The first page of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” in pencil. Music Division.
At some point during the hectic composition of “Rhapsody in Blue,” one of George Gershwin’s masterpieces of 20th-century American music, the maestro got impatient with the process. The piece, which was to debut in just a few short weeks, would eventually run to 22,000 notes over 500 measures, after all.
In Gershwin’s handwritten score of “Rhapsody,” he sketched out the notation for his piano solo but left a small section blank in the second draft, as by then copyists were helping notate each change that he was making as the piece came together. That solo section stayed blank in the third and final score arranged by Ferde Grofé, with only a note to conductor Paul Whiteman to “wait for nod” when Gershwin launched into his solo.