George Gershwin only has a few weeks to compose a concerto. His piece is supposed to exemplify American music and premiere at a concert entitled "An Experiment in Modern Music." Homesick for New York while rehearsing for a musical in Boston, he soon realizes that American music is much like its people, a great melting pot of sounds, rhythms, and harmonies. JoAnn Kitchel's illustrations capture the 1920s in all their art deco majesty.
To provide greater availability for a work of such importance, the original publishers secured from Gershwin a solo piano version wherein the orchestral parts are fused together with the solo piano part (PS0047). Due to concerns that the composer's arrangement presented too many technical demands to pianists not possessing the requisite technique, a modified arrangement was delicately solicited from pianists of the time. (Gershwin's untimely death precluded any modification from the composer himself.) Many attempts at technical modifications were rejected on ethical grounds until Herman Wasserman--who taught Gershwin to play the piano--submitted a manuscript which became this edition. Several prominent pianists who reviewed the score all attested to the amazing reduction in technical demands while retaining the clarity, sonority, and brilliance of the original. This edition is designed for Early Advanced pianists, although some sections, including the well-known Moderato middle section, are accessible to those performing at less-advanced levels.
In Arranging Gershwin, author Ryan Bañagale approaches George Gershwin's iconic piece Rhapsody in Blue not as a composition but as an arrangement -- a status it has in many ways held since its inception in 1924, yet one unconsidered until now. Shifting emphasis away from the notion of the Rhapsody as a static work by a single composer, Bañagale posits a broad vision of the piece that acknowledges the efforts of a variety of collaborators who shaped the Rhapsody as we know it today. Arranging Gershwin sheds new light on familiar musicians such as Leonard Bernstein and Duke Ellington, introduces lesser-known figures such as Ferde Grofé and Larry Adler, and remaps the terrain of this emblematic piece of American music. At the same time, it expands on existing approaches to the study of arrangements -- an emerging and insightful realm of American music studies -- as well as challenges existing and entrenched definitions of composer and composition. Based on a host of newly discovered manuscripts, the book significantly alters existing historical and cultural conceptions of the Rhapsody. With additional forays into visual media, including the commercial advertising of United Airlines and Woody Allen's Manhattan, it moreover exemplifies how arrangements have contributed not only to the iconicity of Gershwin and Rhapsody in Blue, but also to music-making in America -- its people, their pursuits, and their processes.
In 1924, American pianist George Gershwin composes his masterpiece, Rhapsody in Blue, in less than five weeks. Includes historical note. Suggested level: primary.
Originally for piano and orchestra; arr. for piano solo./ "Includes the addendum to the 2 piano/4 hands edition and the fully restored piano manuscript"--Cover./ Includes foreword and commentary on the manuscript by Alicia Zizzo (p. [2]-15), and biographical notes on the editor
One of Gershwin’s most popular compositions is available for the first time in Dover’s music catalog. This affordable edition includes Solo Piano and Piano and Orchestra versions with Orchestral Reduction for Second Piano.
The composer Witold Lutostawski (born 1913) is one of the outstanding musical personalities of the twentieth century. In this critical biography Steven Stucky traces Lutostawski's development from the Stravinsky-influenced music of his student days to his emergence in the 1960s as a leading avant-gardist. Since the vicissitudes of cultural life in his native Poland have profoundly affected the composer's career, the book includes detailed accounts of Lutostawski's official censure for 'formalism' in the late 1940s and the leading role he later played in a flourishing Polish modernist movement. Both well-known works, such as the Concerto for Orchestra, Trois poemes d'Henri Michaux and the Second Symphony, and the lesser-known early music are considered in detail. Fragments of many compositions never before published in the West are included. There are also analytical summaries of each major work from Jeux véitiens (1961) to Mi-parti (1976).
