Paul Whiteman had expended a great deal of musical and political capital when he fought to include the one act Gershwin opera “Blue Monday” in the 1922 edition of George White’s Scandals. Although the opera was a failure and was dropped after opening night, Paul, who was an astute judge of musical talent, knew that George Gershwin possessed the kind of gift that only comes along once in a century.
Paul had pulled off an experimental classical-jazz concert at Aeolian Hall on November 1, 1923. Aeolian was a manufacturer of pianos and possessed a third floor recital hall that had been used by artists such as Rachmaninov. Ready for something more ambitious, Paul asked George to contribute a piece for an all-jazz concert for February 12, 1924. Gershwin declined on the grounds that he would not have enough time to compose the piece.
Late on the evening of January 3, 1924, George and Buddy DeSylva were playing pool in midtown Manhattan while Ira Gershwin was seated nearby, reading the next day’s New York Tribune and smoking his cigar. Ira spotted an article about the upcoming Whiteman concert, “What is American Music?”
”Hey, George, listen to this. ‘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.’”
George: “What??!!!”
The next morning, George called Paul Whiteman. He was not in a good mood. Paul told George that his main bandleader rival, Vincent Lopez, was planning to steal the idea of his experimental concert. The clock was running out. After some begging and pleading, George signed onto the project.
One thing that was rattling around George’s brain was that jazz in that era was all about duple time. Jazz pieces were in 2/4 like ragtime or 4/4 like a march. George wanted to introduce rhythmic variation into the mix.
He was on his way to Boston on the New Haven Railroad for tryouts for “Sweet Little Devil” when he had his revelation.
It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattlety 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 metropolitan madness. By the time I reached Boston I had a definite plot of the piece, as distinguished from its actual substance.
“Not to put any pressure on you, George,” said Paul over the phone, “but John Philip Sousa and Sergei Rachmaninov are going to be there.” George began sketching the piece on January 7 and handed the product in to Ferde Grofe, Whiteman’s favorite arranger, on February 4.
Sergei Rachmaninov, his wife, and two daughters had fled Lenin and Trotsky after the family’s assets had been seized by the Bolsheviks. Arriving in New York with only gold coins sewed into the lining of their clothing, Sergei found that his main talent, conducting Russian opera, was not in much demand outside the Russian speaking world. He took time off to get his pianism up to speed, and in the end he would be known as the greatest pianist of the 20th Century. He signed with the Victor label, took America by storm in the 1920s, and turned out to be a brilliant businessman.
On occasion, Sergei would attend a Broadway show, and it took him very little time to recognize a Gershwin tune after hearing only a few bars. Like Paul Whiteman, he recognized Gershwin’s genius.
One thing that delighted Rachmaninov was that in America, it didn’t matter where you came from or your family’s social position – America didn’t have a titled nobility like Russia. You achieved success by your talent and hard work. In Russia, the Rachmaninovs and the Gershowitzes would not have rubbed shoulders. Sergei’s family came from the minor nobility and spoke Russian and French, while George’s family spoke Yiddish with a little Russian. But in America, none of that mattered. George Gershwin was on his way to becoming the King of Broadway, and Sergei was tickled that another son of Mother Russia was making good in America – even if his family came from the other side of the tracks.
Musically, they were of similar minds. If you listen to the slow movement of Rachmaninov’s Cello Sonata, some of the thematic material sounds like Gershwin, and the final bars even feel a little like Gershwin on the fingers. But the sonata was written in 1901 when Gershwin was only three years old. It’s just a coincidence. But it wasn’t a coincidence when Sergei’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” from 1934 had passages that sounded and felt like Gershwin. I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that when the wife and daughters were out of the house, Sergei would pull Gershwin’s teenage ragtime pieces out of his piano bench and try his hand at them.
Although Gershwin and Rachmaninov didn’t run in the same social circles, they met once at a party. Gershwin was always looking for a teacher to give him composition and orchestration lessons, and as the story goes, he asked Sergei if he would take him on as a student. Rachmaninov knew that a natural talent like Gershwin’s might be ruined if strictly confined to the staves of music paper, so he found a clever way to dodge the issue. Sergei asked George how much money he made per year. George named a sum well into six figures. “Nyet,” said Sergei, “you teach me.”
Paul Whiteman opened his Aeolian Hall concert on the afternoon of February 12 with a lecture. The purpose of the experiment was to be purely educational. It would at least provide a stepping stone which would make it very simple for the masses to understand, and therefore enjoy, symphony and opera.
But the program was long, including 26 separate musical movements divided into two parts and eleven sections, bearing titles such as “True form of jazz” and “Contrast: legitimate scoring vs. jazzing.” That was a mistake. Gershwin’s piece was next to last on the program. Many of the numbers sounded too much alike, and the ventilation system was broken. People in the audience were rapidly losing their patience and leaving when the opening clarinet glissando of “Rhapsody in Blue” was played by Ross Gorman. There was nothing but rapt attention after that.
That opening came into being during rehearsal when, as a joke on Gershwin, Gorman played it with a noticeable glissando, adding what he considered to be a humorous touch to the passage. Reacting favorably, Gershwin asked him to perform it that way at the concert and to add as much of a wail as possible.
Today we’re in the dark as to just how the Rhapsody sounded at its premiere. Paul added a small string section to his regular band, and George handled the piano while keeping his options open as to when Paul would bring in the orchestra. He didn’t write down his piano solos, leaving only the words “Wait for nod,” scrawled by Grofé on the score, as a cue for Paul. George didn’t write out the piano part until after the performance. If this sounds like Beethoven’s way of handling the premieres of his early piano concertos, it’s not a coincidence.
Olin Downes, 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 colleagues. Tuttis are too long, cadenzas are too long, the peroration at the end loses a large measure of the 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.
Lawrence Gilman, New York Tribune:
How trite, 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!
In 1955, Leonard Bernstein added his two cents.
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 must 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 goes 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.”
By 1927, Whiteman’s recording with Gershwin at the piano had sold over a million copies.
In 1942, five years after Gershwin’s death, Ferde Grofe re-orchestrated the piece as a piano concerto with full orchestra, and in 1945 Oscar Levant recorded it with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. Thanks to Grofe and Levant, this was the version that has been remembered and imitated over the decades.
But I’m going back to the original jazz band arrangement, which was revived by Michael Tilson Thomas in the Eighties. The opening clarinet passage is the naughtiest I’ve ever heard.
