A witty reviewer, writing of Paul Whiteman's recent concert of Jazz music, at Carnegie Hall, spoke of it as "Mr. Whiteman's attempt to make a good woman out of Jazz." Apparently Mr. Whiteman, impatient with the controversy raging in the public prints about the faults and merits of his very lucrative Muse, and, perhaps, a little bored with the superior approbation of a few Aesthetes and Learned Persons, decided to settle the thing emphatically by one bold and spectacular stroke. He would bring his Palais Royal orchestra with all its soothing and raucous accessories to Carnegie Hall, and there, amid the astonished echoes of a thousand classics, let it blow and strum for itself a place in the sun.

A strange audience gathered for the ceremony and experienced strange reactions. There were people from w'hat is referred to by public speakers as "every walk of life". In this conglomerate mass, two elements were dominant: the adherents of Mr. Whiteman in his unabashed Palais Royal phase, and the respectable artists and followers of the consecrated Muse at whose portals Mr. Whiteman was so loudly knocking.

The former were, of course, superior in numbers; exhibiting, too, in their bearing, a certain insolence, a boisterous bravado, intimating, almost, an intention to carry the assault, if not by merit, then by force. The latter were divided in their reactions. They listened with an exaggerated attention, anxious to penetrate to a deeper significance in the music, to sense a prognostication for the future. They sat amused, delighted, with the strange antics of the clarinets and saxophones and the sudden dislocation of accustomed rhythms; or, completely outraged by the cacophonous proceedings, they waited impatiently for the intermission to voice their feelings about the sacrilege.

It must be reported that the Palais Royalists, as the phrase goes, "had it"; that the applause was long and deafening and the encores numerous; and that the sympathizers of the Royalists departed, triumphant, certain that the canonization of Jazz had been achieved.

The writer of this article, who had a year ago traced the history of Jazz for Vanity Fair, attended the Whiteman concert with a keen anticipation of comparing the latest tantalizing inventions with the now familiar fading jazz tunes of a year ago. In this age of rapid development even music must dance to the quick-step of the times. A year is a long period and should record extraordinary things. Indeed so rapid has been the development of Jazz that, although in age it is but an infant and ought still to bawl and shriek to the slide trombones and sirens of Alexander's Ragtime Band, it has, in so short a time, attained to what refinement, to what sophistication, even! How insinuating and subdued it is! How it "roars you" now "as gentle as a sucking dove"! It is still full orchestra, but con sordino, "with the lid on", to use the vernacular. The dry, discreet, incisive banjo has superseded the traps, the numerous percussions,—the "um-tum-tum" of the second violins and violas, and now sustains, singly, the intricately irresponsible structure which is present day Jazz.

To his astonishment the writer found no real advance in the course of the past year. Jazz was musically patterned on its very noisy beginnings; old melodics were shown undergoing the process of electrical rejuvenation by changes in time and clever manipulations of rhythm; the Volga Boat So?ig was metamorphosed into Russian Rose. The numbers followed fast on one another, but nothing really new, nothing startlingly original emerged. It seemed that the popular American musical idiom, developed so suddenly, so amazingly, had already reached its limits. Indeed, it seemed merely a mode of expression rather than an expression of anything;—a new and jaunty vehicle which could carry any tune from Beethoven to Stravinsky,—a trick mirror which reflected objects fascinatingly distorted.

But towards the end of the program something did emerge, something magnificent enough to make musical history.

I had noticed at the bottom of the program A Rhapsody in Blue for piano and orchestra, with the composer, George Gershwin, at the piano, and I had anticipated a melody of Jazz tunes of the "Blues" sort—that minor mode of Jazz, its darker side. Thrown together to exploit the jazzy virtuosity of Mr. Gershwin, it would probably be amusing entertainment. Mr. Gershwin had contributed much to the development of Jazz, he had written many fascinating tunes exhibiting an unusual vitality. Moreover, he is, as I have intimated, an excellent pianist. Fatigued and bored with the sameness of Mr. Whiteman's experiment, one remained, hopefully, for Mr. Gershwin's "Blues". It would be refreshing.

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A word about George Gershwin. He is a tall youth of twenty-five years of age, with black hair and a long, sensitive face. He had started out as a boy to study the piano seriously; but the early discovery of a creative gift that might be commercially exploited decided him to devote his time entirely to composition. He wrote in rapid succession entire scores for musical shows and reviews, as well as a great many single "hits". He became popular; yet his music possessed characteristics intriguing to the cultured musician; —characteristics of form, melody and rhythm, noticeably individual. Everything he wrote had the elements both of grace and strength. His harmonics, though very modern, were securely rooted in the tonic dominant chords. His melodic line was long and flexible. Even the sentimental quality, which may have been his direct bid for popularity, had an air of health and youthful exuberance altogether engaging. There was the song, I Was So Young, You Were So Beautiful, a little saccharine, it is true, but safely carried over by an unmistakable sincerity; the magnificently virile Swanee and Stairway to Paradise; the captivating, Do It Again, a finer song in its genre than anything France had produced; and, more recently, Virginia, from the musical play. Sweet Little Devil, with its long, perfectly-proportioned melody.

Mr. Gershwin's contribution to the popular music of America has been manifold. While Mr. Berlin was the first to introduce the rhythmic variety that is now so common, he lacked a fine melodic gift. He was, it is true, skilful in making the most of the tunes he invented, but the tunes themselves were seldom above the commonplace. Say It With Music is a melody of the regular type, easy and suitable for popular absorption; yet Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil in Hades, built entirely on a rhythmic fragment, possessing no melody in the regular sense, is Mr. Berlin at his best. Mr. Gershwin, with an excellent rhythmic sense is, above all, that rarest of phenomena, a true melodist. To invent any sort of melody is difficult enough, but a really fine melody cannot be invented; —it comes. It comes often to Mr. Gershwin. Furthermore, the harmonic structure of his melodies is forthright and solid. But though Mr. Gershwin is thoroughly conversant with the harmonic secrets of Stravinsky and the latest French "Six", how thoroughly conversant was not known until the advent of the Rhapsody in Blue.

Now since the vitality of Jazz has forced a grudging acknowledgment from musicians and lovers of "legitimate" music, there has been endless speculation about the future of American music. That Jazz is, at present, the only musical idiom of America is hardly gainsaid. Whether Jazz is beautiful or ugly is of no more consequence than the aesthetic quality of a skyscraper. The skyscraper is the expression of American life, whether you regard it as a new and daring type of cathedral, aspiring, commercially, to the heavens as the mediaeval cathedral aspired religiously, or a perpendicular arrangement of packing cases reaching to the skies only for lack of available space on earth.

Accepting Jazz, then, as one is forced to accept the environment one lives in, the question of what could be done with it naturally presented itself. Would it eventually replace the old forms, as exemplified in the music of the classics, or would certain features of it be incorporated in the older forms and Jazz itself disappear. Against the former contention was urged the obviously restricted duration of jazz numbers in their present form, for the constant unceasing rhythmic pulsation, so effective in a composition lasting a few minutes, would, if stretched to a greater length, become intolerable. Should, however, the latter view prevail, the jazz element would in time be entirely lost in the placid, substantial proportions of the forms that evolved originally from a classic conception of life—a conception that was large enough to include every variety of human manifestation, yet constantly keep in mind the general scheme. If Jazz managed to persist at all, it would be, at most, in the nature of a piquant flavoring, like a touch of some sharp spice in a conservative and well-tried dish. Into the midst of this controversy has come Mr. Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.

It is evident that Mr. Gershwin, in planning his composition was actuated by "Aims", a motivation usually inimical to the production of fine art. There was, first, the aim to demonstrate the possibility of writing a jazz piece the length of a symphonic poem; there was the desire to discard the old forms altogether in doing this and to be formless, if such a thing were possible, or else to create for the new material entirely new forms. If those were his intentions, Mr. Gershwin's experiment cannot be called thoroughly successful. The piece, it is true, takes twenty minutes to perform, but not all of it is pure Jazz. Form, in the usual sense, is not only not discarded but is used, unconsciously, it is presumed, as a solid foundation for the new and bizarre material. In spite of Mr. Gershwin's intentions, however, the Rhapsody in Blue is highly successful. It is good music. Thus The Pilgrim's Progress survives as a good story, though Bunyan had intended merely a religious tract.

Rhapsody in Blue is a compromise. In that fact lies its success. It is built on two themes in the highest degree contrasting—a glowing phrase of symphonic proportion not unreminiscent of Strauss, to which is attached, by a touch of pure inspiration, a "jazzy" fragment of three descending chromatic notes reiterated with many rhythmic changes, a fragment half humorous, half pathetic, perhaps a satiric comment on the grandeur of the theme, a "jazzy" kidding of classical pretensions. Pitted against this is a boisterous, devil-may-care jazz melody. Several other tunes abound and many effects are exploited, but the interest is captured by the time-honoured development of the principal themes. Though Mr. Gershwin in this first attempt is often diffuse and blundering and has yet to learn the secret of economy in form, there is, nevertheless, so much vitality in the presentation and development of his material that the listener's emotions are almost constantly engaged.

The contending themes are so manipulated that one might, if one were so minded, suspect Mr. Gershwin of a deliberate symbolism, an attempt to embody, actually, in sound, the fury of the controversy which called into being Mr. Whiteman's experiment. It would appear, by the lack of ceremony with which he treats his classic theme at the finish— by the unseemly antics it is made to perform, by the sudden transformation of the erstwhile noble accents into current patter, that Mr. Gershwin wished to indicate his belief in the ultimate triumph of Jazz. But strangely enough, it was this theme that remained, afterwards, the one thing fixed in my mind; not in its final guise, hectic and impatient, but in the calm, deliberate grandeur of its first appearance.

Mr. Gershwin has demonstrated, once for all, the suitability of Jazz as thematic material for the larger musical forms. Whether, in the future, he or some one else will attain a skill ingenious enough to manipulate jazz tunes in such a manner as to reveal a sufficient variety of melodic and rhythmic contrasts and thus enable the composer to dispense entirely with conventional material is problematical, though not, in the light of what the Rhapsody in Blue has already accomplished in this direction, improbable. It may very well be that in the future annals of music George Gershwin will figure as a pioneer.