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Abstract This book approaches George Gershwin’s iconic Rhapsody in Blue as an “arrangement”—a status it has held since its inception in 1924, yet one unconsidered until now. It shifts the emphasis away from a centralized composition and from the sole agency of a single composer, positing a broad vision of the Rhapsody. Based on a host of newly discovered manuscripts, this book significantly alters existing historical and cultural conceptions of the Rhapsody. Each chapter engages a different set of previously unknown documents, providing the reader with a dynamic and multifaceted reappraisal of this emblematic piece of American music. In the process of remapping the terrain of the Rhapsody, new light is shed on familiar and lesser-known musicians who each used arrangements of the piece to establish their musical identities: Ferde Grofé, Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, Larry Adler, and Anthony Brown. Also considered over the course of the book is the role of visual media in the enduring status of both Gershwin and the Rhapsody, including forays into film, television, and the commercial advertising of United Airlines. The overlapping, divergent, and otherwise hidden narratives that emerge reveal how arrangements of Rhapsody in Blue have shaped the development and approach of musicians throughout the twentieth century and beyond. The reader emerges from the process with new conceptualizations of the Rhapsody, George Gershwin, and music-making in America.
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