2013-02-27
3 分钟Howard Goodall and Suzy Klein discuss Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue
The story of music in 50 pieces with Howard Goodall and Susie Klein.
Howard, one of the most popular pieces of the 20th century, came about almost by accident from a composer who was completely inexperienced in writing orchestral music.
This is George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.
Yes, it is a fabulous and enjoyable piece, although received when it was first performed by the, what you might call the high brow critics in a very condescending and unpleasant manner.
They couldn't see the impact of what it was going to be thereafter.
Why should they have been able to?
They couldn't see the future.
But Rhapsody in Blue is the moment where the two separate by then fields of jazz and classical were.
They attempted to bring them together in a concert, a very long concert, where they wanted to show the classical concert going audience what jazz might be like if it was in that context, instead of in speakeasies and bars, etcetera.
And they also wanted to show people who liked jazz what a classical concert might be like.
It's a two way street.
You come and listen to this.
And the promoter of the concert thought it might be an idea to get a young composer in the popular field to come along and write a piece of sort of jazz.
We have to be clear about Rhapsody, but it's not really jazz, as a lot of jazzers at that time would have understood.
It's jazzy.
And Duke Ellington, I think, although he much liked the piece, did say it's not really the kind of swing that everybody else is doing.
The idea was to say to a writer of popular music, can you write something from that field, this new field of jazz that somehow fits with the classical orchestra?
And Gershom was very up for this idea.
Indeed.
He wrote many pieces in the classical arena thereafter.