Scott Joplin achieved fame for his ragtime compositions and was dubbed the "King of Ragtime" by contemporaries. His "Maple Leaf Rag" is one of the most famous rags.
Ragtime, also spelledrag-time orrag time,[2] is a musical style that was popular and heavily influenced musical genres such as theBlues, and was seen in the United States from the 1890s to 1910s.[1] Its signature trait is itssyncopated or "ragged"rhythm.[1] Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such asScott Joplin,James Scott, andJoseph Lamb. Ragtime pieces (often called "rags") are typically composed for and performed on thepiano, though the genre has been adapted for a variety of instruments and styles.
Ragtime music originated withinAfrican American communities in the late 19th century and became a distinctly American form of popular music. It is closely related tomarches. Ragtime pieces usually contain several distinct themes, often arranged in patterns of repeats and reprises. Scott Joplin, known as the "King of Ragtime", gained fame through compositions like "Maple Leaf Rag" and "The Entertainer". Ragtime influenced earlyjazz,[3] Harlemstride piano,Piedmont blues, and early 20th century European classical composers such asErik Satie,Claude Debussy, andIgor Stravinsky. Despite being overshadowed by jazz in the 1920s, ragtime has experienced several revivals, notably in the 1950s and 1970s (the latter renaissance due in large part to the use of "The Entertainer" in the filmThe Sting). The music was distributed primarily throughsheet music andpiano rolls, with some compositions adapted for other instruments and ensembles.
While the wordragtime was first recorded in 1896, the term probably originates in the dance events known as "rags", hosted by enslaved black folk bound to the plantation system.[4] The first recorded use of the termragtime was byvaudeville musicianBen Harney who in 1896 used it to describe the piano music he played (which he had extracted from banjo and fiddle players).[4]
Ragtime music was developed long before it was printed as sheet music.[4] While its precise origins are uncertain, scholars like Terry Waldo believe it to stem from music played byplantation slaves for dance events called "rags" (these were mentioned in newspaper articles as early as the 1820s).[4] The musician ensemble would generally only consist of abanjo player and afiddle player.[4] They would play dance music likejigs, reels andschottisches, with the way the banjo is played providing the syncopation that ragtime came to be known for.[4]
While no examples of music from this era survive, there are nevertheless some examples from before ragtime's heyday in the 1890s.[4] Believed to be one of the oldest preserved pieces of ragtime music isThe Dream Rag (originally titledThe Bull Dyke's Dream) byJessie Pickett.[4] While its year of composition is unknown,Eubie Blake (who Pickett taught it to around 1900), believed it to have been written some time before theAmerican Civil War.[4] Unlike the march-style left hand pattern of many later rags,The Dream Rag uses a rhythm more closely related to thehabanera, providing a good example of how Spanish music influenced the ragtime genre.[4] Jesse Pickett performedThe Dream Rag at the 1893Chicago World's Fair, where the greater American public were first introduced to what would become known as ragtime.[4][5] Others present at the exposition were such names asScott Joplin,Ben Harney, andShep Edmonds[5] (referred to by some as the "father of ragtime"[who?][5][6]).
Another surviving example of early ragtime is the music ofLouis Moreau Gottschalk. Born in 1829 in New Orleans, his childhood home was within earshot of Congo Square, a traditional Sunday meeting place for New Orleans' African-American community, where dancing and music-making took place on a regular basis, featuring the rhythms that would later characterize ragtime.[5] While not a ragtime composer per se, there are elements in Gottschalk's compositions, traceable to the music he heard from Congo Square, that distinctly foreshadow the ragtime music of the 1890s.[further explanation needed][5]
The composed ragtime of the 1890s had its origins inAfrican American communities of theMississippi Valley in general andSt. Louis in particular.[4] Most of the early ragtime musicians could not read ornotate music, but insteadplayed by ear andimprovised. The instrument of choice by ragtime musicians during this time was usually abanjo or a piano. It was performed inbrothels, bars, saloons, and informal gatherings at house parties orjuke joints. These places were an excellent breeding ground for new music as European classical music was mixed with African-American folk songs.
Cover for "La Pas Ma La" sheet music (1895). Words and music by Ernest Hogan.
The first ragtime composition to be published was "La Pas Ma La" in 1895. It was written byminstrel comedianErnest Hogan.Kentucky nativeBen Harney composed the song "You've Been a Good Old Wagon But You Done Broke Down" the following year in 1896. The composition was a hit and helped popularize the genre to the mainstream.[7][8] Another early ragtime pioneer was comedian and songwriterIrving Jones.[9][10]
Scott Joplin, considered the "King of Ragtime" (1912)
Ragtime was also a modification of themarch style popularized byJohn Philip Sousa. Jazz criticRudi Blesh thought itspolyrhythm may be coming from African music, although no historian or musicologist has made any connection with any music from Africa.[11] Ragtime composerScott Joplin (ca. 1868–1917) from Texas, became famous through the publication of the "Maple Leaf Rag" (1899) and a string of ragtime hits such as "The Entertainer" (1902), although he was later forgotten by all but a small, dedicated community of ragtime aficionados until the major ragtime revival in the early 1970s.[12][13] For at least 12 years after its publication, "Maple Leaf Rag" heavily influenced subsequent ragtime composers with itsmelody lines,chord progressions ormetric patterns.[14]
In a 1913 interview published in theblack newspaperNew York Age, Scott Joplin asserted that there had been "ragtime music in America ever since theNegro race has been here, but the white people took no notice of it until about twenty years ago [in the 1890s]."[15]
Ragtime quickly established itself as a distinctly American form ofpopular music. Ragtime became the firstAfrican American music to have an impact on mainstream popular culture. Piano "professors" such asJelly Roll Morton played ragtime in the "sporting houses" (bordellos) ofNew Orleans. Polite society embraced ragtime as disseminated by brass bands and "society" dance bands. Bands led byW. C. Handy andJames R. Europe were among the first to crash the color bar in American music. The new rhythms of ragtime changed the world of dance bands and led to new dance steps, popularized by the show-dancersVernon and Irene Castle during the 1910s. The growth of dance orchestras in popular entertainment was an outgrowth of ragtime and continued into the 1920s.
Ragtime also made its way to Europe. Shipboard orchestras on transatlantic lines included ragtime music in their repertoire. In 1912, the first public concerts of ragtime were performed in the United Kingdom by the American Ragtime Octette (ARO) at theHippodrome, London; a group organized by ragtime composer and pianistLewis F. Muir who toured Europe.[16][17] Immensely popular with British audiences, the ARO popularized several of Muir's rags (such as "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee" and "Hitchy-Koo") which were credited by historianIan Whitcomb as the first American popular songs to influence British culture and music.[18] The ARO recorded some of Muir's rags with the British record labelThe Winner Records in 1912; the first ragtime recordings made in Europe.[19] James R. Europe's 369th Regiment band generated great enthusiasm during its 1918 tour of France.[20]
Ragtime was an influence on earlyjazz; the influence of Jelly Roll Morton continued in the Harlemstride piano style of players such asJames P. Johnson andFats Waller. Ragtime was also a major influence onPiedmont blues. Dance orchestras started evolving away from ragtime towards thebig band sounds that predominated in the 1920s and 1930s when they adopted smoother rhythmic styles.
There have been numerous revivals since newer styles supplanted ragtime in the 1920s. First in the early 1940s, many jazz bands began to include ragtime in their repertoire and put out ragtime recordings on78 rpm records. A more significant revival occurred in the 1950s as a wider variety of ragtime genres of the past were made available on records, and new rags were composed, published, and recorded.
In the 1960s, two major factors brought about a greater public recognition of ragtime. The first was the publication of the book,They All Played Ragtime, in 1960, by Harriet Janis and Rudi Blesh. Some historians refer to this book as "The Ragtime Bible". Regardless, it was the first comprehensive and serious attempt to document the first ragtime era, and its three most important composers, Joplin, Scott, and Lamb. The second major factor was the rise to prominence ofMax Morath. Morath created two television series for National Educational Television (now PBS) in 1960 and 1962:The Ragtime Era, andThe Turn of the Century. Morath turned the latter into a one-man-show in 1969, and toured the US with it for five years. Morath subsequently created different one-man-shows which also toured the US, that also educated and entertained audiences about ragtime.[21] New ragtime composers soon followed, including Morath,Donald Ashwander,Trebor Jay Tichenor,John Arpin,William Bolcom, andWilliam Albright.
In 1973,The New England Ragtime Ensemble (then a student group called The New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble) recordedThe Red Back Book, a compilation of some of Joplin's rags in period orchestrations edited by conservatory presidentGunther Schuller. It won a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance of the year and was named Top Classical Album of 1974 byBillboard magazine. The filmThe Sting (1973) brought ragtime to a wide audience with its soundtrack of Joplin tunes. The film's rendering of "The Entertainer", adapted and orchestrated byMarvin Hamlisch, was a Top 5 hit in 1975.
Ragtime originated in African American music in the late 19th century and descended from the jigs andmarch music played by African American bands, referred to as "jig piano" or "piano thumping".[26][27]
By the start of the 20th century, it became widely popular throughout North America and was listened and danced to, performed, and written by people of many different subcultures. A distinctly American musical style, ragtime may be considered a synthesis of African syncopation and European classical music, especially the marches made popular by John Philip Sousa.
Some early piano rags were classified as "jig", "rag", and "coon songs". These labels were sometimes used interchangeably in the mid-1890s, 1900s, and 1910s.[26] Ragtime was also preceded by its close relative thecakewalk. In 1895, black entertainerErnest Hogan released the earliest ragtime composition, called "La Pas Ma La". The following year he released another composition called "All Coons Look Alike to Me", which eventually sold a million copies.[28]
Tom Fletcher, a vaudeville entertainer and the author of100 Years of the Negro in Show Business, has stated that "Hogan was the first to put on paper the kind of rhythm that was being played by non-reading musicians."[29] While the success of "All Coons Look Alike to Me" helped popularize the country to ragtime rhythms, its use of racial slurs created a number of derogatory imitation tunes, known as "coon songs" because of their use ofracist andstereotypical images of black people. In Hogan's later years, he admitted shame and a sense of "race betrayal" from the song, while also expressing pride in helping bring ragtime to a larger audience.[30]
The emergence of mature ragtime is usually dated to 1897, the year in which several important early rags were published. "Harlem Rag" byTom Turpin and "Mississippi Rag" byWilliam Krell were both release that year. In 1899, Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" was published and became a great hit and demonstrated more depth and sophistication than earlier ragtime.
Ragtime was one of the main influences on the early development of jazz (along with theblues). Some artists, such asJelly Roll Morton, were present and performed both ragtime and jazz styles during the period the two styles overlapped. He also incorporated theSpanish tinge in his performances, which gave ahabanera ortango rhythm to his music.[31] Jazz largely surpassed ragtime in mainstream popularity in the early 1920s, although ragtime compositions continue to be written up to the present, and periodic revivals of popular interest in ragtime occurred in the 1950s and the 1970s.
The keys of thisplayer piano from 1885 are controlled by musical information in the centerpiano roll.
The heyday of ragtime occurred before sound recording was widely available. Like European classical music,classical ragtime has primarily been a written tradition distributed though sheet music. But sheet music sales ultimately depended on the skill of amateur pianists, which limited classical ragtime's complexity and proliferation. Afolk ragtime tradition also existed before and during the period of classical ragtime (a designation largely created by Scott Joplin's publisherJohn Stillwell Stark), manifesting itself mostly through string bands, banjo and mandolin clubs (which experienced a burst of popularity during the early 20th century) and the like. Ragtime was also distributed viapiano rolls for mechanicalplayer pianos. While the traditional rag was fading in popularity, a genre callednovelty piano (or novelty ragtime) emerged that took advantage of new advances in piano roll technology and thephonograph record to permit a more complex, pyrotechnic, performance-oriented style of rag to be heard. Chief among the novelty rag composers isZez Confrey, whose "Kitten on the Keys" popularized the style in 1921.
Ragtime also served as the roots forstride piano, a more improvisational piano style popular in the 1920s and 1930s. Elements of ragtime found their way into much of the American popular music of the early 20th century. It also played a central role in the development of the musical style later referred to asPiedmont blues; indeed, much of the music played by such artists of the style asReverend Gary Davis,Blind Boy Fuller,Elizabeth Cotten, andEtta Baker could be referred to as "ragtime guitar."[32]
Although most ragtime was composed for piano, transcriptions for other instruments and ensembles are common, notably includingGunther Schuller's arrangements of Joplin's rags. Ragtime guitar continued to be popular into the 1930s, usually in the form of songs accompanied by skilled guitar work. Numerous records emanated from several labels, performed byBlind Blake,Blind Boy Fuller,Blind Lemon Jefferson, and others. Occasionally, ragtime was scored for ensembles (particularly dance bands andbrass bands) similar to those ofJames Reese Europe or as songs like those written byIrving Berlin. Joplin had long-standing ambitions of synthesizing the worlds of ragtime andopera, to which end the operaTreemonisha was written. However, its first performance, poorly staged with Joplin accompanying on the piano, was "disastrous" and was never performed again in Joplin's lifetime.[33] The score was lost for decades, then rediscovered in 1970, and a fully orchestrated and staged performance took place in 1972.[34] An earlier opera by Joplin,A Guest of Honor, has been lost.[35]
The rag was a modification of the march made popular byJohn Philip Sousa, with additionalpolyrhythms coming from African music.[11] It was usually written in2 4 or4 4time with a predominant left-hand pattern of bass notes on strong beats (beats 1 and 3) and chords on weak beats (beat 2 and 4) accompanying asyncopated melody in the right hand. According to some sources the name "ragtime" may come from the "ragged or syncopated rhythm" of the right hand.[1] A rag written in3 4 time is a "ragtime waltz".
Ragtime is not a meter in the same way that marches are in duple meter and waltzes are in triple meter; it is rather a musical style that uses an effect that can be applied to any meter. The defining characteristic of ragtime music is a specific type of syncopation in whichmelodic accents occur between metrical beats. This results in a melody that seems to be avoiding some metrical beats of the accompaniment by emphasizing notes that either anticipate or follow the beat ("a rhythmic base of metric affirmation, and a melody of metric denial"[36]). The ultimate (and intended) effect on the listener is actually to accentuate the beat, thereby inducing the listener to move to the music. American composer and pianistScott Joplin, known as the "King of Ragtime", called the effect "weird and intoxicating." He also used the term "swing" in describing how to play ragtime music: "Play slowly until you catch the swing...".[37]
The nameswing later came to be applied to an early style of jazz that developed from ragtime. Converting a non-ragtime piece of music into ragtime by changing the time values of melody notes is known as "ragging" the piece. Original ragtime pieces usually contain several distinct themes, four being the most common number. These themes were typically 16 bars, each theme divided into periods of four four-bar phrases and arranged in patterns of repeats and reprises. Typical patterns were AABBACCC′, AABBCCDD and AABBCCA, with the first two strains in thetonic key and the following strains in the subdominant. Sometimes rags would include introductions of four bars or bridges, between themes, of anywhere between four and 24 bars.[1]
In a note on the sheet music for the song "Leola" Joplin wrote, "Notice! Don't play this piece fast. It is never right to play 'ragtime' fast."[38]E. L. Doctorow used the quotation as the epigraph to his novelRagtime.
Ragtime pieces came in a number of different styles during the years of its popularity and appeared under a number of different descriptive names. It is related to several earlier styles of music, has close ties with later styles of music, and was associated with a few musical fads of the period such as thefoxtrot. Many of the terms associated with ragtime have inexact definitions and are defined differently by different experts; the definitions are muddled further by the fact that publishers often labelled pieces for the fad of the moment rather than the true style of the composition. There is even disagreement about the term "ragtime" itself; experts such as David Jasen andTrebor Tichenor choose to exclude ragtime songs from the definition but include novelty piano and stride piano (a modern perspective), whileEdward A. Berlin includes ragtime songs and excludes the later styles (which is closer to how ragtime was viewed originally). The terms below should not be considered exact, but merely an attempt to pin down the general meaning of the concept.
Shoe Tickler Rag, cover of the music sheet for a song from 1911 by Wilbur Campbell
Cakewalk – a pre-ragtime dance form popular until about 1904. The music is intended to be representative of an African American dance contest in which the prize is a cake. Many early rags are cakewalks.
Characteristic march – a march incorporating idiomatic touches (such as syncopation) supposedly characteristic of the race of their subject, which is usually African Americans. Many early rags are characteristic marches.
Two-step – a pre-ragtime dance form popular until about 1911. A large number of rags are two-steps.
Slow drag – another dance form associated with early ragtime. A modest number of rags are slow drags.
Coon song – a pre-ragtime vocal form popular until about 1901. A song with crude, racist lyrics often sung by white performers inblackface. Gradually died out in favor of the ragtime song. It was strongly associated with ragtime in its day.
Ragtime song – the vocal form of ragtime, more generic in theme than the coon song. Though this was the form of music most commonly considered "ragtime" in its day, many people today prefer to put it in the "popular music" category.Irving Berlin was the most commercially successful composer of ragtime songs, and his "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1911) was the single most widely performed and recorded piece of this sort, even though it contains virtually no ragtime syncopation.Gene Greene was a famous singer in this style.
Folk ragtime – ragtime that originated from small towns or assembled from folk strains, or at least sounded as if they did. Folk rags often have unusual chromatic features typical of composers with non-standard training.
Classic rag – the Missouri-style ragtime popularized by Scott Joplin, James Scott, and others.
Foxtrot – a dance fad that began in 1913. Fox-trots contain a dotted-note rhythm different from that of ragtime, but which nonetheless was incorporated into many late rags.
Novelty piano – a piano composition emphasizing speed and complexity, which emerged after World War I. It is almost exclusively the domain of white composers.
Stride piano – a style of piano that emerged after World War I, developed by and dominated by black East-coast pianists (James P. Johnson,Fats Waller, andWillie 'The Lion' Smith). Together with novelty piano, it may be considered a successor to ragtime, but is not considered by all to be "genuine" ragtime. Johnson composed the song that is arguably most associated with the Roaring Twenties, "Charleston." A recording of Johnson playing the song appears on the compact discJames P. Johnson: Harlem Stride Piano (Jazz Archives No. 111, EPM, Paris, 1997). Johnson's recorded version has a ragtime flavor.
During the early 20th century, someEuropean classical composers were influence from the form. The first contact with ragtime was probably at the Paris Exposition in 1900, one of the stages of the European tour of John Philip Sousa. The first notable classical composer to take a serious interest in ragtime wasAntonín Dvořák.[39] French composerClaude Debussy emulated ragtime in three pieces for piano. The best-known remains theGolliwog's Cake Walk (from the 1908 Piano SuiteChildren's Corner). He later returned to the style with two preludes for piano:Minstrels, (1910) andGeneral Lavine-excentric (from his 1913Préludes),[24] which was inspired by a Médrano circus clown.
Erik Satie,Arthur Honegger,Darius Milhaud, and the other members ofLes Six in Paris never made any secret of their sympathy for ragtime, which is sometimes evident in their works. Consider, in particular, the ballet of Satie,Parade (Ragtime du Paquebot), (1917) andLa Mort de Monsieur Mouche, an overture for piano for a drama in three acts, composed in the early 1900s in memory of his friend J. P. Contamine de Latour. In 1902 the Americancakewalk was very popular in Paris and Satie two years later wrote two rags,La Diva de l'empire andPiccadilly. Despite the two Anglo-Saxon settings, the tracks appear American-inspired.La Diva de l'empire, a march for piano soloist, was written for Paulette Darty and initially bore the titleStand-Walk Marche; it was later subtitledIntermezzo Americain when Rouarts-Lerolle reprinted it in 1919.Piccadilly, another march, was initially titledThe Transatlantique; it presented a stereotypical wealthy American heir sailing on an ocean liner on the New York–Europe route, going to trade his fortune for an aristocratic title in Europe.[40] There is a similar influence in Milhaud's balletsLe boeuf sur le toite andCreation du Monde, which he wrote after a visit toHarlem during his trip in 1922. Even the Swiss composer Honegger wrote works in which the influence of African American music is pretty obvious. Examples includePacific 231,Prélude et Blues and especially theConcertino for piano and orchestra.
The first edition cover of "Pine Apple Rag", composed and released by Scott Joplin in 1908.
In the early 1940s, many jazz bands began to include ragtime in their repertoire, and as early as 1936 78 rpm records of Joplin's compositions were produced.[42] Old numbers written for piano were rescored for jazz instruments by jazz musicians, which gave the old style a new sound. The most famous recording of this period isPee Wee Hunt's version ofEuday L. Bowman's "Twelfth Street Rag."
A more significant revival occurred in the 1950s. A wider variety of ragtime styles of the past were made available on records, and new rags were composed, published, and recorded. Much of the ragtime recorded in this period is presented in a light-hearted novelty style, looked to with nostalgia as the product of a supposedly more innocent time. A number of popular recordings featured "prepared pianos", playing rags onpianos with tacks on the hammers and the instrument deliberately somewhat out of tune, supposedly to simulate the sound of a piano in an oldhonky tonk.
In 1980, an adaption ofE. L. Doctorow's historical novelRagtime was released on screen.Randy Newman composed its music score, which was all original. In 1998, a stage version ofRagtime was produced on Broadway. With music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, the show featured several rags as well as songs in other musical styles.
^Meyers, David (January 31, 2010)."The Attucks Music Publishing Co".Columbus, The Musical Crossroads.Archived from the original on December 11, 2024. RetrievedDecember 11, 2024.
^Blesh, Rudi (1981).'Scott Joplin: Black-American Classicist, Introduction to Scott Joplin Complete Piano Works. New York Public Library. p. xvii.
^Brogan, Hugh (1999).The Penguin History of the United States of America (2 ed.). Penguin Books. p. 415.ISBN978-0-14-025255-2.
^Scott Joplin: Black-American Classicist, p. xviii
^Scott Joplin: Black-American Classicist, p. xxiii.
^"Theatrical Comment: Use of Vulgar Words a Detriment to Ragtime".New York Age. April 3, 1913. p. 6.
^Jack Burton, Graydon LaVerne Freeman, Larry Freeman (1962).The Blue Book of Tin Pan Alley: A Human Interest Encyclopedia of American Popular Music, Volume 2. Century House. p. 213.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Bastin, Bruce. "Truckin' My Blues Away: East Coast Piedmont Styles" inNothing But the Blues: The Music and the Musicians. Ed. Lawrence Cohn. New York: Abbeville Press, 1993.
^Scott, William B.; Rutkoff, Peter M. (2001).New York Modern: The Arts and the City. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 37.
