![]() Regarding the orchestration of the concerto. The Globe Theater in New York City today the Lunt-Fontanne ![]() Its flaws aside (Gershwin himself later admitted that at the time he wrote Rhapsody in Blue he hardly knew more about composition than one could find “in a ten-cent manual”), Gershwin was bitten by the “concert composing bug” at exactly the time when the American arts community was coming to believe that ragtime and jazz were “America’s Classical Music”. Don’t get me wrong we should all love the Rhapsody, but from a purely technical point of view, it might very well be the shoddiest piece of music in the concert repertoire, making even Tchaikovsky’s compositionally appalling 1812 Overture look slick by comparison. Rhapsody in Blue is a medley of great tunes linked by some shockingly pedestrian transitions. It received its premiere with Paul Whiteman conducting his band and Gershwin at the piano at New York’s Aeolian Hall on February 12, 1924. His back to the wall, Gershwin quickly wrote Rhapsody in Blue, which was arranged for piano and jazz band by Whiteman’s orchestrator, Ferde Grofé. He had put the offer out of his mind entirely when, to his horror, a notice appeared in the New York papers that announced he was composing just such a piece. Gershwin hesitated: writing songs was one things, but having had no training in composition, counterpoint, or orchestration, there was no reason to believe he could compose such a work. In 1923, Gershwin was approached by the society bandleader Paul Whiteman to “compose” a “serious” concert work in the “jazz idiom” for piano and jazz band. ![]() Left to right: Ferde Grofé, Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel, and Paul Whiteman
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |