Adding Color to Concert Music
William Grant Still was one of the younger composers who received encouragement from Edgard Varèse. Varèse saw to it that Still’s music was performed at concerts of the International Composers’ Guild, and this opened the door for further opportunities. Still received commissions from the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), the New York World’s Fair, the League of Composers, and also from numerous major orchestras: Philadelphia, New York, Cleveland, and Cincinnati. He won a Guggenheim Fellowship on three separate occasions—and all these achievements took place while the United States was still a segregated nation.
William Grant Still was one of the younger composers who received encouragement from Edgard Varèse. Varèse saw to it that Still’s music was performed at concerts of the International Composers’ Guild, and this opened the door for further opportunities. Still received commissions from the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), the New York World’s Fair, the League of Composers, and also from numerous major orchestras: Philadelphia, New York, Cleveland, and Cincinnati. He won a Guggenheim Fellowship on three separate occasions—and all these achievements took place while the United States was still a segregated nation.
In 1930, Still composed his Afro-American Symphony, which was the first of the five symphonies he would write. He used the blues as part of his inspiration, but this was a controversial choice. The blues—considering the style’s impoverished rural origins—still carried a lot of stigma among white listeners, and even among some middle-class blacks, who “disapproved of jazz and the blues, associating them with nightclubs and brothels.”
However, the use of the style within art music helped to increase the respect it enjoyed. When the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra premiered the Afro-American Symphony in 1931, this was the first symphony by an African American to be performed by a major orchestra. Still went on to break through a number of other racial barriers: he was the first African American to lead a white radio orchestra (1933), to conduct a major orchestra, and to have an opera performed by a major company (1949).
The genre of the version of Rhapsody in Blue that is best known today is a piano concerto—a work for piano and orchestra—but it took some time before that version came into existence. The Rhapsody began as a two piano work, which Gershwin delivered to Whitman’s orchestrator Ferde Grofé (1892–1972). Grofé arranged the piece for twenty-three players: Whiteman’s jazz band plus some added strings, and, of course, piano. In the mid-1930s, Gershwin performed the Rhapsody several times with concert orchestras, raising the question: who orchestrated that symphonic version? In 1942, five years after Gershwin’s untimely death, Grofé published the orchestration most in use today— was it the same one used earlier? Or is there a “lost” Gershwin orchestration? No matter who first created the “piano concerto” version, Rhapsody in Blue has enjoyed a lasting popularity. Jazz musicians note that it is not genuine jazz, since it contains no improvisation. But, the jazz-like harmonies and the rhythms are much more aligned with jazz style than they are with classical, so the Rhapsody’s position as a “hybrid” work seems secure.
Gershwin’s achievement in crafting this piano concerto should not be underestimated; in a single evening, he managed to sweep away his reputation as “merely” a Tin Pan Alley composer. He also demonstrated that art music could absorb many different elements from popular styles without losing its integrity, nor would the walls of America’s concert halls collapse when these mixed pieces were performed.