{"id":2889,"date":"2024-02-11T22:50:31","date_gmt":"2024-02-12T03:50:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=2889"},"modified":"2024-02-12T10:31:14","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T15:31:14","slug":"happy-birthday-to-the-worst-masterpiece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2024\/02\/happy-birthday-to-the-worst-masterpiece.html","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday to the \u201cWorst Masterpiece\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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February 12 marks the 100th<\/sup> birthday of Rhapsody in Blue<\/em>. Via NPR, the daily newsmagazine \u201c1A\u201d is re-airing my \u201cGershwin Moment\u201d documentary<\/a><\/strong> from last February; it highlights my favorite Rhapsody in<\/em> Blue<\/em> recording, by Alexander Tsfasman and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky (Moscow, 1960). And I\u2019m taking part in additional Gershwin radio features on NPR and BBC-3. As the pianist Benjamin Pasternack once had occasion to remark to me: \u201cIt\u2019s the most beloved piece in the American concert repertoire.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, historically, it may also be the most reviled. When I wrote Classical Music in America: A<\/em> History of Its Rise and Fall<\/em><\/a> (2005), among my most startling discoveries was \u201cthe Gershwin Threat.\u201d In the classical music community, prominent musicians who spoke up for Gershwin were invariably foreign-born \u2013 a long list including Schoenberg, Klemperer, Rachmaninoff, and Ravel. American-born classical musicians typically disparaged Gershwin as a dilettante interloper. The larger picture here is the Jazz Threat \u2013 an antipathy to jazz being one of the defining features of interwar American classical music. In fact, the Gershwin Threat is an inexhaustible topic \u2013 and it apparently remains itself inexhaustible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A much noticed Jan. 26 article<\/a><\/strong> in the New York Times<\/em>, by the estimable jazz pianist Ethan Iverson, was headlined: \u201cThe Worst Masterpiece: \u2019Rhapsody in Blue\u2019 at 100.\u201d Iverson calls Gershwin\u2019s Rhapsody<\/em> \u201cna\u00efve and corny.\u201d His grievance is that the \u201cpromise\u201d of Rhapsody in Blue<\/em> \u201chasn\u2019t been honored.\u201d Gershwin\u2019s \u201cbold and obvious proposal\u201d was that America\u2019s vital Black vernacular be merged with classical genres. And it never really happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He’s correct about that \u2013 our concert composers have mainly squandered the Black musical motherlode \u2013 but Gershwin (of all people) is not to blame. He was the great hope, not the great obstacle. Iverson cites the \u201creception history\u201d of Rhapsody in Blue<\/em> \u2013 but that history is obviously unknown to him. What\u2019s salient here isn\u2019t that Rhapsody<\/em> \u201cclogged the arteries\u201d of American symphonic practice; what\u2019s salient is that it was shunned. Just check out the subscription-concert repertoire for the major American orchestras all the way to the turn of the 21t century \u2013 with the exception of the New York Philharmonic, they all ghettoized Gershwin as a marginal \u201cpops\u201d composer. A typical example: the Boston Symphony first performed Rhapsody in Blue<\/em> on subscription in 1997. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did\u00a0Rhapsody in Blue<\/em>\u00a0exert a baneful influence on American composers? No \u2013 it exerted virtually no influence at all. They denigrated it as amateur hackwork. The most notable exception, if it can be called that, was Aaron Copland\u2019s Piano Concerto of 1926 , conceived as a modernist \u201cimprovement\u201d on Gershwin\u2019s\u00a0Rhapsody in Blue<\/em> and Concerto in F. And that\u2019s how Paul Rosenfeld influentially extolled it — for fixing Gershwin\u2019s \u201chash derivative\u201d efforts. Roy Harris, in comparison, urged Copland to ignore jazz altogether. You have to look abroad \u2013 to, e.g., Ravel\u2019s divine Piano Concerto in G \u2013 to find a major composer for whom Gershwin was a catalyst for memorably assimilating the jazz influence. In the US, the exception that proves the rule was Gershwin\u2019s own\u00a0Porgy and Bess<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 itself a work still\u00a0threatening and misunderstood<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0in the US (but not abroad).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gershwin\u2019s followers, Iverson complains, had \u201cterrible rhythm\u201d (he singles out Oscar Levant). But Gershwin was himself a master stride pianist. He was intimate with Harlem. He hung out with James P. Johnson and Luckey Roberts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gershwin Threat was many things. It stigmatized Black America as declasse. It symptomatized New World provincialism, an exaggerated quest for pedigree. It never wholly died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I write about the Gershwin Threat at length in \u201cOn My Way<\/strong>\u201d<\/a> \u2013 the Forgotten Story of Rouben<\/em> Mamoulian, George Gershwin, and \u201cPorgy and Bess\u2019\u2019<\/em> and Dvorak\u2019s<\/a> Prophecy<\/em><\/strong> and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And here\u2019s a Listening Guide for The Gershwin Momen<\/a>t<\/strong> on 1A:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

00:00 Rhapsody in Blue, <\/em>as recorded in Soviet Russia in 1960<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4:12 \u2014 John McWhorter on resituating Gershwin in the story of American music<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8:55 \u2014 Ruby Elzy sings \u201cMy Man\u2019s Gone Now\u201d for the departed composer<\/p>\n\n\n\n

13:40 \u2013Kirill Gerstein plays \u201cI Got Rhythm\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

14:30 \u2014 Gerstein performs and discusses his improvised cadenza in the Gershwin Piano Concerto in F<\/p>\n\n\n\n

23:33 \u2014 Traci Lombre on Gershwin and Black America<\/p>\n\n\n\n

26:20 \u2014 Gershwin plays \u201cI Got Rhythm\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

27:40 \u2014 Nina Simone sings \u201cI Love You Porgy\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

29:50 \u2014 \u201cMusic by Gershwin\u201d on the radio (1934)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

35:10 \u2014 Mark Clague on An American in Paris<\/em> \u2014 taxi horns and sonata structure (with the University of Michigan Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Kiesler)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

40:40 \u2014 What if Gershwin had lived as long as Copland (with comments by Mark Clague)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

February 12 marks the 100th birthday of Rhapsody in Blue. Via NPR, the daily newsmagazine \u201c1A\u201d is re-airing my \u201cGershwin Moment\u201d documentary from last February; it highlights my favorite Rhapsody in Blue recording, by Alexander Tsfasman and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky (Moscow, 1960). And I\u2019m taking part in additional Gershwin radio features on NPR and BBC-3. As the pianist Benjamin Pasternack once had occasion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2889","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-KB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2889"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2927,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2889\/revisions\/2927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}