Rhapsody in Blue, musical composition by George Gershwin, known for its integration of jazz rhythms with classical music, that premiered on February 12, 1924, as part of bandleader Paul Whiteman’s “An Experiment in Modern Music” concert at New York’s Aeolian Concert Hall. The composition, perhaps Gershwin’s most famous, is one of the most performed of all American concert works, and its opening clarinet glissando is one of the most recognized musical passages in the world. Woody Allen introduced the composition to a new audience with the visually and aurally striking opening of his 1979 film Manhattan, and United Airlines’s use of the music in its advertisements since the 1980s greatly expanded its global popularity.
Legend has it that Gershwin completely forgot that Whiteman had commissioned a work from him for the upcoming concert in New York. According to the tale, George’s brother Ira, on January 3 or 4, read in a newspaper that Whiteman would soon lead his musicians in a concert of works by Victor Herbert, Irving Berlin, and George Gershwin, the Gershwin piece to be a jazz concerto. When Ira asked his brother about the new piece, George expressed astonishment. He remembered talking with Whiteman about a concerto, but he had not understood that it was expected by Whiteman for performance at that concert. Gershwin had only five weeks left before the premiere on February 12.
He began composing the new concerto on January 7 . Because he needed to travel to Boston for the opening of his newest musical, the main theme of Rhapsody in Blue was actually written on the train from New York. The composer later claimed,
It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang that is often so stimulating to a composer (I frequently hear music in the very heart of noise) that I suddenly heard—and even saw on paper—the complete construction of the Rhapsody from beginning to end. …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 the definite plot of the piece.
Gershwin worked quickly, sketching out the ensemble parts of the piece at the piano, then handing over the score to Ferde Grofé, Whiteman’s arranger, who orchestrated it. Thanks to their team effort, the band’s parts were ready in time, but the solo piano part was not yet on paper. It existed only in the composer’s mind, and at the first performance, fronting Whiteman’s band, Gershwin played it from memory. Grofé completed a score for piano and full symphony orchestra in 1926.
Ira Gershwin would later recall that George wanted to name his composition American Rhapsody, but Ira, having just seen an exhibit of paintings by James McNeill Whistler that included Whistler’s painting Nocturne: Blue and Gold—Old Battersea Bridge, instead suggested the title Rhapsody in Blue. In whatever case, the debut concert, attended by Sergey Rachmaninoff, Leopold Stokowski, and other luminaries, was a triumph, and an American classic was born.