By the early 1920s, jazz had become widely known. During this period dance bands were also performing a variety of pop-oriented music. This music, although similar to and influenced by jazz, was not as rhythmically or melodically complex. It was dance music. One of the most successful of these bands was led by Paul Whiteman.
Whiteman commissioned the young composer George Gershwin to write Rhapsody in Blue for his orchestra. Because of the newness of combining jazz elements to what was otherwise a form of symphonic music, Whiteman billed the work as “An Experiment in Modern Music.”
Gershwin was born in Brooklyn, New York, of Russian Jewish immigrants. When he was twelve, his family purchased a piano. George quickly took to it and at age fifteen, dropped out of school to work as a pianist for Jerome H. Remick and Co., a music publisher.
Gershwin’s training included the study of classical music, but he worked mostly in popular genres. He worked as a songwriter with his brother Ira, a lyricist. By the time he composed Rhapsody in Blue, he had composed a number of musicals and had had a number of songs published. At the time, most classical musicians and music critics did not view jazz favorably. They felt that it was a sloppy music played by bad musicians because of all the note-bending, blue notes, and swing rhythms being used.
Gershwin wanted to create a piece that was suitable for a concert program and that used jazz rhythms and phrasing while not involving improvisation. The critics as well as audiences approved of Rhapsody in Blue. George Gershwin became known as “the man who brought jazz to the concert hall.”
During the early twentieth century, a number of African American composers were writing in the classical tradition. In addition to Scott Joplin, who was best known for his piano rags, were Henry T. Burleigh, Florence B. Price, and William Dawson. The man who came to be known as the “dean of Afro-American Composers” was William Grant Still.
Still was born into a musical family in Woodville, Mississippi. As a young man he intended to attend medical school but his love for music changed the direction he took. He studied at Oberlin College Conservatory. After completing his education he settled in New York City.
William was a versatile performer and an active composer. He composed in a variety of genres and styles throughout a long career. He composed for films and television; he composed operas and ballets; he composed chamber music and works for voice. He died in 1978 at age eighty-three.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
1. Hardly any composers of the twentieth century were unaffected by jazz. Stravinsky, Ravel, Milhaud, Poulenc, and other Europeans were quite interested in this American phenomenon. American composers from Copland to Bernstein also fused jazz elements into their works. Jazz performers were equally interested in “classical” music, too. A number of them commissioned significant works from important composers. Stravinsky composed his Ebony Concerto for Woody Herman. Benny Goodman was responsible for works from Copland, Bartók, Hindemith, and Milhaud.
2. George Gershwin’s place in the pantheon of American composers is difficult to locate. Although his classically oriented works, especially Porgy and Bess and Rhapsody in Blue, were well received, it was his work on Broadway that brought him fame and fortune. He was among a group of young composers lured to Hollywood when sound motion pictures developed. Had he lived longer, he might have been one of the first successful movie composers.
3. William Grant Still was the first important African American composer in the United States. His career included many firsts: the first African American composer to have a work performed by a major American orchestra (1931); the first African American to conduct a major orchestra (1936); and the first African American to have an opera performed by a major American orchestra (Troubled Island, 1949). He composed a number of works for children, including “The Little Song That Wanted to be a Symphony.”
FURTHER TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. How is Rhapsody in Blue similar to a piano concerto? Should it be considered a piano concerto? Why or why not?
2. Is Afro-American Symphony a program work? If not, does it have any programlike elements?