Ferdinand Rudolph von Grofé (March 27, 1892 – April 3, 1972), known as Ferde Grofé () was an American composer, arranger, pianist, and instrumentalist. He is best known for his 1931 five-movement symphonic poem the Grand Canyon Suite, and for orchestrating George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue for its 1924 premiere.
During the 1920s and 1930s, he went by the name Ferdie Grofé.
Grofé was born on 127 East Third Street, New York City, in 1892 to German immigrants. He came by his extensive musical interests naturally. His family included several musicians. His father, Emil von Grofé, was a baritone who mainly performed in light opera. His mother, Elsa Johanna Bierlich von Grofé, was a professional cellist and a versatile music teacher who taught Ferde to play both the violin and the piano. Elsa's father, Bernard Bierlich, was a cellist in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York, and her brother, Julius Bierlich, was the first violinist and concertmaster of the Los Angeles Symphony.
Ferde's father died in 1899, after which his mother took him abroad to study piano, viola, and composition in Leipzig, Germany. Ferde became proficient on a wide range of instruments including piano (his favored instrument), violin, viola (he became a violist in the LA Symphony), baritone horn, alto horn, cornet and drums. This command of musical instruments and composition gave Ferde the foundation to become, first an arranger of other composers' music, and then a composer in his own right.
Grofé left home at age 14 and variously worked as a milkman, truck driver, usher, newsboy, elevator operator, helper in a book bindery, iron factory worker, and played in a piano bar for two dollars a night, and as an accompanist. He continued studying piano and violin. When he was 15 he was performing with dance bands. He also played the alto horn in brass bands. He was 17 when he wrote his first commissioned work, "Elks' Grand Reunion March & Two-step".
Beginning in 1920, he played piano with the Paul Whiteman orchestra. He served as Whiteman's chief arranger from 1920 to 1932. He made hundreds of arrangements of popular songs, Broadway show music, and tunes of all types for Whiteman. One commentator said Grofé, while arranging for Whiteman, "conceived the idea of instrumental contrasts, especially of the 'harmonic chorus,'" where "some solo instrument, usually a saxophone, softly croons the melody as a chordal accompaniment is achieved by the brass."
Grofé's most memorable arrangement is that of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which established Grofé's reputation among musicians. Grofé took what Gershwin had written for two pianos and orchestrated it for Whiteman's orchestra. He transformed Gershwin's musical canvas with the colors and many of the creative touches for which it is so well known. It was Grofé's arrangement that was first performed by George Gershwin and the Paul Whiteman Orchestra in New York's Aeolian Hall on February 12, 1924. He went on to create two more arrangements of the piece in later years. Grofé's 1942 orchestration for full orchestra of Rhapsody in Blue is the one most frequently heard today. In 1928, Gershwin wrote a letter to ASCAP complaining that Grofé had listed himself as a composer of Rhapsody in Blue. The dispute was settled, with Grofé receiving a portion of the music royalties for the piece. Despite this misunderstanding, Grofé served as one of the pallbearers at Gershwin's funeral in 1937.
In 1932, The New York Times called Grofé "the Prime Minister of Jazz". This was an oblique reference to the fact that Whiteman was widely called "King of Jazz", especially after the appearance of the 1930 King of Jazz film which featured Whiteman and his music.
During this time, Grofé also recorded numerous piano rolls for the American Piano Company (Ampico) in New York. Some captured performances were embellished with additional notes after the initial recording took place to attempt to convey the thick lush nature of his orchestra's style. Hence those published rolls are marked "Played by Ferdie Grofé (assisted)".
Not everybody appreciated Grofé's flowery arrangements during this time. In a review of a Whiteman jazz concert in New York, one writer said the music was expected to be pleasing, and "it proved so when it was repeated last night, in spite of the excessive instrumentation of Ferde Grofé." A writer of a later generation said "the Grofé and Gould pieces were the essence of slick commercialism..."
Radio, TV, conducting and teaching
Mardi Gras (from Mississippi Suite) was recorded in the radio transcription series Shilkret Novelties in 1931. and again by Nathaniel Shilkret in RCA Victor's transcription series His Master's Voice of the Air in 1932. "On the Trail" (from Grand Canyon Suite) was also recorded in the His Master's Voice of the Air transcriptions.
During the 1930s, he was the orchestra leader on several radio programs, including Fred Allen's show, the George Burns and Gracie Allen show and his own The Ferde Grofé Show. The "On the Trail" segment of Grand Canyon Suite was used for many years as the "musical signature" for radio and television programs sponsored by Philip Morris cigarettes, beginning with their 1933 radio program featuring Grofé and his orchestra and concluding with I Love Lucy (1951–57). Jon Hendricks wrote lyrics for "On the Trail", and the song was recorded for Hendricks' album To Tell the Truth (1975). The piano version sheet music of the suite includes lyrics to the central section of "On the Trail" by songwriter Gus Kahn.
Several times he conducted orchestral programs in New York's Carnegie Hall. On March 25, 1938, Ferde Grofe and his Symphony Orchestra played a concert at Carnegie Hall for the benefit of "Free Milk Fund for Babies, Inc.", Mrs. William Randolph Hearst, President and Founder. The concert included a number of premieres, with George Gershwin's "Three Preludes" for orchestra (scored by Ferde Grofé) featured.
In January 1933 the premiere of his Tabloid, an orchestral suite in four movements, was presented in Carnegie Hall. In 1937, he conducted a concert tribute to George Gershwin at Lewisohn Stadium. The turnout (20,223 people) was the largest in that stadium's history. In 1934, Grofé announced he was working on an opera, to be based on the Edgar Allan Poe story "The Fall of the House of Usher".
In 1943, he was a guest on Paul Whiteman Presents. In 1944, he was a panelist on A Song Is Born radio show, judging the works of unknown composers. Before that time he had served several times as judge or co-judge in musical contests. Grofé was later employed as a conductor and faculty member at the Juilliard School of Music, where he taught orchestration.
In addition to being an arranger, Grofé was a composer in his own right. While still with Whiteman, in 1926, he wrote Mississippi Suite, which Whiteman recorded in a shortened format in 1927. He wrote a number of other pieces, including a theme for the 1939 New York World's Fair and suites for Niagara Falls and the Hudson River. Possibly as a result of his World's Fair theme, October 13, 1940, was designated "Ferde Grofé Day" at the American pavilion of the World's Fair. In 1961, Grofé conducted his Niagara Falls Suite as part of the ceremony marking the opening of the first stage of the Niagara Falls Power Generation project.
Other notable compositions by Grofé were the Death Valley Suite and a music production about Mark Twain. The Death Valley Suite is a short symphonic suite written by Grofé in 1949, depicting the westward travels of pioneers through the "harsh lands" of Death Valley in California. Grofé was commissioned by the Death Valley 49ers, a nonprofit organization devoted to preserving the pioneering and mining history of the Death Valley region encompassing Death Valley National Monument (now Death Valley National Park) and the surrounding area. The composition and music was part of a pageant performed on December 3, 1949, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Forty-niners who came by way of Death Valley in search of gold and other riches, as well as celebrating the California state centennial (1850–1950). The 1949 pageant setting was outdoors at Desolation Canyon in Death Valley. Grofé was the conductor, and actor James Stewart was the narrator. In 1960, work was announced on a musical production based on the life of Mark Twain. The music was first assigned to Victor Young, but Grofé was later brought in to complete the work.