George Gershwin Not Only in Blue

“It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang, that is so often so stimulating to a composer—I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise. … And there I suddenly heard, and even saw on paper—the complete construction of the rhapsody, from beginning to end. No new themes came to me, but I worked on the thematic material already in my mind and tried to conceive the composition as a whole. I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness. By the time I reached Boston I had a definite plot of the piece.”

George Gershwin about the train journey from New York to Boston, when he began writing down the first ideas for Rhapsody in Blue—just 39 days before the premiere.