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Rhapsody in Blue is a 1924 musical composition written by George Gershwin for solo piano and jazz band, which combines elements of classical music with jazz-influenced effects. Commissioned by bandleader Paul Whiteman, the work premiered in a concert titled "An Experiment in Modern Music" on February 12, 1924, in Aeolian Hall, New York City.[2][3] Whiteman's band performed the rhapsody with Gershwin playing the piano.[4] Whiteman's arranger Ferde Grof orchestrated the rhapsody several times including the 1924 original scoring, the 1926 pit orchestra scoring, and the 1942 symphonic scoring.

The rhapsody is one of Gershwin's most recognizable creations and a key composition that defined the Jazz Age.[5][6][7] Gershwin's piece inaugurated a new era in America's musical history,[8] established his reputation as an eminent composer and became one of the most popular of all concert works.[9] In the American Heritage magazine, Frederic D. Schwarz posits that the famous opening clarinet glissando has become as instantly recognizable to concert audiences as the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.[10]

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Many of the early numbers in the program underwhelmed the audience, and the ventilation system in the concert hall malfunctioned.[35] Some audience members had departed the venue by the time Gershwin made his inconspicuous entrance for the rhapsody.[35] The audience purportedly were irritable, impatient, and restless until the haunting clarinet glissando played the opening notes of Rhapsody in Blue.[3][36] The distinctive glissando had been created quite by happenstance during rehearsals:

Whiteman's orchestra performed the rhapsody with "twenty-three musicians in the ensemble" and George Gershwin on piano.[38][39] In characteristic style, Gershwin chose to partially improvise his piano solo.[39] The orchestra anxiously waited for Gershwin's nod which signaled the end of his piano solo and the cue for the ensemble to resume playing.[39] As Gershwin did not write the solo piano section until after the concert, it remains unknown exactly how the original rhapsody sounded at the premiere.[40]

Upon the conclusion of the rhapsody, the audience tumultuously applauded Gershwin's composition,[4][41] and, quite unexpectedly, "the concert, in every respect but the financial,[a] became a 'knockout'."[43] The concert soon became historically significant due to the premiere of the rhapsody, and its program would "become not only a historic document, finding its way into foreign monographs on jazz, but a rarity as well."[25]

Following the success of the rhapsody's premiere, future performances followed. The first British performance of Rhapsody in Blue took place at the Savoy Hotel in London on June 15, 1925.[44] The BBC broadcast the performance in a live relay. Debroy Somers conducted the Savoy Orpheans with Gershwin himself at the piano.[44] Audiences heard the piece again in the United Kingdom during the second European tour of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, most notably on April 11, 1926, at the Royal Albert Hall, with Gershwin in the audience. The Gramophone Company/HMV recorded this performance.[45]

By the end of 1927, Whiteman's band had performed Rhapsody in Blue approximately 84 times, and its recording sold a million copies.[10] For the entire piece to fit onto two sides of a 12-inch record, the rhapsody had to be played at a faster speed than usual in a concert, which gave the recording a hurried feel with noticeably lost rubato. 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."[46]

As Gershwin did not have sufficient knowledge of orchestration in 1924,[54] Whiteman's pianist and chief arranger Ferde Grof played a key role in the rhapsody's meteoric success,[55] and scholars have contended that Grof's arrangements of the Rhapsody secured its place in American culture.[56] Gershwin's biographer, Isaac Goldberg, noted in 1931 that Grof played a crucial role in the premiere's triumph:

Nearly a hundred years after the debut of Gershwin's rhapsody in 1924, tens of thousands of orchestras as well as solo pianists have recorded the piece, both abridged and unabridged. A number of these recordings have garnered critical recognition such as pianist Michel Camilo's 2006 rendition which won a Latin Grammy Award.[94]

The influences of jazz and other contemporary styles are present in Rhapsody in Blue. Ragtime rhythms are abundant,[102] as is the Cuban "clave" rhythm, which doubles as a dance rhythm in the Charleston jazz dance.[48] Gershwin's own intentions were to correct the belief that jazz had to be played strictly in time so that one could dance to it.[106] The rhapsody's tempos vary widely, and there is an almost extreme use of rubato in many places throughout. The clearest influence of jazz is the use of blue notes, and the exploration of their half-step relationship plays a key role in the rhapsody.[107] The use of so-called "vernacular" instruments, such as accordion, banjo, and saxophones in the orchestra, contribute to its jazz or popular style, and the latter two of these instruments have remained part of Grof's "standard" orchestra scoring.[66]

Beginning with that incomparable, flamboyant clarinet solo, Rhapsody is irresistible still, with its syncopated rhythmic vibrancy, its abandoned, impudent flair that tells more about the Roaring Twenties than could a thousand words, and its genuine melodic beauty colored a deep, jazzy blue by the flatted sevenths and thirds that had their origins in the African-American slave songs.[7]

Although Gershwin's rhapsody is "by no means a definitive example of jazz in the Jazz Age,"[109] music historians such as James Ciment and Floyd Levin have similarly concurred that it is the key composition that encapsulates the spirit of the era.[5][110] As early as 1927, writer F. Scott Fitzgerald opined that Rhapsody in Blue idealized the youthful zeitgeist of the Jazz Age.[111] In subsequent decades, both the latter era and Fitzgerald's related literary works have been often culturally linked by critics and scholars with Gershwin's composition.[112] In 1941, social historian Peter Quennell opined that Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby embodied "the sadness and the remote jauntiness of a Gershwin tune."[113] Accordingly, director Baz Luhrmann used Rhapsody in Blue as a dramatic leitmotif for the character of Jay Gatsby in his 2013 film The Great Gatsby, a cinematic adaptation of Fitzgerald's 1925 novel.[60][114]

Likewise, music historian Vince Giordano has opined that "the syncopation, the blue notes, the ragtime and jazz rhythms that Gershwin wrote in 1924 was really a feeling of New York City in that amazing era. The rhythm of the city seems to be in there."[115] Pianist Lang Lang echoes this sentiment: "When I hear Rhapsody in Blue, I see the Empire State Building somehow. I see the New York Skyline in midtown Manhattan, and I already see the coffee shops [in] Times Square."[115]

Gershwin's rhapsody has influenced a number of composers. In 1955, Rhapsody in Blue inspired accordionist John Serry Sr. to compose his 1957 work American Rhapsody.[118] Brian Wilson, leader of The Beach Boys, stated on several occasions that Rhapsody in Blue is one of his favorite pieces. He first heard the piece as a two-year-old and recalled that he adored it.[119] According to biographer Peter Ames Carlin, the rhapsody influenced Wilson's Smile album.[119] Rhapsody in Blue also inspired a collaboration between blind savant British pianist Derek Paravicini and composer Matthew King on a new concerto, called Blue premiered at the South Bank Centre in London in 2011.[120]

As part of the merger with Continental Airlines last year, United dropped its familiar red and blue stylized "U" logo in favor of the old globe symbol that had been used by Continental. But in the latest ad campaign, which is now airing, a familiar orchestral recording of "Rhapsody in Blue" still plays.

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