Gershwin, Jazz, and the Rhapsody

The Gershwin biographer Isaac Goldberg wrote in 1931 that with the Rhapsody in Blue, George Gershwin “fired the jazz shot heard round the world.” This symphonic jazz concerto may be the most famous piece of American classical music. Undoubtedly the most famous classical work of its own time, it was a serious concert work that contained elements of popular music in the 1920s including the style of jazz. Gershwin’s Rhapsody even remains a part of American popular culture today; its famous themes are heard from the big screen in Disney’s Fantasia 2000 to the television screen in United Airlines commercials. While the popularity of the Rhapsody cannot be questioned, one can ask the question to what extent does Gershwin actually employ elements of jazz music in his so-called “symphonic jazz concerto?” After all, it would seem that the Rhapsody does not contain many of jazz’s most important aspects, such as swing or improvisation. Why, then, was the Rhapsody labeled a “jazz concerto?” Though the Rhapsody lacked some aspects of jazz that would today be considered essential, in the context of jazz in the 1920s Gershwin successfully combined a number of jazz elements into a “serious” composition, including jazz instrumentation and orchestration, jazz rhythms, and the blues scale.

By modern definitions of jazz, it would seem that the Rhapsody does not contain many of its most important aspects, such as swing or improvisation, but jazz was defined very differently in the 1920s. When Gershwin wrote the Rhapsody, the word “jazz” was applied to more than one genre of music. Its definition was very broad; it “could mean all things