Paul Whiteman billed his afternoon concert at Aeolian Hall as "An Experiment in Modern Music," a long program meant to show that American popular music had grown up enough for the concert hall. The piece the audience remembered came second to last: a new work by the 25-year-old George Gershwin, with the composer himself at the piano. Rhapsody in Blue joined jazz rhythms and blues inflections to symphonic form. It became one of the defining sounds of American music and made Gershwin a serious composer in the eyes of the public.
Whiteman had been planning a concert of American popular music in a major hall since touring Britain with his dance orchestra in 1923. When a rival bandleader announced a similar idea, he hurried his program into shape and needed a showpiece from Gershwin. The composer wrote it in a matter of weeks. Whiteman's arranger, Ferde Grofé, orchestrated it for the band, which was expanded with a string section for the occasion.
The opening bars, perhaps the most famous part of the piece, were a late addition. In rehearsal, the clarinetist Ross Gorman played the rising opening run as a smeared glissando, partly as a joke. Gershwin liked it and told him to play it that way, as boldly as he could, at the premiere. That wail up the scale is now one of the most recognisable few seconds in 20th-century music.
Some of what the audience heard that afternoon was never written down. Gershwin improvised parts of his piano solos and told Whiteman to wait for his nod before bringing the orchestra back in. No one can know exactly how the first performance sounded. What survives is the recording Whiteman and Gershwin made that spring, on both sides of a twelve-inch 78 rpm disc.
Key people: George Gershwin, Paul Whiteman, Ferde Grofé, Ross Gorman