GRAND CANYON SUITE

Originally published in the December 1938 issue of Arizona Highways.

EDITOR'S NOTE: In 1917, a piano player from Los Angeles made his first trip to Arizona. Like so many visitors, he eventually headed north to watch the sun rise over the Grand Canyon. A decade later, he began work on what would become known as the Grand Canyon Suite. The now-iconic piece was completed in 1931 and was first performed that same year by Paul Whiteman and his orchestra at the Studebaker Theatre in Chicago. In 1938, the composer wrote about how his masterpiece came to be.

HERE ARE THINGS IN THIS WORLD which we love passingly, or long, or always, and that applies particularly to persons and places. It is to such a place that I dedicate this article with all the love and gratitude in my heart. The place I mean is large, very large, but I think that I know most of it, as well as the best of it (to me there is no worst) and it has become an abiding part of my fondest memories. There I treasure my recollections of the place I am writing about; recollections sentimental, pictorial, romantic; recollections of grandiose Nature, of vast areas, of eloquent solitudes, towering heights, silent deserts, rushing rivers, wild animal life; of health-giving ozone, magic dawns and resplendent sunsets; silvery moonshine, iridescent colorings of skies and rocks; and before all else, of a stock of men and women who breathe deeply and freely, live bravely and picturesquely, speak their minds in simplicity and truth, and altogether represent as typical and fine a human flowering as this land of ours has inherited from its great pioneer days. If you have read this far, and not guessed the name of the place I am eulogizing, let me relieve your mind. I mean Arizona.

RCA VICTOR Red Seal Records GRAND CANYON SUITE ARTURO TOSCANINI and the NBC Symphony Orchestra

I FIRST WENT TO ARIZONA IN 1917, when the war urge sent me to volunteer for the cavalry band in Douglas. I played the baritone, and my practice hours were spent on the desert, much to the relief of my neighbors in the city! Then came the draft, and I had to return to Los Angeles to report. Before that, however, exciting adventure stalked me in Douglas, when I temporarily exchanged the baritone for the gun, went on a hunting trip, and unknowingly strayed into border Mexico, at Slaughter's Ranch. A troop of Mexicans seized me and took me to Agua Prieta. On the way I tried to put on a bold front, but felt none too good when I remembered that I had no passport, and not even a hunting license. Duly I was arraigned at Mexican headquarters in an open square, and from the voluble palaver and glowering looks of my captors I gathered that things were going none too well for me. Visions of a firing squad filled my mind, and I was wondering to whom to bequeath my scanty belongings when a big Packard car rolled up, and out Before that, however, exciting adventure stalked me in Douglas, when I temporarily exchanged the baritone for the gun, went on a hunting trip, and unknowingly strayed into border Mexico, at Slaughter's Ranch. A troop of Mexicans seized me and took me to Agua Prieta. On the way I tried to put on a bold front, but felt none too good when I remembered that I had no passport, and not even a hunting license. Duly I was arraigned at Mexican headquarters in an open square, and from the voluble palaver and glowering looks of my captors I gathered that things were going none too well for me. Visions of a firing squad filled my mind, and I was wondering to whom to bequeath my scanty belongings when a big Packard car rolled up, and out Stepped a brilliantly uniformed Mexican General, whom to my intense happiness I recognized as an occasional visitor to the Douglas café where I had been doing some professional pianoplaying. I remembered that the General applauded my performances, and had sent me requests to do some of the operatic melodies he liked. I pushed my guard aside, rushed over to the General, and pantomimed an imitation of piano-playing, saying Rigoletto, Lucia, Faust, Traviata. Suddenly he smiled, nodded affirmatively, and appeared to ask the nature of the charges against me. Satisfied that I was not a spy or in any way endangering the safety of Mexico, the General gave some curt orders, wrote a release, had my confiscated gun returned to me, and appointed an escort to take me back to the United States line. We separated with mutual bows, and if I had been a Mexican, I would have kissed him on both cheeks.

After the war, I lived in Arizona at different periods in 1918, '19, '20, '21 and '23. I was familiar with the Prescott rodeos, made frequent visits to the Grand Canyon, camped everywhere from the border to Mohave County, felt at home in Flagstaff and Tombstone, the State ranches, mining camps; I hobnobbed with Indians, did some gold-prospecting with an old friend, who at one time controlled an interest in the famous Ivanpaw Mine in the Hualapai Mountains; often heard the Indians' drums beating all night during their pow-wows; had some ownership in the New Jersey Mining Company at Chloride; formed a partnership in several hundred head of livestock with a cattleman and got to know the packing-houses and their methods of slaughter and dressing; fished the Colorado River they were epitomized, before all else, in the awe-inspiring magnificence and towering mystery of the Grand Canyon, which always had stimulated my imagination to tonal impressions. I saw color, but I "heard" it, too.

Just here let me digress to set forth briefly my previous musical background, as it may help to explain my approach to the mighty subject I had ambitiously chosen for transference into orchestral expression. Born in New York, I was only a few months old when I was taken to California by my parents, and so from early childhood my sympathies were Western in spite of my Eastern derivation. My later destiny shaped itself through the heritage coming from maternal grandfather Bernard Bielich, who occupied the first cello desk at the Metropolitan Opera House together with Victor Herbert. Subsequently my ancestor became solo cellist of the Los Angeles Orchestra, where my uncle, Julius, functioned as concertmaster. My mother, too, played the cello, had been a pupil of the great Klengel at the Leipsic Conservatory, and gave me my primary musical education. Dad was right in the spirit, with previous activity as a singer, serving in the famous light opera organization, The Bostonians, which premiered such works as Robin Hood, The Serenade, The Fortune Teller, and other hits of their day.

Well, it was decided by my elders that the family had enough professional musicians, and so my first real jobs were those of bank clerk, printer, and bookbinder. But nothing of above Needles; experienced marvelous floods; spent wonderful nights on the desert; and rode all over the state in a cut-down Ford roadster. Do you wonder that I had by that time considered myself almost a native Arizonan? Recalling the desert, I remember when I broke down there in my Ford, and had to make my own repairs, no small matter for an unmechanical musician, and by the way, in those days one traveled Arizona with a so-called "strip-map," which meant that the only guides were landmarks like a certain farm, tree, fork of some stream, watermill, giant cactus, or ranchhouse. There were few signposts, and the roads were of the dirt and unimproved variety. To follow the strip-map correctly, it was only necessary to set the speedometer at so many miles, and then at given points to look for the indicated landmarks I have just described. Old-timers will smile reminiscently that kind worked. If some domestic animals are subject to the call of the wild, I could not escape the call of music. It got me, and got me good. Soon I was a traveling pianist, doing itinerant playing in various California communities, including one in which necessity forced me to tickle the keyboard in the saloon of a mining camp. But nostalgia overcame me, and to get the price of a ticket for home, I gave a "recital" in the saloon! It was a lengthy affair during which the primary business of the establishment was forgotten. When the last bibulous "music lover" left, at 5 a.m., he presented me with two silver dollars. Exactly two hours and thirteen minutes later, I was on the train, bound for Los Angeles.

with me, now that we know the modern touring facilities of Arizona, with its exact maps and perfected great highways. However, as the saying has it, "them was the days," and there are many of us with whom they linger affectionately in memory. My last extended visit to Arizona was in 1926, and on that occasion came to me the irresistible impulse to put into music what I felt about the State and its wonders of Nature. To me There I occasionally played the viola in the local symphony orchestra, but often traveled to other localities and appeared with popular instrumental groups performing in hotels, theaters and dance-halls. In 1919, after one of my Arizona sojourns, I joined John Tait's orchestra in a famous San Francisco resort, and dissatisfied with the thin arrangement he used, I first tried my hand at improving them with characteristic changes of my own. A year later I was a member of Paul Whiteman's first orchestra in Los Angeles. Like myself, he had enjoyed symphony training, but we both were interested in applying Our knowledge to a better sort of orchestration for popular music. Paul encouraged me to experiment along that line, and to try my hand at various kinds of innovations. I worked out new ideas, and to meet them, Paul gradually changed the instrumentation of his band to the type that later became the real jazz combination. We abandoned the huddle system of everybody playing together all the time, featured solos, and took the saxophone into our orchestral family. Our new offerings were piquant and dancy, and made an instantaneous hit. I have since been called "the father of jazz instrumentation," and I suppose that I really represent that more or less illegitimate parenthood.

In the strictly jazz idiom, I imagine that my best known child is the scoring of the late lamented George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which he first brought to me in the form of a pencil manuscript for piano solo. It was at that time the longest jazz composition that had been orchestrated, and my dominant purpose was to fill it with uncommon instrumental variety and coloring. In 1924 I retired from the Whiteman band as pianist and arranger, and devoted my time to some conducting of my own; but chiefly to scoring, arranging, transcribing, and composing. In the last-named field my record includes the Mississippi Suite, Metropolis, Southern Rhapsody, Hollywood Suite, and Grand Canyon.

I have related the foregoing in order to give you an idea of the preliminaries to the genesis of my Grand Canyon music, which, once the idea to compose it had me in its grip, seemed to call for a tonal language not that of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, or even symphonic moderns, but for a truly American idiom, falling easily into the average ear, and completely understandable by ordinary Mr. and Mrs. John Citizen and even their adolescent offspring. Whether or not I have succeeded, I leave it to others to judge.

THE GRAND CANYON SUITE HAS FIVE MOVEMENTS:

(1) Sunrise, (2) Painted Desert, (3) On the Trail, (4) Sunset, (5) Cloudburst. Strange as it may seem, I did not write the movements in that order, except that I started with Sunrise, for which I made the first sketches at Santa Monica, California, in 1929, and finished it later at my home in Teaneck, N.J. I next (also in 1929) did Sunset, at the Saddle River Country Club, near Hackensack, N.J. Now followed On the Trail, which became the "best seller" of the series, and engaged my leisure when I was a member of the Whiteman band in Chicago during 1931. The theme of the burros, which struck the popular fancy so strongly, came to me while wheeling my son along Sheridan Road. Five pile-drivers were thumping in some building operation, and their peculiar broken rhythm at once suggested its adaptability for musical use, recollection of the metrical hooftap which I had heard so often from the little beasts of burden in Arizona. For Painted Desert (1931, Chicago) I went again to memories, and envisioned a scene at Holbrook, where I had been on the rim of the desert at early morn and gazed in rapt amazement at the changing colors and shadows. The fifth movement of Cloudburst had me guessing for a while, in order to find the impressive dynamic effects I desired for Nature at its utmost fury, even though I had in mind a vivid mentalrecord of a terrific electrical storm I encountered in Arizona.

Then providence aided, for a similar watery deluge, with thunder and lightning, raged before my eyes during a visit to the Chippewa Indian Reservation. Immediately Cloudburst took shape and soon was transferred to paper, as the conclusion of the Grand Canyon Suite.

Its world's premiere took place November 22, 1931, in Chicago, with Paul Whiteman conducting, and I trust that I shall not be considered as lacking in modesty if I add that the composition scored impressive success, and since then has been performed all over the world. Of course, the usual critics arose here and there to put me in my place, and I remember especially one who objected to the fact that I did not orchestrate the work in the accepted fashion set by European composers! He said that the new type of American orchestration "did violence to the grandeur of the Grand Canyon," and that "it is a fitting subject only for the greatest of symphony writers." The greatest of symphony writers were Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Brahms, and as none of them ever was in Arizona, I do not quite see how they could have done musical justice to the Grand Canyon. The same critic contradicted himself, however, when he went on: "The Grand Canyon is a place of a thousand cathedrals, suggesting graphically the stupendous scope and majesty and beauty of this natural wonder. But we do not doubt that Grofé could write and Whiteman could play a description even of St. Peter's in 'symphonic jazz,' that would meet with great acclaim."

On the other hand, I like to recall the opinion of the Chicago critic who wrote, "That Donkey Motif of Grofé's is the most intriguing bit of music these old ears have heard in 20 years." And then there was the generous letter of my fellow composer, the late Raymond Hubbell: "Irvin Cobb looked over the edge of the Grand Canyon and said, 'God made it, but he didn't make any words to describe it.' May I rephrase that, and remark, 'God made it and now he has given Ferde Grofé music to describe it!' This is the greatest job done by any modern composer, and it sent the cold chills up and down my spine."

An outstanding New York critic also made me happy when my opus was first-timed there, with his praise of my "coloring, melody, imagination, and instrumentation of evocative atmosphere. Grofé actually gives you the spirit of the Grand Canyon, its gorgeous beauty, its vastness, its part in the Indian history of the Southwest."

Every composer's output generally includes one number which is most dear to his heart, perhaps because he considers it his best, or maybe because of the cherished associations in the music. In my case, that favored example is the Grand Canyon Suite, and for both of the reasons I have mentioned. It is my fervent hope that I may be able to do something to rank with it. But where is there such another subject to move me similarly? Do you wonder that my heart is filled with enduring love and lasting gratitude for Arizona and its grandest glory? Believe me when I say that I am looking forward to the time when I shall have a small ranch of my own, not far from Flagstaff and my beloved Grand Canyon country, where I may re-live my younger days in the great open, and find a finale of peace that passeth understanding. So, let the day arrive soon when I may sing, "Arizona, here I come!" AH