Rhapsody in Blue

The Rhapsody in Blue was a new sound in music. Blues melody, jazz piano figurations, jazz band instrumental effects had all been used in “concert music” before but never so consistently, so ambitiously and so successfully. Gershwin wrote it for Paul Whiteman’s concert of symphonic jazz in New York in 1924, scoring it for piano and jazz band. Ferde Grofe rescored it for the Whiteman dance band and later made two more versions for orchestra - both of which retain, however, the three saxophones and banjo of the dance-band arrangement.

The splendid opening gesture, the solo clarinet trill and the long glissando up to the main theme, was Gershwin’s idea. But, apart from that essential stylistic statement, the greatness of the work is not in its instrumentation, brilliant though it is. Nor is in its structure, rhapsodic as it is. It is in its creative vitality and its melodic inspiration. Gershwin quite frankly takes a tune, varies it and develops it for all it is worth and then goes on to the next. So the entry of each new theme - always introduced by the orchestra, incidentally, never by the piano - marks off the main sections of the piece.

The cheerful second main theme is introduced by the three saxophones, while the third theme is a very characteristic sentimental show-stopper, richly scored for oboes, clarinet and saxophones. This basically simple layout is both complicated and unified by the pianist, who affirms his (or her) fidelity to the first theme in three extended solo passages, the last of them just before the coda rattles all three main themes together.