Howard posits that the work's legacy is best understood as embodying the cultural zeitgeist of the Jazz Age: "Beginning with that incomparable, flamboyant clarinet solo, "Rhapsody" is irresistible still, with its syncopated rhythmic vibrancy, its abandoned, impudent flair that tells more about the Roaring Twenties than could a thousand words, and its genuine melodic beauty colored a deep, jazzy blue by the flatted sevenths and thirds that had their origins in the African-American slave songs." Although Gershwin's rhapsody "was by no means a definitive example of jazz in the Jazz Age," music historians such as James Ciment and Floyd Levin have similarly concurred that it is the key composition that encapsulates the spirit of the era.