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remmers
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Ragtime Notebook
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Jul 7 05:43 UTC 1992 |
W.C. O'Hare's "Levee Revels", subtitled "An Afro-American Cane-
Hop", was published in 1898, a year before Scott Joplin's "Maple
Leaf Rag" launched the ragtime boom. It's an early cakewalk
two-step somewhat reminiscent in style of W.H. Krell's
"Mississippi Rag" and "Shake Your Dusters". It's far more
polished than Krell's work, though, and the blend of unusual
harmonic coloration and traditional folk melody make it sound
almost like Aaron Copeland writing in Americana folk mode. Trebor
Tichnor calls "Levee Revels" "one of the most inspired and soulful
cakewalk-style pieces ever written".
I believe him. After a magnificent alternation between quiet e
minor and grandiose G major in the first two strains, the piece
modulates into C major and launches into a beautiful, simple folk
melody in the trio that sounds a bit like Blind Boone's "Carrie's
Gone to Kansas City" but is a lot more subtle, with little slips
back into minor mode at the ends of phrases. When I first
sight-read the piece and had no idea what was coming, that C major
strain practically blew me away.
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| 256 responses total. |
remmers
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response 1 of 256:
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Jul 10 14:13 UTC 1992 |
At the opposite pole chronologically is Willie Anderson's
"Keystone Rag", published by the Stark Music Company in 1921,
really past the end of the ragtime era. It's a classical slow
rag, nostalgic in feel. "Keystone Rag" is a small-scale piece,
not difficult technically, but it's a wonderfully expressive
backward look at a genre whose popularity, once enormous, had
faded away. Stark, which in its heyday had printed the work
of the giants of the field like Scott Joplin and James Scott,
was one of the last publishers still doing this type of music.
As with any piece in this style, it's important not to rush it
(that doesn't mean it has to be played funereally), and the
sixteenth note runs should be played even, as written, rather than
as jazzy dotted sixteenths as was the style with 20's tin pan
alley music.
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arabella
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response 2 of 256:
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Aug 25 07:06 UTC 1992 |
What are your published sources for these pieces, John? Is there
a book of Ragtime rarities I should look for?
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remmers
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response 3 of 256:
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Aug 26 03:43 UTC 1992 |
Two anthologies, published by Dover, of rags selected by Trebor Tichenor:
_Ragtime Rarities_ and _Ragtime Rediscoveries_. The pieces mentioned above
are from the latter volume.
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arabella
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response 4 of 256:
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Aug 26 08:08 UTC 1992 |
Thanks for the information, John. Hmm, I haven't played much ragtime
in awhile (used to specialize in Joplin). I stopped playing ragtime
because I had some bad tendonitis in my hands and wrists, and all the
leaping octaves in the left hand just gave me pain and aches. My
tendonitis is a lot better now (with regular chiropractic adjustments),
so I might look for those two books you mention.
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aa8ij
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response 5 of 256:
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Aug 26 19:17 UTC 1992 |
has anyone ever heard of "rialto ripples" by George Gershwin?
excellent ragtime piece.
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remmers
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response 6 of 256:
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Aug 28 17:54 UTC 1992 |
Indeed it is. I recently acquired it on CD -- a collection of
miscellaneous rags, played by John Arpin, an excellent ragtime
pianist who's been performing since at least the 1970's. There's
a recording of it by William Balcom also.
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remmers
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response 7 of 256:
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Mar 11 16:29 UTC 1993 |
Just about everybody has heard of Scott Joplin, "the King of
Ragtime", and those who know a bit about the classical ragtime era
have probably heard about the other two composers of the ragtime
Big Three, Joseph Lamb and James Scott.
But the ragtime era produced many other composers of merit, now
largely forgotten. How many have heard of Clyde Douglass, J.
Reginald MacEachron, Julia Lee Niebergall, Sydney K. Russell.
Clyde Douglass' "Old Virginia Rag" (1907) is a pure burst of
creative invention in the key of E flat that practically plays
itself. Never straying far from the two octaves around middle C,
the piece just bounces through its five sections.
MacEachron's "On Easy Street" (1902) is an delightful dance tune in
the sunny key of G major. Play it at a bright but not frenetic
pace. Beautiful contrast between the high-stepping opening theme
and the sustained measure-long notes of the second strain.
"Horseshoe Rag" (1911), composed by Julia Niebergall, is something
of a technical challenge. The first two strains are harmonically
quite rich, involving chords and octaves in both hands throughout,
yet the piece needs to sound light and bouncy. If Niebergall
played this herself, she must've had big hands. The more modest
trio, with its continual duet-like alternation between low and
high figures, is a delight.
A harmonically ambitious exercise indeed is Sydney Russell's
foxtrot, "Too Much Raspberry" (1906). Lots of sudden, daring key
modulations, that all seem to work. Despite the "moderato" tempo
marking, I think that this piece needs to be played at a brisk
pace.
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polygon
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response 8 of 256:
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Mar 31 20:31 UTC 1993 |
What period (year A to year B) would you identify as being "the ragtime
era"? When did ragtime first win widespread public acclaim, and when
did this stop happening?
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arabella
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response 9 of 256:
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Apr 1 03:49 UTC 1993 |
I mostly know about Scott Joplin... His huge hit, "Maple Leaf Rag,"
was the first million seller in sheet music. That came out (I
think) in 1899. Classic ragtime was winding down around 1914
or so. I need to check my facts, but I believe Joplin died
in 1917. I think variations on classic ragtime continued into
the '20s. Rudi Blesh wrote the definitive book on this
musical style, "They All Played Ragtime." I have a copy of
it somewhere. Sorry if this seems disjointed. I did a paper
on Joplin and ragtime about 20 years ago, when I was a freshman
in high school.
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remmers
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response 10 of 256:
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Apr 2 14:45 UTC 1993 |
That's right -- the vogue of "classical" ragtime coincided
pretty closely with the career of Scott Joplin. I think the first
published "ragged time" pieces may have appeared in the mid-1890's.
By the time of Joplin's death in 1917, popularity of the form was
in decline. By the mid-1920's, it had virtually vanished, even
its leading composers mostly forgotten.
There were a couple of small revivals of interest in this music
in the 1940's and late 1950's. In the late 1960's and early 1970's,
the music was rediscovered by some serious musicians and musical
scholars -- perhaps mostly notably Joshua Rifkin, William Albright,
and William Balcom (the last two are University of Michigan School
of Music Faculty -- Ann Arbor is something of a center for the
study of the ragtime genre and other American popular music forms).
New recordings of the work of Joplin and other ragtime composers
began to appear.
It was Rifkin's recordings of Joplin rags, on the Nonesuch label,
that sparked my own interest in the ragtime genre. It may have
been the same recordings that inspired director George Roy Hill to
incorporate Joplin's music in the soundtrack of his immensely
popular film, "The Sting" (1973). With the success of that movie,
certain Joplin themes became a standard part of the public
musical consciousness. (How many times have I heard "The
Entertainer" on Musak systems?)
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arabella
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response 11 of 256:
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Apr 6 10:51 UTC 1993 |
Not to be nitpicky or anything, but it's Bolcom, not Balcom.
I care because Bolcom was one of my more fun professors at the
U of M. I studied composition in his class about five years
ago.
Funny, you and I seem to have had our interest in ragtime sparked
simultaneously, John! And to think, I wouldn't meet you for
sixteen years after I started playing ragtime piano... I don't
play ragtime much anymore because I have some persistent tendonitis
in my hands/wrists that makes the constant jumping octaves rather
painful. Bach is easier. ;)
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remmers
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response 12 of 256:
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Apr 7 01:03 UTC 1993 |
(Thanks for the spelling correction, Leslie. By the way, there's an
article on Bolcom in tonight's Ann Arbor News. Seems he's been named
to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.)
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remmers
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response 13 of 256:
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Apr 7 01:58 UTC 1993 |
Scott Joplin has been called the Mozart of classical ragtime. If this
is so, then James Scott is surely the Beethoven. His music is more
challenging technically than Joplin's, in a ratio that I find quite
close to the difficulty of Beethoven's piano music over Mozart's. And
Scott has a harmonic inventiveness and a way of making a theme soar and
swoop and hang magically suspended and disappear and suddenly re-appear
in a new guise that reminds me a lot of Beethoven.
A great service to serious ragtime afficionados is the recent
publication of _The Music of James Scott_, a handsome hardcover volume
edited by Scott DeVeaux and William Howland Kenney (Simithsonian
Institution Press, 1992). There's a long introduction on Scott's
career, an essay on the music itself dealing with such issues as proper
performance practice -- but the greatest contribution of this volume is
that it contains all of Scott's known solo piano pieces and songs. To
my knowledge, Scott's complete works have never before been published
together in one volume, and his non-ragtime pieces -- waltzes and
popular songs -- have long been out of print until now. The works have
been reprinted with minimal editing -- mostly facsimile reproductions
with corrections of obvious typographical errors and inconsistencies
(not uncommon in the sheet music of that era), and including all of the
original sheet music cover art (reproduced in black and white -- I
assume the originals were colored).
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arabella
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response 14 of 256:
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Apr 7 02:15 UTC 1993 |
Do you know who in the area would carry the Scott volume?
I'd be interested in picking up a copy.
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remmers
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response 15 of 256:
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Apr 7 02:42 UTC 1993 |
I found it at Borders.
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chelsea
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response 16 of 256:
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Apr 9 22:16 UTC 1993 |
I've been meaning to purchase William Albright's recently recorded
collection of all 31 of Joplin's rags. (I think it's 31.) But
for the longest time I couldn't locate it at either SKR or Tower.
Has anyone heard these recordings?
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steve
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response 17 of 256:
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Apr 10 05:03 UTC 1993 |
No, but when you do John, let us know here? I've always wanted
a collection of Joplin rags. It would be wonderful if all of them
were contained in one little CD package, and it was good quality.
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remmers
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response 18 of 256:
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Apr 10 12:40 UTC 1993 |
Seems to me I've seen the Albright collection, but I don't remember
where.
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remmers
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response 19 of 256:
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May 11 04:50 UTC 1993 |
Stopped in at King Keyboards the other day to see what they have in the
ragtime line; picked up a couple of volumes that fill in some gaps in my
collection:
Scott Joplin, _Complete Piano Rags_, edited by David A. Jasen (Dover 1988)
Similar in format and content to the Joplin _Collected Piano Rags_
published in the 1970's, this book contains some pieces not included in
that earlier volume because of copyright problems: "Searchlight Rag",
"Rose Leaf Rag", and "Fig Leaf Rag". I consider "Searchlight" to be one
of Joplin's most beautiful compositions, and I've wanted to get my hands
on it for some time now.
_World's Greatest Ragtime Solos for Piano_, edited by Maurice Hinson
(Alfred Publishing Co., 1993)
Around forty compositions by various ragtime composers. Duplicates
a lot of material that I already have, but with some interesting
additions: W.C. Handy's magnificent "St. Louis Blues", Irving Berlin's
"Alexander's Ragtime Band", Claude Debussy's "Golliwogg's Cakewalk"
and "Le petit Negre", Erik Satie's "Le Piccadilly", Lucky Roberts'
bouncy "Pork and Beans", Julia Lee Niebergall's "Hoosier Rag", Eubie
Blake's "The Chevy Chase".
Re the Debussy and Satie: The American ragtime craze of the late 19th
and early 20th centuries attracted the attention of a number of European
composers of the time. I've read that Brahms was planning a ragtime
project, which death prevented him from completing.
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remmers
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response 20 of 256:
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Aug 28 15:00 UTC 1993 |
I've got "Searchlight Rag" down pretty well now, and can play it from
memory. Learning to play it has reinforced my impression that it is
one of Joplin's loveliest pieces.
"Fig Leaf Rag" is quite good too, although I suspect its billing on the
cover (my book contains facsimile reproductions of the original sheet
music covers) as a companion piece to "Maple Leaf Rag" was intended to
boost sales rather than give a clue about the music. "Fig Leaf" is a
much later composition than "Maple Leaf" and quite different, although
the closing section does have some of the bounciness of the earlier
work.
To celebrate the arrival of our new kitten Sidney to the household, I am
learning to play Zez Confrey's "Kitten on the Keys" (1921).
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remmers
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response 21 of 256:
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Sep 20 00:04 UTC 1993 |
Recently started working on William Bolcom's delightful rag "Graceful
Ghost", published in 1971 and recorded by Bolcom on an album of the
same name around that time. It's one of his easier rags technically,
but still quite a challenge compared to most of Joplin -- 5 flats in
the key signature, modulating to 6 in the third strain. And lots and
lots of octaves.
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polygon
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response 22 of 256:
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Sep 21 15:26 UTC 1993 |
Are you planning to do a recital any time soon?
Re-reading this item makes me want to buy some ragtime music on CD.
Right now, all I have are two old LP's of Scott Joplin pieces played
on piano by Joshua Rifkin (and a tape made from those two albums).
Particularly looking toward the other ragtime composers, where would
you recommend I start?
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remmers
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response 23 of 256:
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Sep 23 00:27 UTC 1993 |
I've done informal recitals in the past (not for a number of years,
though) and from time to time think about doing another one. Not sure
where, though -- our music room won't hold many people and the
accoustics are a bit too harsh.
If you want to branch out to other ragtime composers, I'd recommend
starting with a CD called "Kings of Ragtime" on the ProArte label.
Pianist John Arpin plays works of the ragtime big three -- Joplin,
James Scott, Joseph Lamb -- as well as pieces by Eubie Blake, Gershwin,
Harry Guy, Joe Jordan, W.C. Handy, Jelly Roll Morton, William Bolcom,
and himself.
Arpin is a fine ragtime pianist, and this album is an excellent sampler
of the genre. Bolcom's "Graceful Ghost" is included, as well as a
brilliant rendition of Handy's "St. Louis Blues".
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krj
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response 24 of 256:
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Sep 27 06:19 UTC 1993 |
I didn't know there was a recording of "Graceful Ghost" on CD.
Cool. Too bad neither of Bolcom's own recordings have been so issued;
one of them was even recorded digitally.
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