Arranging Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue and the Creation of an American Icon.

Wells, Elizabeth A.

Arranging Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue and the Creation of an American Icon. By Ryan Raul Banagale. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. [xv, 209 p. ISBN 9780199978373 (hardcover), $105; ISBN 9780199978380 (paperback), $21.95; (e-book, Oxford Scholarship Online).] Music examples, illustrations, companion Web site, bibliography, index.

Ryan Raul Banagale's Arranging Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue and the Creation of an American Icon is one of a number of second-or third-generation works on American cultural identity that are part of a groundswell of interest in American music. Growing out of his doctoral work at Harvard, Banagale weaves a masterful history of George Gershwin's classic by looking at arrangements as diverse as those for harmonica to the O'Hare airport's use of the work in its underground concourse, "Terminal of Tomorrow." At first glance, this would seem like a scholarly effort that would produce mixed and often disjointed results, but Banagale manages to discuss Gershwin's work as a manifestation of an array of American experiences that seems to bring it all together to show how Gershwin, his legacy, and our own uses of American cultural artifacts play out in history. As the author writes in his opening, there are three central concerns to the book: "arrangements, mythmaking, and the recursive power of George Gershwin and Rhapsody in Blue in narratives of America and its music" (p. 1). Although the author has chosen a few signal arrangements to examine through this lens, he does make reference to many other arrangements and important touchpoints for the work throughout American history, including a seemingly over-the-top version for multiple pianists featured at the 1984 Olympic games.

The author has chosen a few important arrangements of the Rhapsody to investigate: first, the Ferde Grofe orchestration that has become famous as an early and "original" version of the work; Leonard Bernstein's youthful arrangement for camp band as well as his famous recording from 1959; Duke Ellington's arrangement; harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler's version; and perhaps most intriguingly, the use of the Rhapsody in United Airlines' advertising campaign, which has continued for decades. Along with the prose, there is a Web site, which provides helpful links to performances and clips that are referred to in the book. This makes for an interesting study--one can listen to various versions and excerpts while following the story of the Rhapsody through multiple iterations.

Certainly one of the most compelling chapters of the book, and one that will be of interest to both a more general audience and to Bernstein scholars, is the chapter investigating Bernstein's relationship with the work. Combining careful examination of the sources in the Bernstein archive with the version that the musician eventually recorded (with particular cuts) shows the Rhapsody and Gershwin as central controlling ideas in Bernstein's musical consciousness. From his early teenage days as a camp counselor at a summer camp (when he first learned of Gershwin's death over the radio), to his iconic (in its own right) recording with the New York Philharmonic, Banagale tells a very compelling narrative of Bernstein's tortured relationship with Gershwin's legacy. Trying to live up to the earlier composer (noting Bernstein's "Why Don't You Run Upstairs and Write a Nice Gershwin Tune?" in his Joy of Music as a central text), while also trying to get over his death, the author sees the Rhapsody as a continuing preoccupation in Bernstein's musical life. This is certainly one of the strongest chapters of the book. The only weak point is the assertion that the Rhapsody and its meaning to Bernstein were wrapped up in the musician's sexuality. Many authors have established that Bernstein's homosexuality was a central concern in his life and career, but the argument made for the Rhapsody, in particular, as relating to this important aspect of Bernstein's identity seems a little forced.

One of the other strengths of this book is its demystifying and demythologizing of the Gershwin classic through careful archival work that reveals misapprehensions in its history that have been carried through much previous scholarship. For instance, Banagale proves: that the Rhapsody did not sell one million copies, as previously reported (chap. 2); that harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler could not (as he claimed) have played on the Gershwin memorial concert in the late 1930s (chap. 5); and that Bernstein's reminiscence of finding out about Gershwin's death could not have been timed as he remembers it (chap. 3). A host of other smaller and larger errors are corrected in this account. The author is to be commended for his careful perusal of a number of archival sources in order to correct these sometimes small--but sometimes substantial--errors in the history' of the work.

Among the most fascinating parts of this book is the use of the Rhapsody in the now-ubiquitous United Airlines advertising campaigns. Here the work of the cultural historian comes to the fore, exploring how the Rhapsody was originally chosen and used, and how it changed subtly and not-so-subtly over the many years that United used the work and snippets from it in their advertising. Bringing together the ways the airline branded itself during different eras of aviation history (for example, before and after September 11) with how the company was presented in foreign markets, Banagale tells us a great deal about American corporate culture, not just the musical history of America. And certainly, although we can probably agree that the Rhapsody is one of the most well-known works of "popular" music in the twentieth century, the author points out that for a whole generation of young people it is more strongly linked to United Airlines than it is to George Gershwin.

Although in his opening chapter the author positions the Rhapsody with a summary of analyses and then outlines how he will discuss the various themes ("stride," "love," etc.) that occur in the piece, this is not a book that will further your understanding of Rhapsody in Blue in musical terms. Nor is it a book that will give you extensive information on Gershwin's composition of the work, although it touches on that (for this, the Cambridge Music Handbook Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue by David Schiff is the obvious place to turn, or to one of the many biographies of Gershwin). Nor does Banagale provide an exhaustive list of recordings or performances, as many musicologists pursuing reception history might have done. Instead, Banagale presents a family tree (of sorts) of this work, exploring how each arrangement reenvisions and represents both contemporary ideas about Gershwin and his music, and the cultural and musical work that each arranger is doing in appropriating the Rhapsody for their own agendas. In its scope, depth, and fastidious detail work, this is a very strong piece of musicological scholarship. Although the target audience may not be as clear, certainly anyone interested in American music and culture would benefit from this very readable, very well-written and researched account of one of the most famous pieces in our repertoire.

ELIZABETH A. WELLS

Mount Allison University