On this day in New York · December 13, 1928
Gershwin's Paris Taxi Horns Honk at Carnegie Hall
George Gershwin carried four Parisian taxi horns home in his luggage so Carnegie Hall could hear the real sound of a Paris street corner.
The facts
- Date
- December 13, 1928
- Venue
- Carnegie Hall, New York City
- Conductor
- Walter Damrosch, leading the New York Philharmonic
- The horns
- Four taxi horns Gershwin brought back from Paris, labeled A, B, C, and D, tuned to A-flat, B-flat, D, and a low A
On December 13, 1928, Walter Damrosch conducted the New York Philharmonic in the world premiere of George Gershwin's An American in Paris at Carnegie Hall. Gershwin had spent part of that year in Paris researching the piece, and he brought back four actual Parisian taxi horns, tuned to specific pitches, to be played as instruments in the score. The audience gave the new work an enthusiastic reception, though Gershwin himself left a later performance unhappy with what he considered Damrosch's dragging tempo. Critics debated whether a jazz-inflected tone poem belonged on a program alongside composers like Wagner, but the piece quickly became one of Gershwin's most performed orchestral works.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
-
a demonstration of enthusiasm impressively genuine in contrast to the conventional applause which new music, good and bad, ordinarily arouses
Edward Cushing, describing the audience's reaction to the premiere
Source: Wikipedia -
It's not a Beethoven Symphony, you know... It's a humorous piece, nothing solemn about it. It's not intended to draw tears. If it pleases symphony audiences as a light, jolly piece, a series of impressions musically expressed, it succeeds.
George Gershwin, responding to critics of the piece
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
The premiere planted a permanent piece of Paris street noise inside the American concert hall, and it cemented Gershwin's case that jazz-rooted American music belonged next to the European classics on a New York stage.
Sources
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