[Dixielandjazz] Gershwin and the Whiteman Band.

[Bert Brandsma]

Many great artists didn't get the recognition they deserved in their own time.
Gerhwin has as at same time been praised highly but also critisised as not being a serious composer.
There is something to say for both sides.
On firsthand experience I can tell you that many symphony musicians love to play pieces like Rhapsody in Blue, the Orchestral version of Porgy and Bess and An American in Paris.The three pieces are the ones that are played most often by orchestra's. (I played all sax parts and one time the clarinet part of Rhapsody in different concerts).
The audiences also love these pieces, so in that sence there is no doubt about his quality, esp. if we consider that Rhapsody is made almost 90 years ago.
The biggest reasons for critisism I read are two :
- his lifestyle, Gerswin seems to have been a big party animal. Not the picture society wants to see of the tortured and misunderstood genius of an artist.
- his pieces lacking form. Bernstein said he loved the music of Rhapsody in Blue, (he made one of the most famous recordings as piano player) but didn't think it was a good composition in the form sence.
My impression is that many of the people who critisised Gershwin in this field tried to relate it to forms like the Classical Sonata form or Rondo or whatever, but could not find parralels.Thus didn't it have the same intelectual heights as Beethoven's best sonata's or the complicated inner relations like Bach Fugue.
In a way it is the same kind of comment people gave Ellington, esp. for his longer works.
And here is where they , in my personal opinion, made the big mistakes.
Both Ellington's and Gerswin's music are a new kind of expression, not rooted in the tradition of classical music. In fact I'm pretty sure that no "Jazz" composition would work really well in sonata form, or for the matter a Fugue, as these forms are too intellectual, but also too restricyed, to really have a healthy simbioses with the feel of spontanity a good Jazz performance needs.
As with so many people in so many fields, they feel the need to prove that what they are doing is the most interesting. Certainly in the world of classical music there is a need for a certain form of snobbism. The reason is in fact not very complicated, the music is not too popular anymore so in self-defence they try to sell it as more intelligent.
The trouble here of course is that in classical music there was and to this day is, composed a lot of trash that nobody listens to anymore. The only names that stood the times are the famous ones like Mozart, Betthoven, you name them.
By now we can be pretty safe to asume that Gershwin and Ellington wil go into history as the greatest Jazz composers, no doubt about it.As a youth Gershwin was much more talented, Ellington worked longer and probably harder.

Then the critisism on the Whiteman band, I totally agree with the point taken by Gunther Schuller in his book : The Swing era.Whiteman's problem is that you cannot judge him as a Classical musician , since he is not playing classical music, and you cannot judge him as a jazz musician, since he did not play jazz.At least, not in what the word jazz means in our days...... it was considered jazz though in the 1920's...... But on the other hand, the band did it's job, playing MUSIC, in a very professional way. Excellent intonation, good arrangements, well performed, with for the purpose a nice beat.And that alone is no bad achievement.
Kind regards,
Bert Brandsma