Out of the Blue

When George Gershwin brought together the worlds of jazz and classical in the premiere of his Rhapsody in Blue 100 years ago in New York, a whole new soundworld was born, as Mervyn Cooke relates

‘How trite and feeble and conventional the tunes are; how sentimental and vapid the harmonic treatment, under its disguise of fussy and futile counterpoint! … Weep over the lifelessness of the melody and harmony, so derivative, so stale, so inexpressive!’ Such was the verdict of the New York Tribune on Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, in a scathing review of the premiere in February 1924. Yet Gershwin’s piece is today considered to be a pioneering example of symphonic jazz and, with the passage of time, it becomes ever harder to recapture just how provocative and controversial the idea seemed at the time.

Gershwin would soon be no stranger to tetchy reviews. Four years later, the New York Telegram dismissed his An American in Paris as ‘nauseous claptrap, so dull, patchy, thin, vulgar, long-winded and inane that the average movie audience would be bored by it… This cheap and silly affair seemed pitifully futile and inept.’ As late as 1935, fewer than two years before Gershwin’s untimely death from a brain tumour at just 38, New York’s Herald Tribune described the vocal ribed the vocal numbers in Porgy and Bess – destined to become some of the best-loved songs of all time – as the new opera’s ‘cardinal weakness’ and the ‘blemish on its musical integrity’.