg, and eagerly absorbed their ideas.
Gershwin’s dream was to marry classical and popular music – to “make an honest woman out of jazz.” His first attempt to bring jazz into the concert hall was his most famous: Rhapsody in Blue. The work was a commission from the bandleader Paul Whiteman, who shared Gershwin’s ambition to elevate jazz by giving it a classical respectability, and who wanted a new orchestral work for an upcoming concert called “An Experiment in Modern Music.” The commission came at the last minute, and Gershwin wrote hastily. Whiteman’s own arranger, Ferde Grofé, scored the piece for jazz band. Gershwin was the soloist at the concert, which took place in February 1924 (two weeks after the first New York performance of The Rite of Spring, which “exercised a great influence” on Gershwin, as he told a friend). The hall was packed with musical celebrities, including Leopold Stokowski, Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kreisler, John Philip Sousa, Alma Gluck, and Rachmaninoff.
From the clarinet’s famous opening glissando, the audience sat rapt, and at the end of the performance they went wild. What they had heard was a brash, melodically rich, tonally daring composition whose highlights included a brilliant opening, a dizzying series of harmonic modulations, propulsive rhythms, and of course the continuous use of flatted blue notes. Gershwin later wrote that when he began to work on the rhapsody, he “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.” It’s that vision, successfully carried out, that makes Rhapsody in Blue an iconic portrait of Jazz Age America in all its exuberance and dance-driven vitality.
It doesn’t take a full orchestra to capture Rhapsody in Blue’s multitude of charms. Over the years it has appeared in many guises, including a performance by 84 pianists at the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. As today’s performance shows, four hands are more than enough to convey the pleasures of a composition that has become probably the best-known American concert work of the 20th century