Page 66 - GTMF 2024 Season Program

July 5 & 6 PROGRAM NOTES

Rhapsody in Blue

continued

Rhapsody in Blue, a score so new
that he hadn’t even written out
the piano part: Whiteman simply
waited for George’s nod to cue
in the orchestral entrances. It has
become an article of faith that
Gershwin wrote the score with
blinding speed (either four days
or three weeks, depending on
your source) but Gershwin’s own
account of the composition of the
work hints at something more like
two months, from about December
of 1923 through January 1924.
Given Gershwin’s experience in
the hurly-burly of musical theater,
where songs were written
overnight and entire scores were
prepared within a matter of a few
weeks, two months represents a
relatively lavish timeframe, even
allowing for Gershwin’s lack of
formal training and subsequent
struggles with the nuts and bolts
of symphonic composition. Claude Debussy — Atelier Nadar

His inexperience was such, in
fact, that Whiteman’s house
arranger Ferde Grofé provided
the orchestration. He was also a Claude Debussy
neophyte as to musical form, so Ibéria from Images
the Rhapsody is more potpourri
than organically-unified AT A GLANCE
structure. But no matter. It Claude Debussy made only the
rightfully brought down the briefest of visits to Spain, but
house, uniquely American, Jazz Born: 1862 despite that—or perhaps because
Age anthem that it is. “How trite, Died: 1918 of that—he wrote some of the
feeble and conventional…so Date of Composition: 1905-1912 best Spanish-themed music
stale, so inexpressive!” sniped Instrumentation: Ibéria is scored around. His was a Spain of the
New York critic Lawrence Gilman. for piccolo, 3 flutes (3 doubling imagination, informed by reading
rd
What a grump. piccolo), 2 oboes, English and conversations with Spanish
friends and not by tourism. In
horn, 3 clarinets, 3 bassoons, addition to piano pieces such
contrabassoon, 4 horns, as the fragrant La soirée dans
3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, Grenade or the borderline louche
timpani, percussion, 2 harps, La puerta del vino, Debussy gifted
celesta and strings. posterity with a glittering orchestral

64 Grand Teton Music Festival Season 63