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Although I haven't been through Ohare in a while, I believe it is Brian Eno's "Music for Airports" that plays in the moving walkway area, not Rhapsody in Blue. Can anyone else confirm this? Is this a mistake or did they change the music?
CSharpMinor 00:44, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
The reaction to rhapsody in blue made it anything but an instant success, some people walked out half way through the debut performance. The sentence saying it was met with instant success is wrong, i'd like to change it. Briaboru 22:54, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
The section as it stands in the article now seems only to present negative reactions. I am not a music historian, but surely if response was mixed, the section on its reception should reflect this? The standing text seems biased toward negative criticism. 72.49.43.222 ( talk) 04:54, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
Whatever the reaction of the audience, its supposedly illustrious members need to be documented with more care. Concert and CD programme note writers, and this article, confuse those named in the original programme as patrons of Whiteman's project with actual audience members. Rachmaninoff appears as an "influential composer" who was present. Well, he wasn't. On February 12, 1924 he was in Kansas City giving a recital as part of a long US concert tour. Two days beforehand he was in Davenport, Iowa, and one day later he was in Lincoln, Nebraska. That doesn't give him time to hop on a train and leg it to Aeolian Hall in Manhattan for an afternoon concert. A listing of all his known concerts can be found at rachmaninoff.org, and it has clearly been researched with great care, from concert programmes and other materials, mainly at the Library of Congress.
If Rachmaninoff was not there, how many other patrons have been inaccurately equated with members of the audience? In an article published in the Sioux City Sunday Journal on March 2, 1924, entitled "Jazz Dons the Purple", O.O. McIntyre names some of those listed as patrons in the original programme, which includes Amelita Galli-Curci, Mary Garden, Alma Gluck, Walter Damrosch, Jascha Heifetz, Victor Herbert, John McCormack, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Josef Stransky. If some other contemporary critic listed those whom he actually saw in attendance, will someone please quote the source material, so that we can all judge the original article? Otherwise this Wiki article needs to be modified, which I am happy to do myself, but only after giving those more closely involved the chance first. Pianola ( talk) 21:28, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
Today. February 11th, 2024, I bit the bullet and removed several more false attendees from the main page. Since I am removing them, it is difficult to provide sources on the actual page, so I have augmented the advice on NOT including the various attendees, in between the arrow brackets that I found on the edit page, where I have quoted sources for the absence of those I have removed. I realise that I shall not be the most popular member of the Wiki community, dashing people's dreams, but after all we are here to be as truthful as we can. Additionally the BBC ran an item on its main lunchtime news programme today, mentioning that Stravinsky was there, and that was the last straw. There will be an academic article about all this, in a few months' time. Pianola ( talk) 20:23, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
I'm snipping
I don't have any Tom and Jerry music handy and I'm afraid I don't remember the character's "leitmotifs."
"Quite obviously directly inspired by" doesn't sound too objective to me, tunes being what they are and implications of plagiarism being what they are.
Of course cartoons do quote and borrow from classical music all the time, but I would have thought MGM would have been cautious about referring to music which... wouldn't it still have been under copyright at the time? Is Gershwin credited in the cartoon credits? Dpbsmith (talk) 11:05, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
BTW, I've been trying to find a source since the wording was - quite justifiably - removed (due to it being un-sourced). Some of the above argument is unsigned, and I thought I'd better just state that it wasn't me(!)... I'm still looking for a suitable source, although I have come across mentions that RIB itself was used as a soundtrack in one particular T&J short... but no one seems to know the name! Still searching... Howie ☎ 18:42, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Per above, a contributor has reinserted the assertion that "In the Tom and Jerry cartoons, each of the character's leitmotifs are inspired by Rhapsody in Blue and other Gershwin works." In response to my request for a citation, he references http://www.recordhall.com/george-gershwin-biography.html . Does this adequately meet the policies of WP:V and WP:CITE? Note that www.recordhall.com appears to be a Wikipedia-like site that allows anonymous contributions, and that no author's identity is available for the article being cited. Dpbsmith (talk) 16:01, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm settling for weasel-wording for now:
I'm not really happy with a http://www.recordhall.com/george-gershwin-biography.html as a source, but I think it's OK for the statement that the Tom and Jerry music is a) "sometimes perceived" as resembling b) Gershwin generally. I don't think anyone has yet pinned source citations that would make a connection with the Rhapsody in Blue specifically, and certainly not to the characters' leitmotifs referencing the Rhapsody in Blue. Dpbsmith (talk) 11:05, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Seriously, wikipedia moderators, get a grip. The tune in the show is not "sometimes perceived as reminiscent of Gershwin": they are plain Rhapsodhy in Blue, chord-to-chord. One just has to listen to the piece and to the cartoon. How do you reference that? Easy with book passages, huh? Anyway, now that I've seen this discussion, I know my editing will get deleted. who cares? I just came here because I've been listening to Rhapsody non-stop for a few days trying to remember when I've heard it before and then, bang! Tom & Jerry came to mind... always thought that Scott Bradley was awesome. Now I know he was just adapting outside material... anyway, bye -- 189.125.176.194 ( talk) 17:40, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
I'll offer this analysis of Richard Wagner and Star Wars as the standard for a convincing description of a serious composer's influence on a piece of modern popular culture. The reference cited here doesn't go into anything approaching that depth. Since it's a superficial statement from a dubious source and it fails to quote anyone involved in the production of the Tom and Jerry cartoons, I'd leave it out of the Wikipedia article altogether. It could return in future revisions if the editor finds better sources. Regards, Durova 19:56, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm snipping
I just don't accept http://www.recordhall.com/george-gershwin-biography.html as a reliable source. And nobody's come up with any specific connection to the "Rhapsody in Blue."
And I've made a point of listening to a few Tom and Jerry cartoons recently, including Manhattan Serenade, and frankly, I don't buy it. I believe what people are hearing is music that is composed in a "Jazz Age" idiom (by "Jazz Age" I'm thinking of the likes Paul Whiteman and the other mostly-white big-band jazz-inspired music of the 1920s and 30s). The music that Leroy Shield composed for the Laurel and Hardy films has many elements of that idiom; all the music played by Whiteman at the Aeolian Hall concert, not just "Rhapsody in Blue" ihas elements of that idiom; Ferde Grofe's "Mississippi Suite" has elements of that idiom. What Gershwin did was to use the contemporary pop-music idiom in a sustained, sophisticated way in a longish piece of orchestral music.
I did not hear any "leitmotifs" for individual characters that were carried over from one cartoon to another.
"Mouse in Manhattan" of course does not just sound like Louis Alter, it is Louis Alter. I've listened to several recordings of "Manhattan Serenade" though nothing else by Alter. I'm not enough of a musicologist to judge how close a resemblance there is between Alter and Gershwin. I think, myself, OK, perhaps an influence, maybe something more than both just immersed in the same musical idioms. (I suspect a lot of things sounded like the Rhapsody in Blue for a few years after it came out).
I may not have listened to enough or to the right cartoons, but the ones that were not Mouse in Manhattan did not sound "Gershwinesque" to me at all.
There was a sort of tradition, that I connect with the name "Silly Symphonies" for the early Disney cartoons, of occasionally basing a cartoon on a (butchered) familiar bit of "pop" classical music, the sort of thing I imagine a town band might have played on a Sunday afternoon in the bandstand, and I think there are other cartoons that have a strong connection to one particular piece of music.
Anyway, I'm prepared to be convinced about the Tom and Jerry music, but I want a citable source before this goes into the article
Personally, at the moment I do not even buy a specific connection to Gershwin, let alone to the Rhapsody in Blue. I think this is rather like someone listening to the Max Steiner score of "Gone with the Wind," and saying, "Oh! that sounds just like Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto." The Max Steiners and Erich Korngolds and John Williamses used classical idioms in their film scores for serious films; the Scott Bradleys and Carl Stallingses used 1920s-1930s pop-music, "jazz age," idioms (with considerable dashes of familiar classical music). But as I say, I'm fully prepared to be convinced otherwise. Dpbsmith (talk) 11:15, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Sarah!!!!!
I'm removing
until someone can provide a verifiable source for this interesting-if-true fact. It's been labelled as needing a citation for... months? A long time, anyway. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:58, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
What does copyright law say about short excerpts of music recordings? The clarinet opening seems an obvious choice if legal.
Most of the work that I've read on Paul Whiteman states that although he was happy to be called the King of Jazz, he didn't invent it for himself, nor did he bandy it about often. His "King of Jazz" status, Benny Goodman's "King of Swing," Elvis Presley's "King of Rock and Roll," Michael Jackson's "King of Pop," and Clark Gable's "King of Hollywood" crown for that matter, were given to them by others and had nothing to do with artistic or historical circumstance and everything to do with ability to sell product. All of these men were talented, perhaps less talented than some others working at the same time and in the same fields, but all were absolutely the kings at the cash register in their respective eras - hence the title. Like others have stated in Whiteman's Wiki page and on this discussion page, he always acknowledged his sources, and 1920s audiences tended to be much broader in their definition of jazz than those of today or even the 1940s. Whiteman, however, couldn't yet make the leap to actually hiring African American musicians. That would wait another decade for Goodman to cross that line. PJtP ( talk) 01:23, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Just be sure to keep in mind, somebody already had the title of "King of Jazz." That would be King Oliver. (This is mentioned in many places, professors, textbooks, and the wikipedia page of jazz royalty.) He was the first truly dedicated jazz artist to be recorded. (If my text book serves me right.) Whiteman was alright with the name of King of Jazz, but maybe this was just a nickname for the times. I just wanted to throw in my two bits. I hope it helps out. 71.237.75.150 ( talk) 23:58, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
As the most famous classical composition by Gershwin, it established his reputation as a "serious composer." This sounds awfully subjective... who says it's his most famous piece and on what grounds? Record sales? Live performances? Not sure it really belongs. Figment79 ( talk) 18:07, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
No response and no citation for it being his "most famous classical composition", so I have removed it per WP:ASF. Figment79 ( talk) 15:31, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
The article says there were thirteen reeds, but only lists twelve. Can someone who has access to the score confirm or correct this discrepancy? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thomprod ( talk • contribs) 17:34, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
The lead gives dates for three orchestral versions by Ferde Grofé and then lower down talks about a version from a fourth date. I suspect a typo somewhere. Anyone got the sources?-- Peter cohen ( talk) 22:02, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
Actually, I took out the part about the Grofe version in the lead paragraph because it is against WP:ASF. No citation, no grounds for calling it "one of the most popular american concert works", so it clearly violates WP:ASF. Figment79 ( talk) 18:33, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
This is my first time contributing to a talk page on Wikipedia, so sorry for any breaches of etiquette! Please advise if I have broken any protocols. The statement 'It was completed some years earlier, as it was conducted by Grofe at the 1937 Gershwin Memorial Concert in New York (Harry Kaufman, piano), and must have been the scoring used by Gershwin when soloing with symphony orchestras in the 1930s' appears without a citation. I'd be very interested in knowing where that information came from. Also, it seems odd that Harms would have been asking Gershwin to create a symphonic orchestration in 1936-37 (see footnote 21) if the Grofé symphonic version already existed! Can anyone clarify? UGK97 ( talk) 17:47, 11 January 2014 (UTC)UGK97
I seek to clarify whether it was Billy Mayerl or Arthur Benjamin who was the soloist in the British premiere of the Rhapsody in Blue.
There are plenty of sources (such as p.307 here), for Billy Mayerl and the date 28 October 1925, with the Savoy Orpheans at the Queens Hall, London. This says it was in Gershwin's presence.
There are also many hits crediting Benjamin with the premiere (see here and here, for example). I haven't seen a date or a venue for the supposed Benjamin premiere.
Both of our articles on these fine pianists claim the premiere. They can't both be right.
I've only found one place that acknowledges the competing claims, but it's just a footnote quoting a source, and is effectively denying the Benjamin claim: see p. 756, Note 28, here.
So, what is the actual story? Can anyone sort this out? -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 22:14, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
According to the article, the only recordings of Gershwin playing the Rhapsody in Blue were made on June 10, 1924, and in 1927. However, the date on the embedded audio file of Gershwin playing is February 24, 1924. John D. Goulden ( talk) 19:25, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
As of 1 January 2020 public domain in the United States includes anything published before 1925. Rhapsody in Blue is from 1924 so is in public domain. The current image of original sheet music in the lead needs a date check, as it is marked as non-free when it might be free. Also there was mistakenly an upload of the song into Commons at
The mistake was that the song was free in Europe but non-free in the United States. It seems that this media file was hardly used, so that is why it was not flagged for deletion. Now we can use it and probably it should go into the infobox of this article for easy access.
There was a 20-year freeze on public domain releases until last year on 1 January 2019. Now every year on 1 January the public domain gets an entire new year of media, and increasingly we will have interesting media works to share. This is also an era of great music so among other issues we should develop best practices for making audio recordings accessible in Wikipedia articles about those recordings. This article would be a great test case. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:20, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 10:45, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
"Whiteman's band which consisted of: three woodwind players doubling one oboe, one heckelphone, one clarinet, one sopranino saxophone in E♭, two soprano saxophones in B♭, two alto saxophones in E♭, one tenor saxophone in B♭, one baritone saxophone in E♭; two trumpets in B♭, two French horns in F, two trombones, and one tuba (doubling on double bass)..."
Is this saying that three players doubled on 18 instruments? Each of them doubles on all of the instrument? Or each only doubled on certain instruments? It is unclear from the way the sentence is written. Certainly it would be unusual for one play to double on reeds AND brass, much less double bass.
Only three players seems like a pretty small section given the powerful sound of Whitman's orchestra, and I'm pretty sure he was recording before multi-track recording techniques existed.
Could this section be worded better to make it clear: a) how many musicians there are, and b) which instruments each one is doubling on? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.253 ( talk) 01:03, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 04:08, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
For anybody interested, found 3 filings, nothing for Grofe's orchestrations (only checked 1924-1928) I found other arrangements he did, but not Rhapsody. Added pub line to infobox, that's all
Rhapsody in blue: by George Gershwin, of U. S. ; pf. © 1 c. June 12, 1924 E589226: Harms, Inc., New York. 11166
Rhapsody in blue; by George Gershwin, of TJ. S. ; pf. ; with 2nd pf. in sc. © Dec. 31, 1924; 2 c. Jan. 2, 1925: E 606144; Harms, inc., New York. 21165
Rhapsody in blue: by George Gershwin, arr. by Isidore Gorn : pf. © Aug. 24, 1927; 2 c. Aug. 26; E 674172; Harms, inc., New York. 19549
Anybody know what the 2nd 1924 filing was for? Tillywilly17 ( talk) 05:39, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
"There were five different published orchestrations" <<< I will check later years
In Fantasia 2000 there was a recording of Rhapsody in Blue. Shouldn't this be included in notable recordings? Pastastraw ( talk) 15:04, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
The video game Little King's Story has remixes of the piano piece as the background music of TV Dinnah and his kingdom. -- Apisite ( talk) 07:30, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm pleased to see that Rachmaninoff's name has been removed from the imaginary members of the audience at Paul Whiteman's Experiment in Modern Music, but Stravinsky's name still appears, which is simply not true, since Stravinsky did not travel to the USA before January 1925, when he recorded music rolls for the Aeolian Company's Duo-Art. All Stravinsky's original correspondence is preserved at the Paul Sacher-Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland, and it is clear from many items of correspondence that 1925 was his first visit. I spent three months there in 1987, transcribing all the letters that referred to Igor's player piano activities.
But don't feel you have to take my word for it: Stravinsky first travelled to the USA on the transatlantic ship "Paris," leaving Le Havre on 24 December 1924 and arriving in New York on 4 January 1925. The passenger list is available on Ancestry.com. and the column where it asks whether the passenger has ever been in the United States before, and if so where, is answered with a simple "No."
The reason for all the apparent famous members of the audience comes from a US article published in the early 1930s, for which a lazy journalist looked at the page in the concert programme which mentioned "Patrons." In Great Britain the word "Patron" tends to mean someone who gives money or the use of their name in aid of some form of worthy endeavour. Since our schools and the internet are doing their best to make our version of the English language more like the American version, the word sometimes has a second meaning, which is that of what the US calls an "Attendee,", whom we would tend to call a "Member of the audience." But in 1924 what the word in the Whiteman programme meant was someone who had allowed their name to be quoted, not just for Gershwin, but mainly for Whiteman, along with all the composers whose music he conducted. Most likely most of them were not at the concert, and Stravinksy certainly wasn't, and, what's more, his name doesn't even appear in the programme. The lazy journalist saw the name of Josef Stransky, the chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic at the time, but since he probably hadn't even heard of Stransky, he conveniently altered the name to Stravinsky, and the error found its way into any number of Gershwin books and articles.
More generally, someone needs to check up on all these apparent attendees. I should think the majority of them were not there, but that they simply allowed their names to be used in order to give a notional pat on the back to Paul Whiteman. I have too much to do during the years that remain to me, and the copy I had of the relevant article got lost in a computer HD malfunction, but I'd be grateful if someone would at least remove Stravinsky's name. I'm well aware that making edits on Wikipedia is unlikely to be effective unless you belong to the unofficial committee that runs each significant page.
Cheers, Rex Lawson (pianola) Pianola ( talk) 17:17, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
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Although I haven't been through Ohare in a while, I believe it is Brian Eno's "Music for Airports" that plays in the moving walkway area, not Rhapsody in Blue. Can anyone else confirm this? Is this a mistake or did they change the music?
CSharpMinor 00:44, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
The reaction to rhapsody in blue made it anything but an instant success, some people walked out half way through the debut performance. The sentence saying it was met with instant success is wrong, i'd like to change it. Briaboru 22:54, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
The section as it stands in the article now seems only to present negative reactions. I am not a music historian, but surely if response was mixed, the section on its reception should reflect this? The standing text seems biased toward negative criticism. 72.49.43.222 ( talk) 04:54, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
Whatever the reaction of the audience, its supposedly illustrious members need to be documented with more care. Concert and CD programme note writers, and this article, confuse those named in the original programme as patrons of Whiteman's project with actual audience members. Rachmaninoff appears as an "influential composer" who was present. Well, he wasn't. On February 12, 1924 he was in Kansas City giving a recital as part of a long US concert tour. Two days beforehand he was in Davenport, Iowa, and one day later he was in Lincoln, Nebraska. That doesn't give him time to hop on a train and leg it to Aeolian Hall in Manhattan for an afternoon concert. A listing of all his known concerts can be found at rachmaninoff.org, and it has clearly been researched with great care, from concert programmes and other materials, mainly at the Library of Congress.
If Rachmaninoff was not there, how many other patrons have been inaccurately equated with members of the audience? In an article published in the Sioux City Sunday Journal on March 2, 1924, entitled "Jazz Dons the Purple", O.O. McIntyre names some of those listed as patrons in the original programme, which includes Amelita Galli-Curci, Mary Garden, Alma Gluck, Walter Damrosch, Jascha Heifetz, Victor Herbert, John McCormack, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Josef Stransky. If some other contemporary critic listed those whom he actually saw in attendance, will someone please quote the source material, so that we can all judge the original article? Otherwise this Wiki article needs to be modified, which I am happy to do myself, but only after giving those more closely involved the chance first. Pianola ( talk) 21:28, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
Today. February 11th, 2024, I bit the bullet and removed several more false attendees from the main page. Since I am removing them, it is difficult to provide sources on the actual page, so I have augmented the advice on NOT including the various attendees, in between the arrow brackets that I found on the edit page, where I have quoted sources for the absence of those I have removed. I realise that I shall not be the most popular member of the Wiki community, dashing people's dreams, but after all we are here to be as truthful as we can. Additionally the BBC ran an item on its main lunchtime news programme today, mentioning that Stravinsky was there, and that was the last straw. There will be an academic article about all this, in a few months' time. Pianola ( talk) 20:23, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
I'm snipping
I don't have any Tom and Jerry music handy and I'm afraid I don't remember the character's "leitmotifs."
"Quite obviously directly inspired by" doesn't sound too objective to me, tunes being what they are and implications of plagiarism being what they are.
Of course cartoons do quote and borrow from classical music all the time, but I would have thought MGM would have been cautious about referring to music which... wouldn't it still have been under copyright at the time? Is Gershwin credited in the cartoon credits? Dpbsmith (talk) 11:05, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
BTW, I've been trying to find a source since the wording was - quite justifiably - removed (due to it being un-sourced). Some of the above argument is unsigned, and I thought I'd better just state that it wasn't me(!)... I'm still looking for a suitable source, although I have come across mentions that RIB itself was used as a soundtrack in one particular T&J short... but no one seems to know the name! Still searching... Howie ☎ 18:42, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Per above, a contributor has reinserted the assertion that "In the Tom and Jerry cartoons, each of the character's leitmotifs are inspired by Rhapsody in Blue and other Gershwin works." In response to my request for a citation, he references http://www.recordhall.com/george-gershwin-biography.html . Does this adequately meet the policies of WP:V and WP:CITE? Note that www.recordhall.com appears to be a Wikipedia-like site that allows anonymous contributions, and that no author's identity is available for the article being cited. Dpbsmith (talk) 16:01, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm settling for weasel-wording for now:
I'm not really happy with a http://www.recordhall.com/george-gershwin-biography.html as a source, but I think it's OK for the statement that the Tom and Jerry music is a) "sometimes perceived" as resembling b) Gershwin generally. I don't think anyone has yet pinned source citations that would make a connection with the Rhapsody in Blue specifically, and certainly not to the characters' leitmotifs referencing the Rhapsody in Blue. Dpbsmith (talk) 11:05, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Seriously, wikipedia moderators, get a grip. The tune in the show is not "sometimes perceived as reminiscent of Gershwin": they are plain Rhapsodhy in Blue, chord-to-chord. One just has to listen to the piece and to the cartoon. How do you reference that? Easy with book passages, huh? Anyway, now that I've seen this discussion, I know my editing will get deleted. who cares? I just came here because I've been listening to Rhapsody non-stop for a few days trying to remember when I've heard it before and then, bang! Tom & Jerry came to mind... always thought that Scott Bradley was awesome. Now I know he was just adapting outside material... anyway, bye -- 189.125.176.194 ( talk) 17:40, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
I'll offer this analysis of Richard Wagner and Star Wars as the standard for a convincing description of a serious composer's influence on a piece of modern popular culture. The reference cited here doesn't go into anything approaching that depth. Since it's a superficial statement from a dubious source and it fails to quote anyone involved in the production of the Tom and Jerry cartoons, I'd leave it out of the Wikipedia article altogether. It could return in future revisions if the editor finds better sources. Regards, Durova 19:56, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm snipping
I just don't accept http://www.recordhall.com/george-gershwin-biography.html as a reliable source. And nobody's come up with any specific connection to the "Rhapsody in Blue."
And I've made a point of listening to a few Tom and Jerry cartoons recently, including Manhattan Serenade, and frankly, I don't buy it. I believe what people are hearing is music that is composed in a "Jazz Age" idiom (by "Jazz Age" I'm thinking of the likes Paul Whiteman and the other mostly-white big-band jazz-inspired music of the 1920s and 30s). The music that Leroy Shield composed for the Laurel and Hardy films has many elements of that idiom; all the music played by Whiteman at the Aeolian Hall concert, not just "Rhapsody in Blue" ihas elements of that idiom; Ferde Grofe's "Mississippi Suite" has elements of that idiom. What Gershwin did was to use the contemporary pop-music idiom in a sustained, sophisticated way in a longish piece of orchestral music.
I did not hear any "leitmotifs" for individual characters that were carried over from one cartoon to another.
"Mouse in Manhattan" of course does not just sound like Louis Alter, it is Louis Alter. I've listened to several recordings of "Manhattan Serenade" though nothing else by Alter. I'm not enough of a musicologist to judge how close a resemblance there is between Alter and Gershwin. I think, myself, OK, perhaps an influence, maybe something more than both just immersed in the same musical idioms. (I suspect a lot of things sounded like the Rhapsody in Blue for a few years after it came out).
I may not have listened to enough or to the right cartoons, but the ones that were not Mouse in Manhattan did not sound "Gershwinesque" to me at all.
There was a sort of tradition, that I connect with the name "Silly Symphonies" for the early Disney cartoons, of occasionally basing a cartoon on a (butchered) familiar bit of "pop" classical music, the sort of thing I imagine a town band might have played on a Sunday afternoon in the bandstand, and I think there are other cartoons that have a strong connection to one particular piece of music.
Anyway, I'm prepared to be convinced about the Tom and Jerry music, but I want a citable source before this goes into the article
Personally, at the moment I do not even buy a specific connection to Gershwin, let alone to the Rhapsody in Blue. I think this is rather like someone listening to the Max Steiner score of "Gone with the Wind," and saying, "Oh! that sounds just like Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto." The Max Steiners and Erich Korngolds and John Williamses used classical idioms in their film scores for serious films; the Scott Bradleys and Carl Stallingses used 1920s-1930s pop-music, "jazz age," idioms (with considerable dashes of familiar classical music). But as I say, I'm fully prepared to be convinced otherwise. Dpbsmith (talk) 11:15, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Sarah!!!!!
I'm removing
until someone can provide a verifiable source for this interesting-if-true fact. It's been labelled as needing a citation for... months? A long time, anyway. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:58, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
What does copyright law say about short excerpts of music recordings? The clarinet opening seems an obvious choice if legal.
Most of the work that I've read on Paul Whiteman states that although he was happy to be called the King of Jazz, he didn't invent it for himself, nor did he bandy it about often. His "King of Jazz" status, Benny Goodman's "King of Swing," Elvis Presley's "King of Rock and Roll," Michael Jackson's "King of Pop," and Clark Gable's "King of Hollywood" crown for that matter, were given to them by others and had nothing to do with artistic or historical circumstance and everything to do with ability to sell product. All of these men were talented, perhaps less talented than some others working at the same time and in the same fields, but all were absolutely the kings at the cash register in their respective eras - hence the title. Like others have stated in Whiteman's Wiki page and on this discussion page, he always acknowledged his sources, and 1920s audiences tended to be much broader in their definition of jazz than those of today or even the 1940s. Whiteman, however, couldn't yet make the leap to actually hiring African American musicians. That would wait another decade for Goodman to cross that line. PJtP ( talk) 01:23, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Just be sure to keep in mind, somebody already had the title of "King of Jazz." That would be King Oliver. (This is mentioned in many places, professors, textbooks, and the wikipedia page of jazz royalty.) He was the first truly dedicated jazz artist to be recorded. (If my text book serves me right.) Whiteman was alright with the name of King of Jazz, but maybe this was just a nickname for the times. I just wanted to throw in my two bits. I hope it helps out. 71.237.75.150 ( talk) 23:58, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
As the most famous classical composition by Gershwin, it established his reputation as a "serious composer." This sounds awfully subjective... who says it's his most famous piece and on what grounds? Record sales? Live performances? Not sure it really belongs. Figment79 ( talk) 18:07, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
No response and no citation for it being his "most famous classical composition", so I have removed it per WP:ASF. Figment79 ( talk) 15:31, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
The article says there were thirteen reeds, but only lists twelve. Can someone who has access to the score confirm or correct this discrepancy? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thomprod ( talk • contribs) 17:34, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
The lead gives dates for three orchestral versions by Ferde Grofé and then lower down talks about a version from a fourth date. I suspect a typo somewhere. Anyone got the sources?-- Peter cohen ( talk) 22:02, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
Actually, I took out the part about the Grofe version in the lead paragraph because it is against WP:ASF. No citation, no grounds for calling it "one of the most popular american concert works", so it clearly violates WP:ASF. Figment79 ( talk) 18:33, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
This is my first time contributing to a talk page on Wikipedia, so sorry for any breaches of etiquette! Please advise if I have broken any protocols. The statement 'It was completed some years earlier, as it was conducted by Grofe at the 1937 Gershwin Memorial Concert in New York (Harry Kaufman, piano), and must have been the scoring used by Gershwin when soloing with symphony orchestras in the 1930s' appears without a citation. I'd be very interested in knowing where that information came from. Also, it seems odd that Harms would have been asking Gershwin to create a symphonic orchestration in 1936-37 (see footnote 21) if the Grofé symphonic version already existed! Can anyone clarify? UGK97 ( talk) 17:47, 11 January 2014 (UTC)UGK97
I seek to clarify whether it was Billy Mayerl or Arthur Benjamin who was the soloist in the British premiere of the Rhapsody in Blue.
There are plenty of sources (such as p.307 here), for Billy Mayerl and the date 28 October 1925, with the Savoy Orpheans at the Queens Hall, London. This says it was in Gershwin's presence.
There are also many hits crediting Benjamin with the premiere (see here and here, for example). I haven't seen a date or a venue for the supposed Benjamin premiere.
Both of our articles on these fine pianists claim the premiere. They can't both be right.
I've only found one place that acknowledges the competing claims, but it's just a footnote quoting a source, and is effectively denying the Benjamin claim: see p. 756, Note 28, here.
So, what is the actual story? Can anyone sort this out? -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 22:14, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
According to the article, the only recordings of Gershwin playing the Rhapsody in Blue were made on June 10, 1924, and in 1927. However, the date on the embedded audio file of Gershwin playing is February 24, 1924. John D. Goulden ( talk) 19:25, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
As of 1 January 2020 public domain in the United States includes anything published before 1925. Rhapsody in Blue is from 1924 so is in public domain. The current image of original sheet music in the lead needs a date check, as it is marked as non-free when it might be free. Also there was mistakenly an upload of the song into Commons at
The mistake was that the song was free in Europe but non-free in the United States. It seems that this media file was hardly used, so that is why it was not flagged for deletion. Now we can use it and probably it should go into the infobox of this article for easy access.
There was a 20-year freeze on public domain releases until last year on 1 January 2019. Now every year on 1 January the public domain gets an entire new year of media, and increasingly we will have interesting media works to share. This is also an era of great music so among other issues we should develop best practices for making audio recordings accessible in Wikipedia articles about those recordings. This article would be a great test case. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:20, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 10:45, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
"Whiteman's band which consisted of: three woodwind players doubling one oboe, one heckelphone, one clarinet, one sopranino saxophone in E♭, two soprano saxophones in B♭, two alto saxophones in E♭, one tenor saxophone in B♭, one baritone saxophone in E♭; two trumpets in B♭, two French horns in F, two trombones, and one tuba (doubling on double bass)..."
Is this saying that three players doubled on 18 instruments? Each of them doubles on all of the instrument? Or each only doubled on certain instruments? It is unclear from the way the sentence is written. Certainly it would be unusual for one play to double on reeds AND brass, much less double bass.
Only three players seems like a pretty small section given the powerful sound of Whitman's orchestra, and I'm pretty sure he was recording before multi-track recording techniques existed.
Could this section be worded better to make it clear: a) how many musicians there are, and b) which instruments each one is doubling on? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.253 ( talk) 01:03, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 04:08, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
For anybody interested, found 3 filings, nothing for Grofe's orchestrations (only checked 1924-1928) I found other arrangements he did, but not Rhapsody. Added pub line to infobox, that's all
Rhapsody in blue: by George Gershwin, of U. S. ; pf. © 1 c. June 12, 1924 E589226: Harms, Inc., New York. 11166
Rhapsody in blue; by George Gershwin, of TJ. S. ; pf. ; with 2nd pf. in sc. © Dec. 31, 1924; 2 c. Jan. 2, 1925: E 606144; Harms, inc., New York. 21165
Rhapsody in blue: by George Gershwin, arr. by Isidore Gorn : pf. © Aug. 24, 1927; 2 c. Aug. 26; E 674172; Harms, inc., New York. 19549
Anybody know what the 2nd 1924 filing was for? Tillywilly17 ( talk) 05:39, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
"There were five different published orchestrations" <<< I will check later years
In Fantasia 2000 there was a recording of Rhapsody in Blue. Shouldn't this be included in notable recordings? Pastastraw ( talk) 15:04, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
The video game Little King's Story has remixes of the piano piece as the background music of TV Dinnah and his kingdom. -- Apisite ( talk) 07:30, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm pleased to see that Rachmaninoff's name has been removed from the imaginary members of the audience at Paul Whiteman's Experiment in Modern Music, but Stravinsky's name still appears, which is simply not true, since Stravinsky did not travel to the USA before January 1925, when he recorded music rolls for the Aeolian Company's Duo-Art. All Stravinsky's original correspondence is preserved at the Paul Sacher-Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland, and it is clear from many items of correspondence that 1925 was his first visit. I spent three months there in 1987, transcribing all the letters that referred to Igor's player piano activities.
But don't feel you have to take my word for it: Stravinsky first travelled to the USA on the transatlantic ship "Paris," leaving Le Havre on 24 December 1924 and arriving in New York on 4 January 1925. The passenger list is available on Ancestry.com. and the column where it asks whether the passenger has ever been in the United States before, and if so where, is answered with a simple "No."
The reason for all the apparent famous members of the audience comes from a US article published in the early 1930s, for which a lazy journalist looked at the page in the concert programme which mentioned "Patrons." In Great Britain the word "Patron" tends to mean someone who gives money or the use of their name in aid of some form of worthy endeavour. Since our schools and the internet are doing their best to make our version of the English language more like the American version, the word sometimes has a second meaning, which is that of what the US calls an "Attendee,", whom we would tend to call a "Member of the audience." But in 1924 what the word in the Whiteman programme meant was someone who had allowed their name to be quoted, not just for Gershwin, but mainly for Whiteman, along with all the composers whose music he conducted. Most likely most of them were not at the concert, and Stravinksy certainly wasn't, and, what's more, his name doesn't even appear in the programme. The lazy journalist saw the name of Josef Stransky, the chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic at the time, but since he probably hadn't even heard of Stransky, he conveniently altered the name to Stravinsky, and the error found its way into any number of Gershwin books and articles.
More generally, someone needs to check up on all these apparent attendees. I should think the majority of them were not there, but that they simply allowed their names to be used in order to give a notional pat on the back to Paul Whiteman. I have too much to do during the years that remain to me, and the copy I had of the relevant article got lost in a computer HD malfunction, but I'd be grateful if someone would at least remove Stravinsky's name. I'm well aware that making edits on Wikipedia is unlikely to be effective unless you belong to the unofficial committee that runs each significant page.
Cheers, Rex Lawson (pianola) Pianola ( talk) 17:17, 17 June 2023 (UTC)