What is a Rhapsody?
It’s nice to break out of the confines of form and structure isn’t it? Go a little bit wild? Enter the Rhapsody, music’s answer to letting it all hang loose. Well, sort of. Michael Beek explains more
We can thank the Greeks for the idea of the Rhapsody, though their Rhapsodies were rather more word-based – poetry to be exact. Poetic Rhapsodies were a kind of recital of all the best bits of poems, brought together in one colourful epic.
And that’s really what a musical Rhapsody is, a piece of music of indeterminate length and with no formal structure, comprised of a number of different musical ideas. A Rhapsody is all about dynamics: light and shade, high and low, loud and soft, happy and sad… It’s a story, a journey and usually quite the musical ride.
Top examples are Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, painting quite the picture in music, and Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, a sprawling set of variations on Paganini’s Caprice No. 24. Both are single-movement flights of fancy that see a pianist and orchestra going head to head, so they are concerto-like. But they’re not concertos… they’re Rhapsodies!
There's another famous Rhapsody, too... 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. Queen's 1975 epic is every bit a Rhapsody when you really think about it. It's long, it changes stylistic gear a lot and tells a story. All the boxes are ticked.
- The best recordings of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue
- Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini: the best recordings
- Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue…What to listen to next
(Video: Rhapsody in Blue… Martin James Bartlett (piano); RPO/Eric Whitacre – BBC Proms, August 2015)
