Jazz Vocabulary In Grofe’s Music

Ferde Grofe was the first arranger to bring European orchestral techniques and sensibilities to what many Americans perceived as vulgar music. He was known as "the Prime Minister of Jazz" and "father of arrangers". In addition, he was also a classical composer. The descendant of four generations of musicians, with rich classical music foundation, however, he ran into prevailing jazz because of complicated work experience, and then, he became a composer between "serious" and "popular"Grofe arranged plenty of works in jazz style, and composed some art works influenced by jazz. In this dissertation, I chose three influential compositions, Mississippi Suite, Metropolis and Grand Canyon Suite, composed by Grofe. These compositions were finished in the years when Grofe was working in the "king of jazz" Paul Whiteman’s band. This dissertation is to analyse the usage of jazz materials in these three compositions mentioned above in multi perspective, and to explain the phenomenon of jazz into serious music from cultural perspective.The dissertation is divided into five chapters. Chapter One concerns the background of the formation of Grofe’s creative style with jazz, and primitively introduces the works which are in relation to jazz. This chapter is the bedding of the dissertation. Chapter Two is the analysis of blues fators in tradition or beyond tradition. Chapter Three investigates the jazz rhythm factors such as ragtime and syncopation. Chapter Four concerns the jazz orchestration style in Grofe’s three compositions, mainly reflecting in organization and the dealing with timbre. Chapter Two to Chapter Four is the principal part in the thesis. And the research purpose of Chapter Five is to promote the whole dissertation after the four chapters before. A number of jazz-style classically composed pieces played in Grofe’s years, the phenomenon is relatively pervasive, so Chapter Five is to account for the reason behind the phenomenon.