Rhapsody in Blue

I don't usually write about music in this blog, but I cannot allow this significant anniversary to pass without comment. Exactly one-hundred years ago tonight, George Gershwin's classic piano and orchestral work, Rhapsody in Blue, premiered at the Aeolian Hall in New York City. The composer was all of 25 years old, and his audience included the likes of Sergei Rachmaninov, John Philip Sousa, Jascha Heifetz, Leopold Stokowski, and actress Gertrude Lawrence. The occasion was a concert by Paul Whiteman's orchestra, titled, "An Experiment in Modern Music." Whiteman had invited Gershwin to compose a piece for this event, and Gershwin thought he had declined the offer. But Whiteman went ahead and included him in the lineup anyway, inducing something of a panic in George when he learned about it only weeks in advance. Here's the rest of the story:

Late at night on 3 January 1924, George Gershwin, his brother Ira and lyricist Buddy DeSylva were having a game in the Ambassador Billiard Parlor at 52nd Street on Broadway, when an item in the amusement section of the New York Tribune caught Ira’s attention. It was about a concert of new American music to be given by Paul Whiteman and his Palais Royal Band at Aeolian Hall on 12 February—Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. 

“George Gershwin is at work on a jazz concerto,” ran the article, “Irving Berlin is writing a syncopated tone poem…”

It was all news to George. His musical comedy, Sweet Little Devil, was set to open in just three weeks. And now he had to write a concerto by 12 February as well?

Paul Whiteman was the most popular bandleader of the 1920s and enjoyed the title “King of Jazz”—although this was no jazz band; rather it was a large dance orchestra that used jazz musicians from time to time.

But Whiteman twisted Gershwin's arm that all he had to do was supply a piano score. Ferde Grofé, Whiteman’s brilliant in-house arranger, would be able to orchestrate the work tailored to the band’s line-up.

While he was on the train to Boston for rehearsals of his musical, Gershwin sketched out a framework for the new piece, which he began writing on 7 January. Over the next few days, while he also made last-minute changes to ready Sweet Little Devil for its New York opening on 24 January, the genius completed a two-piano score.

What Gershwin produced was not a “jazz concerto” but a rhapsodic work for “piano and jazz band” incorporating elements of European symphonic music and American jazz with his inimitable melodic gift and keyboard facility.

Gershwin’s original title for it was American Rhapsody. But, by chance, Ira had been to an exhibition of Whistler’s paintings and saw the painter's Nocturne In Blue And Green of the Thames at Chelsea. Why not call the new piece Rhapsody In Blue instead, he suggested. The title would reflect the European and American influences. Also at Ira’s suggestion, George contrasted the syncopated character that dominates the tune with an expressive romantic theme the composer had previously improvised at a party.

I fell in love with this unusual piece of music during my last years in high school, when the piece was not yet 50 years old. It wasn't my first introduction to so-called classical music. My parents had phonograph records of classical music, and I had already learnt to love, for example, Bedřich Smetana's Moldau and Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol, among many others. But there was something about the energy and sheer daring of Gershwin's Rhapsody that I found appealing. I quickly picked up on the jazz influence, but much later I came to recognize as well the Yiddish klezmer influence, especially in the memorable wailing clarinet opening to the piece. This is more evident in the early recordings than in the later orchestral arrangements. It recalls a time in American popular music when the Yiddish influence was huge, only to be overshadowed after the Second World War by black and hispanic contributions.

Here is possibly the earliest recording of the Rhapsody from 1924:

And here is the expanded orchestral version more familiar to us. Note the scoring of the opening clarinet solo.

I have sometimes wondered what American music would have been like if George Gershwin hadn't died at so young an age in 1937. What if he had lived to 95 and died in 1993? Would his music have changed with the times? Would he have steered popular music in a different direction from where it eventually went? Incidentally, George's brother and lyricist Ira Gershwin died in 1983 at the age of 86.