In a pre-concert lecture, Whiteman's manager Hugh C. Ernst proclaimed the purpose of the concert was "to be purely educational". The selected music was intended to exemplify the "melodies, harmony and rhythms which agitate the throbbing emotional resources of this young restless age." The concert's program was lengthy with 26 separate musical movements, divided into 2 parts and 11 sections, bearing titles such as "True Form Of Jazz" and "Contrast—Legitimate Scoring vs. Jazzing." In the program's schedule, Gershwin's rhapsody was merely the piece and preceded Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1".