{"id":112,"date":"2015-01-16T22:17:21","date_gmt":"2015-01-16T22:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/program_note\/grand-canyon-suite\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T17:28:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T17:28:24","slug":"grand-canyon-suite","status":"publish","type":"program_note","link":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/program_note\/grand-canyon-suite\/","title":{"rendered":"Grand Canyon Suite"},"content":{"rendered":"

Early in his career, Ferde Grof\u00e9 made an indelible mark on American music, for it was he who orchestrated Gershwin\u2019s\u00a0Rhapsody in Blue<\/em>. Grof\u00e9 was Paul Whiteman\u2019s staff arranger, and without his experience and craftsmanship, there is no small doubt that Gershwin\u2019s masterpiece would have been ready in time, or even have achieved the\u00a0succ\u00e8s fou<\/em>\u00a0that it did.\u00a0 He created so much of the \u201csound\u201d that we associate with Gershwin\u2019s composition, and in 1942 went on to create the arrangement for full symphonic orchestra that everybody knows today. But, of course, Grof\u00e9 was an accomplished composer in his own right, and\u00a0Grand Canyon Suite\u00a0<\/em>is the work by which he is remembered today.<\/p>\n

An indefatigable notable in the American popular music scene for decades, he was born in New York City to a distinguished classical music family, but received his early music education in Germany, and by 1920 was playing piano for Whiteman\u2019s orchestra.\u00a0 He went on to arrange and compose myriad works, was on the radio, conducted in Carnegie Hall, worked on Broadway, was a film composer in Hollywood, and even taught at the Juilliard School.\u00a0 His interests lay everywhere, and his serious compositions reflect this, especially his penchant for composing orchestral suites that are heavily descriptive: Mississippi Suite, Kentucky Derby Suite, Aviation Suite, Death Valley Suite, World\u2019s Fair Suite<\/em>, and\u00a0Rudy Vallee Suite,\u00a0<\/em>to name just a very few.\u00a0 And let\u2019s not forget his Sonata for Flute and Bicycle Pump.<\/p>\n

But, still,\u00a0Grand Canyon Suite\u00a0<\/em>is the survivor, and rightly so.\u00a0 It is a masterpiece of pictorialism and orchestration.\u00a0 Finished in 1931, the suite depicts various scenes as may occur in the canyon.\u00a0 The first movement, \u201cSunrise,\u201d is a gentle, ever-growing depiction of the sun\u2019s creeping rays, carried by constantly ascending scale passages.\u00a0 There are no real memorable tunes here, just atmospheric, swelling harmonies\u2014quite a contrast to Richard Strauss\u2019s bombastic sunrise from the beginning of\u00a0Also sprach Zarathustra.<\/em> \u201cPainted Desert\u201d, too, largely avoids singable melodies, rather, it evokes the static beauty of the quiet desert by constant, repetitive soft woodwind clusters and shimmering percussive effects that revolve slowly like a reflective prism.\u00a0 The introspective English horn finally ends it all, with a little help from a solo clarinet.\u00a0 Who hasn\u2019t heard \u201cOn the Trail,\u201d with its clip-clopping donkey hooves?\u00a0 Long ago, it became ubiquitous from its use by the Philip Morris radio and TV shows.\u00a0 And unmistakable is the opening \u201chee-haw\u201d\u2014and many more throughout the movement\u2013from our long-eared friends.\u00a0 It\u2019s a placid, quintessential Western atmosphere, and with a real, memorable melody, to boot!<\/p>\n

Horns and chimes announce \u201cretreat,\u201d the end of day and the advent of \u201cSunset.\u201d\u00a0 In an inversion of the ascending scales of \u201cSunrise,\u201d gentle descending scales, accompanied by lush scoring in the best Hollywood tradition, gradually settle into dusk, with a final muted call in the brass.\u00a0 \u201cCloudburst\u201d opens with a grandiose, romantic scene setter, but soon little furtive drops of rain begin to fall, distant thunder and lightning draw nearer, and a full-fledged Western gully-washer is in full roar.\u00a0 You don\u2019t need a Walt Disney film to help your imagination in this totally masterful evocation.\u00a0 Then, of course, it all dies away almost as soon as it came, and Grof\u00e9 tops the suite off with a \u201cgrand\u201d peroration led by a recounting of the \u201cOn the Trail\u201d theme, majestically intoned by the brass.<\/p>\n

–Wm. E. Runyan<\/p>\n

\u00a9 2026 William E. Runyan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"program_note_tax":[42],"class_list":["post-112","program_note","type-program_note","status-publish","hentry","program_note_tax-ferdegrof"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note\/112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/program_note"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"program_note_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note_tax?post=112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}