Talk:Rhapsody in Blue

message: 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)
thread_title:  Music in Ohare walkway? 

message: 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)
replies: text: "The Rhapsody in Blue serves as the soundtrack Tom and Jerry cartoons.  It has been said that each of the character's leitmotifs are inspired by Rhapsody in Blue and other Gershwin works."--Urthogie 16:32, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My problem is not the wording of the statement, but that the cited "source" being anonymous, and apparently being another Wiki that anybody can edit. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:37, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: From my investigation of the page, and the site, the bio seems to be totally without either a stated author or any other meta-information.  As such, I think it's only use is as evidence that someone, somewhere on the net, has a some time, made the statements it makes.  It is wholly unacceptable as evidence for any factual assertion.   Keep looking. JesseW, the juggling janitor 18:45, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

text: If (as seems to be claimed above) the included text merely makes a claim that "It has been said", I would strongly argue that such a statement, while appropriatly sourced(someone apparently did say it) is inappropriate for the article, as it is unimportant and irrelevant.  I would point to WP:NPOV(the section on not using "Some have said"), and Wikipedia:AWT.  It's a random website; what it says is not factually reliable, and the fact that it says it is not notable or important.  Sorry. JesseW, the juggling janitor 18:50, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Very well.  I'm fine with removing the some have said, it has been said, if thats the consensus.  Makes sense.--Urthogie 18:58, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion: does www.recordhall.com meet verifiability requirements?

message: I'm settling for weasel-wording for now:
:Scott Bradley's scores for the Tom and Jerry cartoons are sometimes perceived as reminiscent of Gershwin. The score for Mouse in Manhattan (1945) in particular has been described as "Gershwinesque" (although it is actually based on Louis Alter's "Manhattan Serenade"], which is also an alternate title for the film).
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)
thread_title: Tom and Jerry/Gershwin

message: 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)
thread_title:  RfC 

message: I'm snipping
*Scott Bradley's scores for the Tom and Jerry cartoons are sometimes perceived as reminiscent of Gershwin. The score for Mouse in Manhattan (1945) in particular has been described as "Gershwinesque" (although it is actually based on Louis Alter's 1928 "Manhattan Serenade", which is also an alternate title for the film).
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)
thread_title:  Snipping "Tom and Jerry" 

message: What does copyright law say about short excerpts of music recordings?  The clarinet opening seems an obvious choice if legal.
:There's lots of recordings of classical pieces on wikipedia.  You just have to find one that's not copyrighted.  DavidRF (talk) 23:57, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Excerpt 

message: 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)
thread_title:  whiteman king of jazz 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Most famous Gershwin piece? 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Reeds in 1924 orchestration 

message: 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)
thread_title:  So when did Ferde Grofé  orchestrate it? contradiction in the lead 

message: 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)
replies: text: Never resolved, it seems.  Perhaps a naive question, but wasn't the UK premiere Gershwin's own performance broadcast from the Savoy on 15 June 1925 (it was a public live performance, even if no audience in the hall), as per JO's last quoted ref, pp158-159? Davidships (talk) 23:45, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: UK premiere: Billy Mayerl or Arthur Benjamin?

message: 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)
thread_title:  Early recording dates 

message: 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 
*:File:Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue (1927).ogg
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)
thread_title:  Now in public domain globally 

message: 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 . —Community Tech bot (talk) 10:45, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion 

message: "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)
replies: text: Brass aren't 'woodwind'. At most it'd be 10 instruments which isn't all that odd; but there's something clearly wrong -- no mention bass clarinet which can clearly be heard on any recording of the original version. The article used to list what each 'Reed' (as they are called) player played, for instance here but was probably changed due to assumptions of cruft, and made some errors in fixing it. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 05:03, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Heya folks, thank you for highlighting these issues. There were five different published orchestrations which sometimes involved different instruments, and it appears past editors added instruments to the orchestration section without realizing this fact. Case in point: A user inserted the heckelphone into the orchestration via this edit which made the existing sentence unintelligible. Regardless, I'll try to solve these issues by quoting the exact orchestration from Schiff 1997 p. 5 which lists each player and their respective instrument in the original recording. It includes both a heckelphone and a bass clarinet. -- Flask (talk) 04:39, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Multiple doubling? 

message: The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
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Participate in the deletion discussion at the . —Community Tech bot (talk) 04:08, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Copyright/Publication Info 

message: 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)
replies: text: Fantasia 2000 is mentioned in the article under "Legacy and Influence". The "Notable recordings" section needs to be retitled since it is where the bulk of kruft routinely accumulates for the past several years. — Flask (talk) 15:18, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, it could be better as "Notable Performances" or something similar. Pastastraw  (talk) 15:40, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fantasia 2000 version 

message: 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)
replies: text: Yes, and? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 12:20, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Little King's Story 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Famous Members of the Audience at the Aeolian Hall Première