Abstract illustration

Rhapsody in Blue – George Gershwin

I chose this piece as I am  quite familiar with it and already have a copy. Having stated that; the copy I have is on CD and having a copy on a mobile device would seem more practical for the purposes of this exercise.  When investigating what was available, I learnt that Gershwin originally wrote the piece as more of a jazz orientated number, contrary to the most common later interpretations. I found a recording played by Gershwin himself with the Paul Whiteman orchestra.

On listening to an extract decided that I would purchase the download of the track and use it as the basis of the exercise.

With pencil and sketch pad at the ready  I played the track and freely sketched, literally anything that came to mind or was stimulated by the sounds. Hoping that for a) inspiration and b) some theme or image that might be worth developing.

Observation; there are a lot of horn fanfares, this put me in mind of triumphal Roman legionnaires parading through colonnades. However with the additional tempo changes this image stalled.

Adopting a more considered approach, I initially visualised columns of trumpet bell shapes and wide stairs  representing the scales. I toyed with the idea of dancing gloved hands maybe on a keyboard.

columns of fingers in a trumpet bell

Thinking about the meandering scales led me to the idea of the game of snakes and ladders perhaps the upward scale can be represented by ladders and the snakes to indicate the downward.

I thought of snakes in terms of brass instruments with the bell as an open snakes mouth. But then the other way round the snake bodied instrument. I created an image from a photo of a snake with the head changed to a trumpet bell from a photo of a trumpet. It didn’t work for me but I was still keen on the general idea.



So I formulated an idea with brass instruments with bodies that have snake characteristics. Piano keyboards for the ladders, bit of a cliché, .

I played around with some other imagery snake entwining and coiling around things each other this was to get a better sense of the natural look of the reptile in different positions.
I made a draft of a potential final piece.

 To follow through with the loose snakes and ladders idea I decided on at least an impression of the squares of the board game, a background of squares blocked in with various hues of blue.
These, kind of, make sense of the travelling of the ladders  making interconnections of the phases of the music; alluding to the differing textures and moods within the piece.
Here is the finished piece;