Reflections on power

America at 250: a salute to an iconic orchestral composition

By John C. Wohlstetter

American orchestral composer and conductor Peter Boyer poses with pianist Jeffry Biegel ahead of the performance of Boyer’s Rhapsody in Red, White and Blue with the London Symphony

Orchestra. 

PHOTO COURTESY OF PETER BOYER

On a snowy afternoon, February 12, 1924 — Abraham Lincoln’s birthday — a performance of America’s most iconic orchestral composition was presented at Aeolian Hall in Manhattan: George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. It was the penultimate piece in a lengthy program, titled An Experiment in Modern Music, that included a contribution from Irving Berlin and concluded with Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance. Among those in attendance were classical music “swells”: composer-pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff, composer Victor Herbert, nonpareil violinist Jascha Heifetz, conductors Leopold Stokowski and Walter Damrosch, all there to opine whether the new music was enough of a lady to be played in formal concert venues.

Yet Gershwin’s composition is, to borrow Winston Churchill’s 1939 description of Russia, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped inside an enigma.” Here’s why:

First, we do not know note-for-note what Gershwin played during the February 12, 1924, concert — at two points in the score, Gershwin’s instruction “wait for nod” directed the orchestra when to resume playing; second, during his lifetime, Gershwin never got around to publishing a solo-piano version of the two-piano/four hands arrangement he gave orchestrator Ferde Grofé to orchestrate for conductor Paul Whiteman and the Palais Royale Orchestra; and third, George Gershwin never heard the 1942 orchestral score by Ferde Grofé, composed five years after Gershwin’s untimely death; it is the version that audiences have heard ever since.

The composition’s genesis began after Gershwin learned from a January 3, 1924, newspaper story that Whiteman was going to conduct a major concert on February 12, and that Gershwin would contribute a “jazz concerto.” As Gershwin rode a January 4 train to Boston to watch a show for which he had composed the score, he saw in his mind’s eye and heard in his mind’s ear all the major jazz themes he would use:

… It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, rattle-ty-bang … I frequently hear music in the very heart of noise. And there 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.

Gershwin chose to title his piece a rhapsody, a loose musical form derived from the Greek words “to sew together” (unite) and “ode” (song). From his brother, lyricist Ira, came “in blue,” inspired by two paintings by James Abbott MacNeil Whistler: Nocturne in Black and Gold and Arrangement in Grey and Black, the latter famously nicknamed Whistler’s Mother. “Blue” was, of course, the fundamental tonal color of George’s composition.

Upon his return from Boston, he began work on his manuscript. One day, Grofé, who commuted to the Gershwin home daily, walked in as George was playing a slow melody on the piano. Grofé wrote it down and returned the next day. He suggested to George that he add a slow theme to his composition. But Gershwin thought it too sentimental and did not want to use a melody he had composed some five years before and put in a trunk. Grofé said, “You’ll have a hard time writing another theme like that.” Ira walked in, and George played the melody for his brother. He fully agreed with Grofé that the Rhapsody could use a slow theme and added, “You could have a hard time writing another tune as good as this.”

When Grofé returned the next day, Gershwin had raised his melody from the key of E-flat to E Major, where it remains. Then known as the Whiteman theme, it is now known as the United Airlines theme. Overall, Gershwin’s composition is eclectic: It has three voices: a tempo rubato (Italian: “to steal” — i.e., a stretched-out tempo) jazz blues voice; an ensemble voice, tempo giusto (“strict time”); and a symphonic voice (a big orchestral sound with strong accents). It combines classical and jazz themes. Its classical music referents are the Whiteman theme’s soaring melody per Tchaikovsky; followed by a toccata (It., toccare, “to touch” — rapid staccato passages — “detached” or “separated” — notes of very short duration, each separated by silence) per Sergei Prokofiev; and throughout the composition elaborate ornamental musical flourishes per Franz Liszt. Though some musical commentators — most notably, the late conductor Leonard Bernstein — noted that the composition does not meet strict formalist criteria, the Rhapsody transcends formalism via its sheer exhilarating beauty and what the French philosopher Henri Bergson called élan vital — “life force.”

There is more to the Rhapsody’s spontaneity. During rehearsal, clarinetist Ross Gorman, noted for his virtuosity, tilted back his head and played the opening as a long whooping glissando — It., glissare — “to glide” over a series of notes by gently serially depressing them. (A long part of the solo pianist’s repertoire, in 1924, it was a rarity for clarinetists.) Upon hearing this, Gershwin, whose original piano score had begun with a 17-note scale, immediately adopted the change.

Gershwin’s post-performance piano-roll recording is the only version where all choices were made by the composer. The four and a half minute limits of wax disc recording media necessitate cutting bars to shorten the piece. Luckily, fermatas (discretionary long pauses) fall at the one-third (G Major slow theme) and two-thirds (E Major slow theme) marks. Gershwin played 95 percent of the full-length 600-bar handwritten score, playing both tracks on the recording. There is no ascertainably definitive solo piano urtext (“original score”) for the Rhapsody. Some solo passages that Gershwin played are not in any published scores. All Rhapsody solo piano versions must be reduced from four to two hands. None of those reductions was made by George Gershwin. In 1933, Gershwin wrote to his publisher, expressing his intention to produce a definitive score. But his work on the folk opera Porgy and Bess, and then his work on two movie musicals, intervened; and his untimely 1937 death from a brain tumor precluded it.

In 2019, pianist Jeffrey Biegel decided to commemorate the composition’s 2024 centennial. He performs the centennial critical edition, issued by the University of Michigan Gershwin Initiative. Mr. Biegel further brought composer Peter Boyer to compose a Rhapsody in Red, White & Blue, drawing inspiration from Gershwin’s 1924 original. From 2023 to 2028, including the July 4, 2026, “America 250” semiquincentennial celebration, pianist Biegel will ultimately perform Peter Boyer’s Rhapsody with local orchestras in every state, often juxtaposing it with Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.

Biegel’s first performance of the Peter Boyer Rhapsody was in June 2023 with the Utah Symphony. On May 18, 2024, he performed both compositions at the North Charleston Performing Arts Center with Nick Palmer conducting the North Charleston Pop. Since his initial performances, the Rhapsody National Initiative (RNI) has become the largest consortium of orchestras ever assembled for a new work in the United States. (Readers can find Boyer’s Rhapsody in Red, White & Blue, London Symphony Orchestra, with pianist Biegel recording, online)

Bottom Line: The enduring power of great music can survive multiple generations and immeasurably enrich civilizations worldwide.

John C. Wohlstetter is a senior fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and the Washington, D.C.-based Gold Institute for International Strategy. He is the author of Presidential Succession: Constitution, Congress and National Security (3rd ed., 2026), to be published later this year.