Editing Rhapsody in Blue (section)

=== Premiere ===
[[File:Aeolian Hall (1923).jpg|thumb|right|The ''Rhapsody'' premiered on a snowy afternoon at [[Aeolian Building (42nd Street)|Aeolian Hall]], [[Manhattan]], pictured here in 1923.]]
''Rhapsody in Blue'' premiered during a snowy Tuesday afternoon on February 12, 1924, at [[Aeolian Building (42nd Street)|Aeolian Hall]], [[Manhattan]].{{sfn|Downes|1924|p=16}}{{sfn|Goldberg|1958|p=143}} Entitled "An Experiment in Modern Music",{{sfn|Cowen|1998}} the much-anticipated concert held by Paul Whiteman and his Palais Royal Orchestra drew a packed house.{{sfn|Downes|1924|p=16}}{{sfn|Goldberg|1958|p=142}} The excited audience consisted of "[[vaudevillian]]s, concert managers come to have a look at the novelty, [[Tin Pan Alley]]ites, composers, symphony and opera stars, [[flapper]]s, cake-eaters, all mixed up higgledy-piggledy."{{sfn|Goldberg|1958|p=143}}<!--

Do NOT add Sergei Rachmaninoff, Igor Stravinsky, Fritz Kreisler, John Philip Sousa or Leopold Stokowski. Many sources wrongly conflate the concert's publicized Patrons (sponsors) with the concert's attendees. These are two separate groups, and many sponsors did not attend. On the same day, Rachmaninoff was giving a concert in Kansas City, Missouri (Kansas City Times 1924.02.13 p=13), Stokowski was conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra in Washington DC (Washington Evening Star 1924.02.13 p=4), and Sousa was performing with his band in Pensacola, Florida (https://www.marineband.marines.mil/About/For-Researchers/Sousa-Band-Press-Books/). On the following day, Kreisler was giving a recital in Birmingham, Alabama (Birmingham Age-Herald 1924.02.12 p=14), and the 1924 train schedules would not have got him there in time if he had been at Aeolian Hall on the 12th. Stravinsky does not even appear in the concert programme as a Patron, but instead the former conductor of the [[New York Philharmonic]], [[Josef Stransky]], does. Stravinsky did not travel to the USA until January 1925, arriving at [[Ellis Island]] on January 4 on the S.S. Paris. There are others who have been widely reported as having attended, and who could not have been there for similar reasons, including John McCormack, Mischa Elman, Moriz Rosenthal, Mary Garden and Jasha Heifetz (sources can be provided if necessary).

--> A number of influential figures of the era were present, including [[Carl Van Vechten]],{{sfn|Goldberg|1958|p=154}} [[Marguerite d'Alvarez]],{{sfn|Goldberg|1958|p=154}} [[Victor Herbert]],{{sfn|Jenkins|1974|p=144}} [[Walter Damrosch]],{{sfn|Jenkins|1974|p=144}} and [[Willie "the Lion" Smith]].{{sfn|Wood|1996|p=85}}

In a pre-concert lecture, Whiteman's manager Hugh C. Ernst proclaimed the purpose of the concert to be "purely educational".{{sfn|Schwartz|1979|p=84}}{{sfn|Goldberg|1958|p=144}} Whiteman had selected the music to exemplify the "melodies, harmony and rhythms which agitate the throbbing emotional resources of this young [[Jazz Age|restless age]]."{{sfn|Goldberg|1958|p=145}} The concert's lengthy program listed 26 separate musical movements, divided into 2 parts and 11 sections, bearing titles such as "True Form Of Jazz" and "Contrast—Legitimate Scoring vs. Jazzing".{{sfn|Goldberg|1958|pp=146–147}} The program's schedule featured Gershwin's rhapsody as merely the [[Wiktionary:penultimate|penultimate]] piece which preceded [[Edward Elgar|Elgar]]'s ''[[Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1]]''.{{sfn|Schiff|1997|pp=55–61}}

Many of the early numbers in the program underwhelmed the audience, and the ventilation system in the concert hall malfunctioned.{{sfn|Greenberg|1998|pp=72}} Some audience members had departed the venue by the time Gershwin made his inconspicuous entrance for the rhapsody.{{sfn|Greenberg|1998|pp=72}} The audience purportedly were irritable, impatient, and restless until the haunting clarinet [[glissando]] played the opening notes of ''Rhapsody in Blue''.{{sfn|Cowen|1998}}{{sfn|Greenberg|1998|pp=72–73}} The distinctive glissando had been created quite by happenstance during rehearsals: {{Blockquote|As a joke on Gershwin&nbsp;... [[Ross Gorman|[Ross] Gorman]] [Whiteman's virtuoso clarinetist] played the opening [[Measure (music)|measure]] with a noticeable glissando, 'stretching' the notes out and adding what he considered a jazzy, humorous touch to the passage. Reacting favorably to Gorman's whimsy, Gershwin asked him to perform the opening measure that way&nbsp;... and to add as much of a '[[Vociferation|wail]]' as possible.{{sfn|Schwartz|1979|pp=81–83}}}}

Whiteman's orchestra performed the rhapsody with "twenty-three musicians in the ensemble" and George Gershwin on piano.{{sfn|Goldberg|1958|p=147}}{{sfn|Schwartz|1979|p=89}} In characteristic style, Gershwin chose to partially improvise his piano solo.{{sfn|Schwartz|1979|p=89}} The orchestra anxiously waited for Gershwin's nod which signaled the end of his piano solo and the cue for the ensemble to resume playing.{{sfn|Schwartz|1979|p=89}} As Gershwin did not write the solo piano section until after the concert, it remains unknown exactly how the original rhapsody sounded at the premiere.{{sfn|Schwartz|1979|pp=88–89}}