Gershwin1
My primary goal for enrolling in music appreciation was to learn about the composers/musicians that have greatly contributed to modern music. Therefore, I decided to analyze a piece of music "Rhapsody in Blue", which affected music in 1920's and still impacting the music world today. George Gershwins, "Rhapsody in Blues", first performance was on February 12, 1924, and became an overnight success taking the music world by surprise. In this paper, I intend to analyze two very important versions of "Rhapsody in Blue," and describe Gershwin's life leading to his achievement. George Gershwin was born Jacob Gershowitz on September 26, 1898 in Brooklyn, New York. The son of immigrant parents, George had two brothers, Arthur and Ira, and one sister Francis. Although, George is the most well know of the family, his brother Ira was also a successful lyricist. In fact, if it were not for Ira's interest in music, George's parents would have never purchased the family's first piano. George, took an immediate interest in the piano, and immediately began successfully playing by ear. His parents arranged for piano lessons, and George began to study seriously at the age of 12 years old. George began his professional career in "T
The original version of "Rhapsody in Blue", was a great performance, but incomplete. In the piano part of the original 1924 piano/orchestra edition, over fifty measures had been deleted in the published versions. Remarkably, eighty-eight measures were missing from the piano solo version. Where Gershwin left blanks or few indications, necessary editing had been made. However, in over sixty-five measures, Gershwin's own phrasing, chords, notes, dynamic and other interpretive clues had been altered! Grofe's orchestration of Gershwin's manuscript had not been shortened, and Grofe had not personally made any deletions from Gershwin's piano manuscript. "The final result of Harms decision to shorten the Rhapsody was a fragmented and truncated work, lending confidence to the "structurally flawed" judgment of the work by Gershwin's critics". The originally published Rhapsody was now approximately twelve to fourteen minutes in length, but in Gershwin's original performances it was at eighteen minutes even with his quickly paced tempo. George became one of America's first premier composes and his compositions are still used today as tools for teachers everywhere. His jazz derived techniques, and melodies known as "blues" notes helped shape modern music. His musical style has influenced many modern day Very few composers have achieved instant celebrity to anything like the degree that George Gershwin enjoyed following the performance of "Rhapsody and Blues". This piece was composed very quickly. In fact, the whole evolution of this composition was an experiment. Paul Whiteman, one of New York's foremost bandleaders had hired the Aeolian Hall for what was billed as "An Experiment in Modern Music". The experiment was to see whether it was possible for American composers to achieve a combination of classical and popular idioms and forms. This experiment was a success, and paved Gershwin's road to a short but successful career. After George's de
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Approximate Word count = 1320
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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