Ferde Grofé was born in New York City in 1892. When he was a child, Grofé’s family moved west to Los Angeles, where he played piano and violin under the tutelage of his parents, both of whom were musicians. As a teenager, Grofé began studying composition with various teachers. At age 16, he played piano in nightclubs and brothels, where he first heard jazz. Eventually, he used the skills learned from studying classical music—the ability to formally arrange a piece of music through writing it down—to organize jazz numbers that originated as improvisational pieces.

In 1931, fifteen years after he first saw the Grand Canyon for the first time, Grofé wrote his most famous work, Grand Canyon Suite. Grand Canyon Suite has been described as the ultimate 1920s classical-jazz cross-fertilization piece. Grofé divided the piece into five parts, titled “Sunrise,” “Painted Desert,” “On the Trail,” “Sunset,” and “Cloudburst.” Years later, Grofé said that he arrived at the canyon in 1916 in utter darkness, unaware of what lay just beyond his campsite. He was awakened at sunrise by chirping birds, nature coming to life. “I could not describe the beauty of it in words,” he explained, “because words would be inadequate.” Instead, Grofé wrote what he heard. He used woodwinds to create bird sounds, trumpets to imitate chirping crickets, coconut shells for burro hooves clomping down a trail, and thundersheets for cloudbursting storms. Grofé’s son once explained why he thought so many people responded warmly to Suite. His father, the son said, saw a wide range of emotional possibilities in the Grand Canyon itself, then captured those emotions in sound. Sunrise evoked a feeling of birth, for example, while a cloudburst brought both feelings of death and resurrection.

In his final years, Grofé taught at the Julliard School of Music. He died in 1972.

1. Regarding Grofe’s major work, National Public Radio commentator Therese Schiavone said,“Grand Canyon Suite, with its almost non-stop musical effects, communicates an infectious passion for the beauty of the untouched American West.” Listen to “Sunrise” from Grand Canyon Suite and consider the role of specific places in shaping music. What is so “western” sounding about “Sunrise”? What sound effects might you use to convey the essence of place in today’s West? Can you apply this approach to western towns or cities? To roads or highways?

2. History might disagree with Schiavone that the Grand Canyon is a great example of the “untouched American West”. By the time Grofé visited the Canyon in 1916, three years before the establishment of the national park, tourist-laden trains had been operating on the South Rim for 15 years. Look in your newspaper for stories about national parks and other protected spaces. What draws humans to these places? How does this human presence affect the “naturalness” of parks and refuges?

 

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