"Rhapsody in blue" - The sound of NYC

Close your eyes and dream about walking in a very crowded street in downtown Manhattan. Done? Can you feel the taxies running so closed to you, can you hear the sounds of people chatting, walking, talking about what they have to do, or where do they have to go? Try to smell the air, try to feel the nice fragrance of flowers and wet grass in Central Park. Try to feel the smell of toasted nuts, and hot pretzel, and hot coffee, by the street. Someone is walking very fast just behind you, and you can just suppose where is he going. You can hear the terrible sound of cars running on the street, but you can also hear a happy music that is advertising a show in Broadway. 

Can you feel everything? This is “Rhapsody in blue”.

Photoframe of "Rhapsody in blue", "Fantasia 2000" version by Walt Disney

This great composition was written in 1924 by George Gershwin, an American musician and composer, and it’s one of the most played all over the world. It was born because of an ambitious idea of Paul Whitman, who decided to create a big full jazz concert in Aolie Hall in New York City, in February 1924. Gershwin was considered one of the best American composer at that time, but he had a very few time to write something new for the occasion. At the end, he tried to mix different kind of music, and he combined jazz –influenced effects with classic and contemporary music. The idea of “Rhapsody in blue” arrived during a train trip to Boston. The result, inspired by the train rhythm and the sounds of the travel, is the perfect  mixture of New York City’s sound. 

George Gershwin.

Gershwin himself said:

“It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty 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”.

Gershwin started his work on January 7^th, and the first version of the composition was written for two pianos. Its name was “American rhapsody”. The name changed because of George Gershwin’s brother, Ira, who took inspiration by a painting called “Nocturne in black and gold: The fallen rocket” seen in an exhibition of James McNeill Whistler. With its new name, “Rapsody in blu” arrived in Ferde Grofè’s hands, who was Whitman’s arranger. Grofè worked on it and just 8 days before the premiere it was beautiful as we know it. Gershwin played the piano during the performance, and often he improvised what he was doing. The concert had a great success, also because of the presence of big names of music in the hall: Sousa, Rachmaninoff, Stockowsky. 

After this big event Gershwin became the biggest celebrity in musical American field.

“Rhapsody in blue” is a concept of many instruments. The first sound we can hear listening to this work is a clarinet trill and a glissando, that introduced the main theme of the music. But the structure is very difficult to analyze, because of all those different instruments mixed together (Gershwin experimented peculiar instruments like the banjo and all the typical jazz ones in the classic orchestra structure), and all the different sound influences. In “Rhapsody in blue” there are effects of Charleston music, ragtime, Cuban clave and a lot of jazz improvisation. Since it was born, many music lovers and professors has been fighting and discussing about its style. 

Is it jazz or not?

The clarinet glissando.

Probably this question will never have a sure answer, but actually it’s really sure that Gershwin had the chance to experiment different sounds and styles, creating something very original and new. Thanks to these kind of experiments he quickly became the creator of American musical, and the storyteller of American sounds and life. The “Rapsody” is worldwide known for being used in movies (“Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” for example), in tv series, in famous animation movies (“Fantasia 2000”) and immediately it makes us think about American life.

As he himself said:

"True music must repeat the thought and ispirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today".

We can only try to live that today that Gershwin is talking about, listening to its wonderful notes.

Click here for watching the video.