Ragtime
Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that was popular and heavily influenced musical genres such as the Blues, and was seen in the United States from the 1890s to 1910s. Its signature trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott Joplin, James Scott, and Joseph Lamb. Ragtime pieces are typically composed for and performed on the piano, though the genre has been adapted for a variety of instruments and styles.
Ragtime music originated within African American communities in the late 19th century and became a distinctly American form of popular music. It is closely related to marches. 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 early jazz, Harlem stride piano, Piedmont blues, and early 20th century European classical composers such as Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, and Igor Stravinsky. Despite being overshadowed by jazz in the 1920s, ragtime has experienced several revivals, notably in the 1950s and 1970s. The music was distributed primarily through sheet music and piano rolls, with some compositions adapted for other instruments and ensembles.
Etymology
While the word ragtime 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. The first recorded use of the term ragtime was by vaudeville musician Ben Harney who in 1896 used it to describe the piano music he played.History
Origins
Ragtime music was developed long before it was printed as sheet music. While its precise origins are uncertain, scholars like Terry Waldo believe it to stem from music played by plantation slaves for dance events called "rags". The musician ensemble would generally only consist of a banjo player and a fiddle player. They would play dance music like jigs, reels and schottisches, with the way the banjo is played providing the syncopation that ragtime came to be known for.While no examples of music from this era survive, there are nevertheless some examples from before ragtime's heyday in the 1890s. Believed to be one of the oldest preserved pieces of ragtime music is The Dream Rag by Jessie Pickett. While its year of composition is unknown, Eubie Blake, believed it to have been written some time before the American Civil War. Unlike the march-style left hand pattern of many later rags, The Dream Rag uses a rhythm more closely related to the habanera, providing a good example of how Spanish music influenced the ragtime genre. Jesse Pickett performed The Dream Rag at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, where the greater American public were first introduced to what would become known as ragtime. Others present at the exposition were such names as Scott Joplin, Ben Harney, and Shep Edmonds.
Another surviving example of early ragtime is the music of Louis 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. 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.
The composed ragtime of the 1890s had its origins in African American communities of the Mississippi Valley in general and St. Louis in particular. Most of the early ragtime musicians could not read or notate music, but instead played by ear and improvised. The instrument of choice by ragtime musicians during this time was usually a banjo or a piano. It was performed in brothels, bars, saloons, and informal gatherings at house parties or juke joints. These places were an excellent breeding ground for new music as European classical music was mixed with African-American folk songs.
The first ragtime composition to be published was "La Pas Ma La" in 1895. It was written by minstrel comedian Ernest Hogan. Kentucky native Ben 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. Another early ragtime pioneer was comedian and songwriter Irving Jones.
Ragtime was also a modification of the march style popularized by John Philip Sousa. Jazz critic Rudi Blesh thought its polyrhythm may be coming from African music, although no historian or musicologist has made any connection with any music from Africa. Ragtime composer Scott Joplin from Texas, became famous through the publication of the "Maple Leaf Rag" and a string of ragtime hits such as "The Entertainer", although he was later forgotten by all but a small, dedicated community of ragtime aficionados until the major ragtime revival in the early 1970s. For at least 12 years after its publication, "Maple Leaf Rag" heavily influenced subsequent ragtime composers with its melody lines, chord progressions or metric patterns.
In a 1913 interview published in the black newspaper New York Age, Scott Joplin asserted that there had been "ragtime music in America ever since the Negro race has been here, but the white people took no notice of it until about twenty years ago ."
The heyday of ragtime
Ragtime quickly established itself as a distinctly American form of popular music. Ragtime became the first African American music to have an impact on mainstream popular culture. Piano "professors" such as Jelly Roll Morton played ragtime in the "sporting houses" of New Orleans. Polite society embraced ragtime as disseminated by brass bands and "society" dance bands. Bands led by W. C. Handy and James 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-dancers Vernon 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 at the Hippodrome, London; a group organized by ragtime composer and pianist Lewis F. Muir who toured Europe. Immensely popular with British audiences, the ARO popularized several of Muir's rags which were credited by historian Ian Whitcomb as the first American popular songs to influence British culture and music. The ARO recorded some of Muir's rags with the British record label The Winner Records in 1912; the first ragtime recordings made in Europe. James R. Europe's 369th Regiment band generated great enthusiasm during its 1918 tour of France.
Ragtime was an influence on early jazz; the influence of Jelly Roll Morton continued in the Harlem stride piano style of players such as James P. Johnson and Fats Waller. Ragtime was also a major influence on Piedmont blues. Dance orchestras started evolving away from ragtime towards the big band sounds that predominated in the 1920s and 1930s when they adopted smoother rhythmic styles.
Revivals
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 on 78 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 of Max Morath. Morath created two television series for National Educational Television in 1960 and 1962: The Ragtime Era, and The 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. New ragtime composers soon followed, including Morath, Donald Ashwander, Trebor Jay Tichenor, John Arpin, William Bolcom, and William Albright.
In 1971, Joshua Rifkin released a compilation of Joplin's work which was nominated for a Grammy Award.
In 1973, The New England Ragtime Ensemble recorded The Red Back Book, a compilation of some of Joplin's rags in period orchestrations edited by conservatory president Gunther Schuller. It won a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance of the year and was named Top Classical Album of 1974 by Billboard magazine. The film The Sting brought ragtime to a wide audience with its soundtrack of Joplin tunes. The film's rendering of "The Entertainer", adapted and orchestrated by Marvin Hamlisch, was a Top 5 hit in 1975.
Ragtime – with Joplin's work at the forefront – has been cited as an American equivalent of the minuets of Mozart, the mazurkas of Chopin, or the waltzes of Brahms. Ragtime also influenced classical composers including Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, and Igor Stravinsky.