All it takes is a few notes of its soaring clarinet glissando to know what’s to follow— music, rich with more instantly recognisable rhythms and melodies, vibrant syncopations and sonic complexity, which unfailingly enthrals audiences just as it did when it was performed for the first time 100 years ago. George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue remains one of the most widely performed and recorded symphonic works; one, as a critic presciently wrote after its premiere, that added a new chapter to America’s musical history. 

Gershwin, a second-generation Jewish immigrant in New York, described the rhapsody to his biographer 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 did, in fact, help jazz reach new levels of acceptance from music critics in 1920s America. The story behind the conception of this classical-meets-jazz composition— Gershwin wrote it in a mere five weeks—has more than one version and raises questions on race and cultural appropriation. The 100-year milestone has once again brought to the forefront these questions.  

Birth of the rhapsody 

In the early 1920s, when jazz was still a nascent musical form, Gershwin was on the brink of becoming a sensation on Broadway, drawing from jazz and classical styles to compose anew with aplomb. He had just written his first big national hit song ‘Swanee’ in 1919 and would soon co-write scores for musicals, such as Piccadilly to Broadway in 1920 and For Goodness Sake in 1922. Jazz had arrived only a decade prior to this, as African-American composers melded folk music, blues, pop ballads and ragtime into an entirely new musical form.

Even though jazz was all the rage among the working class, Black communities and an entire generation of young Americans, so to speak, it was considered trite by American critics. Still, its fresh and vibrant sound was hard to ignore, and jazz would only become more popular, with musicians experimenting with unique styles and instrumentation. 

By 1922, bandleader Paul Whiteman had fast become known as “The King of Jazz” for his recordings and concerts that explored many styles of music, of which blending jazz with classical was a prominent one. To make the most of the growing popularity of jazz and, perhaps, to gain the attention of critics, Whiteman dreamed up an “all-jazz concert”— to be performed by his all-white band—that would take shape at New York’s Aeolian Hall, a venue reserved at that time for classical music. The programme for the evening was a version of jazz served on a platter of classical music, which has since stirred discussions about the music of Black communities having been coopted and presented in a manner which was at a distance from both, its original form and originators. 

Yet, the concept of the concert was considered ambitious for its time in 1924 and Whiteman commissioned Gershwin, then 25 years old, to write a jazz concerto—a composition that blended the vibrancy of jazz with the grandeur of classical music. All this, only to have Gershwin decline the offer. Then, five weeks prior to the concert, on an evening out on the town with his brother Ira and lyricist Buddy DeSylva, Gershwin saw an announcement in the newspaper that named him one of the composers for Whiteman’s upcoming concert, ‘An Experiment in Modern Music’. Either Whiteman had not taken no for an answer or Gershwin hadn’t been clear enough about declining the commission. Flabbergasted at first, Gershwin was eventually persuaded to quickly pen the piano score which would then be orchestrated by Whiteman’s arranger, Ferde Grofé.  

Gershwin put down the two piano score for this piece while aboard a train to Boston on 7th January, at the same time polishing his score for Sweet Little Devil that was to open on 24th January. Rhapsody in Blue enjoyed a successful premiere at Whiteman’s concert on 12th February with Gershwin as soloist. The reviews were mixed, but largely met with enthusiasm. Some of the biggest names, from Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff to John Philip Sousa, showed up at the 1,100-plus seat venue. In fact, Whiteman went on to tour the rhapsody in Europe and America for many years after, and Gershwin himself went on to gain popularity for the well received opera Porgy and Bess, among several others. 

Lush orchestration 

Peppered with piano solos, Rhapsody in Blue is centred around five musical themes, namely Ritornello, Train, Stride, Shuffle and Love, each of which is repeated and improvised upon between various sections of the orchestra. Interestingly, the famous wailing glissando that flows into the tubas and trombones section of the Ritornello was the product of a possible prank played by clarinettist Ross Gorman during rehearsals. Gershwin, who had originally written the glissando as a scale, was impressed by what he heard and asked Gorman to retain the section.

The iconic Train theme features the “chug-a-chug-a” rhythm as a prominent motif. Gershwin would later explain that it was his Boston train journey that inspired the rhapsody: “It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang that is often so stimulating to a composer (I frequently hear music in the very heart of noise) that I suddenly heard—and even saw on paper—the complete construction of the rhapsody from beginning to end.”

In the Stride theme, often referred to as the Blues theme, the fast-paced chugging train rhythm slows down to infuse the section with a bluesy feel. Using the stride piano technique popular among Harlem’s jazz pianists in the 1920s, it blends ragtime’s syncopated rhythm using the left hand and an improvisatory blues melody using the right hand. Then comes the Shuffle theme, also called the Ragtime theme, in which the chug of the train speeds up and is marked by syncopated rhythms and an all-round jazzy feel. Finally, the Love theme, also known as the Classical theme, is where Gershwin introduces the grandeur of classical music into his otherwise jazz-centric concerto. 

An ongoing reckoning 

Rhapsody in Blue remains a pivotal piece in music history and is one of the most popular American works to be interpreted on the silver screen and beyond. Since the 1980s, it has also been associated with United Airlines’ television commercial. The rhapsody features in Disney’s Fantasia 2000 and as a recurring theme in Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 adaptation of The Great Gatsby, a film that presented a portrait of the Jazz Age. 

Gershwin’s relenting to the commission by Whiteman introduced jazz to classical audiences, bridging separate musical worlds while challenging notions of what American music could sound like. As successful as the rhapsody proved to be, it has remained a fraught territory. In a piece published by The New York Times earlier this year, Ethan Iverson wrote about Herbie Hancock’s reservations about the rhapsody before he went ahead with recording it. He quotes from Hancock’s memoir, “Why should I make a record celebrating a great white American musician? Especially when that musician had gained fame by creating music in a style that was actually founded by Black musicians—who never got the credit, the fans or the money they so richly deserved.”

It is also true that so far-reaching was the impact of the rhapsody that it went on to influence the music of numerous black jazz musicians. There are others who have argued about the fine line between inspiration and appropriation. In a response to the NYT piece, Béla Fleck wrote: “If it’s wrong for Gershwin to be inspired and influenced by great Black music of the day, would it also be wrong for Charlie Parker to be inspired by Hindemith and Prokofiev to grow jazz into more of a twelve-tone music? Would Coltrane no longer be acceptable because he drew considerable inspiration from Indian music, African music and Stravinsky?” The virtuoso banjo player suggested that the world can create space, opportunity and justice for shunned voices by elevating composers like Duke Ellington in curricula, teaching African and Latin diasporic pulses in the training of classical music, and “still enjoy the rhapsody as one piece of an illustrious puzzle showing the dawn of a powerful coming together of culture in music.”

If we are still talking about Gershwin’s rhapsody 100 years later—be it for its legacy or for its roots in cultural appropriation—then let the conversation flow. Either way, now more than ever, this is a discourse that must be engaged in.