Ferde Grofé

Born: March 27, 1897, New York, NY
Died: April 3, 1972, Santa Monica, CA

Grand Canyon Suite

• Composed: 1931
  
• Premiere: November 22, 1931 in Chicago, conducted by Paul Whiteman.
• Duration: approx. 26 minutes

Though he is often remembered only as the orchestrator of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue for its 1924 premiere at Aeolian Hall in New York, Ferde Grofé was one of America’s most talented and popular composers and arrangers during the first half of the 20th century. He was born Ferdinand Rudolf von Grofé to a musical family in New York on March 27, 1892; his mother, an accomplished cellist, was a graduate of the Leipzig Conservatory, and his father was an actor and operetta performer. Mrs. Grofé’s father, Bernard Bierlich, shared the principal cello desk at the Metropolitan Opera with Victor Herbert at that time, and later became principal cellist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic; one of Ferde’s uncles, Julius Bierlich, was concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The family moved to Los Angeles when Ferde was an infant, and there the boy learned to read music and displayed a pronounced talent for playing violin and piano. Following his father’s death in 1900, his mother took Ferde to Leipzig to study for three years at her alma mater, returning to Los Angeles in 1906. The following year she remarried. When Ferde’s stepfather tried to discourage his musical pursuits, the fifteen-year-old prodigy simply ran away from home, supporting himself with all manner of odd jobs and accepting any available engagements as a violinist or pianist or arranger (including a tour of California mining camps as accompanist for a cornet player).

Grofé was reconciled with his family in 1909 and returned to Los Angeles, where he played in the viola section of the Philharmonic for the next decade. He supplemented his income during those years by performing in theaters and dance halls and by forming a jazz band that drew considerable attention because of his improvisations and arrangements. His work came to the notice of Paul Whiteman, a classically trained musician (he played viola in the Denver Symphony for a short time) who was also interested in jazz and had formed his own band in Santa Barbara. Whiteman hired Grofé as his pianist and arranger in 1920. The first arrangement by Grofé that Whiteman recorded — Whispering — became a tremendous hit, selling over a million copies. Grofé wrote all of Whiteman’s arrangements for the next ten years, including the Rhapsody in Blue, a composition whose success encouraged him to attempt his own large-scale concert works in the vernacular idiom at which he was so adept. His Mississippi Suite of 1925 was the first of a number of orchestral compositions that took as their subjects American topography, culture and history. In addition to the Grand Canyon Suite of 1931, his most celebrated creation, the series came to include suites titled Tabloid (a tribute to American newspapers which included a rank of typewriters in its orchestral ensemble), Rudy Vallee, Hollywood, A Day on the Farm, Kentucky Derby, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Hudson River, Yellowstone, San Francisco, Niagara Falls, World’s Fair (in honor of the 1964 World’s Fair in New York) and Death Valley. After leaving Whiteman’s organization in 1931, Grofé made numerous appearances as a conductor in the concert hall and on radio, and in January 1937, he led a program entirely of his works in Carnegie Hall. From 1939 to 1942, he taught composition and arranging at the Juilliard School in New York, and then returned to California, contributing scores to several movies, including one for the 1944 Minstrel Man for which he received an Academy Award. Grofé died in Santa Monica on April 3, 1972, one week after his eightieth birthday.

Ferde Grofé occupies important places in the histories of both American popular and concert music. In his arrangements for the Whiteman band, he brought an unprecedented breadth and color of orchestral sonority to popular music that influenced Broadway, Hollywood and dance bands around the country. In his concert compositions, he filled the symphonic structures of the European tradition with a content that reflects the vitality of American jazz, folk and popular idioms. “I have spoken of America in this music simply because America spoke to me, just as it has spoken to you and to every one of us,” he wrote of the Grand Canyon Suite. “If I have succeeded in capturing some part of the American musical spirit, I am grateful that I was trained to do so. But this music is your music, and mine only in the highly technical sense that a copyright has been filed away with my name on it. Always we must realize that there is much more to hear. Our land is rich in music, and if you listen you can hear it right now. This is our music you hear, surging forth, singing out to every one of us.”

The Grand Canyon Suite was written in 1931 for Whiteman’s concert at the Studebaker Theatre in Chicago on November 22, an event, like the legendary Aeolian Hall program in New York seven years before, that sought to meld the worlds of popular and concert music. The Suite, originally scored for the twenty pieces of Whiteman’s ensemble, was a success at its premiere; two years later, during his stint as music director of the Capitol Theater Orchestra in New York, Grofé expanded the orchestration to the full symphonic proportions in which the music is known today. “I was able at last to draw on the full resources of the modern symphony orchestra,” he said, “and make use of all the colors I needed to describe my tremendous subject in musical terms.” The Grand Canyon Suite has enjoyed a fine and well-deserved popularity ever since it was first heard, finding its way into the repertory of such noted conductors as Arturo Toscanini, who recorded the work with the NBC Symphony in 1946, his first recording of music by an American composer.

The following comments on the Grand Canyon Suite were provided as a preface to the published score:

“SUNRISE. It is early morning on the desert. The sun rises slowly, spattering the darkness with the rich colors of dawn. The sun comes from beyond the horizon, and a brilliant spray of colors announces the full break of day.

“The movement begins with a soft roll on the kettledrums; a series of chords played by the woodwinds follows. The main theme is played by the English horn. The development of the movement is taken up by other instruments, reaching a triumphant climax that depicts the dawn of a new day.

“THE PAINTED DESERT. The desert is silent and mysterious, yet beautiful. As the bright rays of the sun are reflected against majestic crags and spread across the sands in varying hues, the entire scene appears as a canvas thick with the pigment of nature’s own blending.

“The movement starts with a mysterious theme played by bass clarinet and viola accompanied by weird chords in the lower registers of the orchestra. It is interrupted by strange harmonies from the woodwinds and the upper register of the piano. A contrasting melody of lyric quality follows. This is succeeded by the mysterious music which opened the movement.

“ON THE TRAIL. A traveler and his burro are descending the trail. The sharp hoof beats of the animal form an unusual rhythmic background for the cowboy’s song. The sounds of a waterfall tell them of a nearby oasis. A lone cabin is soon sighted and, as they near it, a music box is heard. The travelers stop at the cabin for refreshment. Now fully rested, they journey forth at a livelier pace. The movement ends as man and burro disappear in the distance.

“This is the most popular movement of the suite. It starts as the orchestra simulates the loud bray of a burro. After a violin cadenza, the first theme — a graceful melody in a rhythmic pattern — is established. It has the feeling of a burro walking. The second theme of the movement — a melody in Western style — is played contrapuntally to the first. This is followed by a suggestion of an old music box, which is played by the celesta. The opening theme is heard again in a faster tempo. The movement is concluded with the bray of the burro. The ending is short and incisive.

“SUNSET. Now the shades of night sweep over the golden hues of day. As evening envelops the desert in a cloak of darkness, there is a suggestion of animal calls coming from the distant rim of the canyon.

“A wild, animal-like call, played by the horns, opens this movement. This is followed by the main theme, which is introduced by bells and violins. In the development, the theme is repeated by oboes and violins, then by woodwinds and violins, again by cellos and horns, horns and flutes. Finally the horns again play the calls heard in the opening bars, and the movement ends as the tones fade into the distance,

“CLOUDBURST. This is the most pictorial movement of the suite. We hear the approach of the storm. Lightning flashes across the sky and thunder roars from the darkness. The torrent of rain reaches its height in a cloudburst, but the storm disappears rapidly and the moon comes from behind clouds. Nature again rejoices in all its grandeur.

“Glissando effects in the violin section describe the approach of the storm. All the resources of the orchestra are used to portray the battle of the elements in the development. The agitated movement subsides, and then follows a gradual crescendo that reaches its climax at the very end.”

— Dr. Richard E. Rodda