Klarinet Archive - Posting 000982.txt from 1997/03

From: Gary Young <gyoung@-----.COM>
Subj: Still more on Gershwin and glissando
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 1997 11:25:40 -0500

I think the list is down, but I've become obsessed with this issue so that
won't stop me.

I found the source of my belief that the clarinetist at the premiere of
Rhapsody in Blue turned the opening run into a glissando/portamento. It's
Pamela Weston's chapter in the Cambridge Companion to the Clarinet, at page
102:

"One of the earliest works to combine jazz with the classical idiom was
Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (1924). The opening glissando -- not in
Gershwin's original score but interpolated as a joke by Paul Whiteman's
clarinettist Ross Gorman -- made the composer famous overnight. The
glissando is not every classical player's cup of tea, and indeed proved
fatal to Baltimore's principal clarinet, Georges Grisez (1884-1946), who
died on stage after performing it."

Well, this account is inconsistent with Deena Rosenberg's, from Ira
Gershwin, which has Gershwin intending (but not notating?) the gliss, a la
klezmer. Pamela Weston does not indicate her source for this story, and I
don't have her other books to check for sources given there. She seems
right that the gliss is not in Gershwin's original piano score (is it in
scores today?). It is unclear who the clarinetist was (Weston and
Rosenberg say Ross Gorman, Gunther Schuller says Chester Hazlett). Does
anyone have any idea what really happened -- and reliable sources to back
it up? And what's the source of the story of poor George Grisez?

I look forward to responses from those similarly obsessed.

Gary

   
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