A Jazz Symphony

• Antheil’s Jazz Symphony was composed in 1925, one year after Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.¹
• Listen for: comic quotations of Rhapsody in Blue opening clarinet motif²
• Listen for: mariachi style theme; ragtime with tone clusters; banjos playing Stravinsky-esque passages ³

Antheil thought his piece would “put Gershwin in the shade.” (It did not) 

Quoted in Matthew Mugmon, “George Antheil, A Jazz Symphony”

1. Matthew Mugmon, “George  Antheil, A Jazz Symphony,” The American Symphony Orchestra, accessed July 11, 2019, https://www.americansymphony.org/george-antheil-a-jazz-symphony/.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.