- This is an article about Ragtime music. For other uses of the word "Ragtime" see: Ragtime (disambiguation).
Ragtime is an American musical genre, enjoying its peak popularity around the years 1900–1918. Ragtime is a dance form written in 2/4 or 4/4 time, and utilizing a walking bass, that is, the bass note played legato on the 1-3 beats with a staccato chord played on the 2-4 beats. Much ragtime is written in Sonata form, with four distinct themes and a modified first theme appearing in the work. Ragtime music is syncopated, with the melodic notes landing largely on the off-beats.
The etymology of the word ragtime is not known with certainty. One theory is that the "ragged time" associated with the walking bass set against the melodic line gives the genre its name.
Historical context
Ragtime originated in African-American musical communities, in the late 19th century. 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-American syncopation and European classical music, though this description is oversimplified.
Ragtime was preceded by its close relative the Cakewalk, but the emergence of mature ragtime is usually dated to 1897, the year in which several important early rags were published. In 1899 Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag was published, which 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 the blues). Some artists, like Jelly Roll Morton, were present and performed both ragtime and jazz styles during the period the two genres overlapped. 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.
Some authorities consider ragtime to be a form of classical music, though this view is not universally held. The heyday of ragtime predated the widespread availability of audio recording. Like classical music, and unlike jazz, classical ragtime was and is primarily a written tradition, being distributed in sheet music rather than through recordings or by imitation of live performances. Ragtime music was also distributed via piano rolls for player pianos. A folk ragtime tradition also existed before and during the period of classical ragtime (a designation largely created by Scott Joplin's publisher John 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.
A form known as novelty ragtime emerged as the traditional rag was fading in popularity. Where traditional ragtime depended on amateur pianists and sheet music sales, the novelty rag took advantage of new advances in piano-roll technology and the phonograph record to permit a more complex, pyrotechnic, performance-oriented style of rag to be heard. Chief among the novelty rag composers is Zez Confrey, whose "Kitten on the Keys" popularized the style in 1921.
Ragtime also served as the roots for stride 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.
Many important ragtime compositions were composed for piano, but it is not exclusively performed on piano. Transcriptions for other instruments and ensembles have been made, and there are a few ragtime compositions originally so scored. The best known of these were for dance bands and brass bands. Scott Joplin wrote a ragtime opera, Treemonisha and another named A Guest of Honor, which has since been lost.
1950s Ragtime Revival Some interest in ragtime occurred in the 1950s. This presented mostly light-hearted novelty ragtime, looked to with nostalgia as the product of a supposedly more innocent time. A number of popular recordings featured "prepared pianos", playing rags on pianos with tacks on the keys and the instrument deliberately somewhat out of tune, supposedly to simulate the sound of a piano in an old honkey tonk.
1970s Ragtime Revival The popular film The Sting featured a good deal of ragtime music and reawakened interest in the genre. Most of the tunes were by Scott Joplin. His rag, "The Entertainer," was a top 40 hit for a time during this period. This revived interest in ragtime as serious music, capable of evoking many moods. Much previously out of print sheet music was collected and republished. The New York Public Library gave ragtime considerable credibility as a legitimate musical form by republishing a compilation of Joplin's work. Nonesuch Records released a pivotal album in 1973 by Joshua Rifkin, recording a number of Joplin's rags, and it became a best seller, winning a Grammy in the classical music category. Treemonisha, Joplin's opera, written in 1911 and never performed during his lifetime, was revived for a two-month run on Broadway in 1975, and has since played in several opera houses.
Ragtime composers Arguably the most sophisticated and famous, though by no means the only, ragtime composer was Scott Joplin. Joseph Lamb and James Scott are, together with Joplin, acknowledged as the three most sophisticated ragtime composers. Some rank Artie Matthews as belonging with this distinguished company. Other notable ragtime composers included May Aufderheide, Eubie Blake, Zez Confrey, Ben Harney, Charles L. Johnson, Luckey Roberts, Paul Sarebresole, Wilber Sweatman, and Tom Turpin. Modern ragtime composers include William Bolcom, David Thomas Roberts, Frank French, Trebor Tichenor and Mark Birnbaum.
Samples - Download recording — "The Wagon" ragtime from the Library of Congress' Gordon Collection (http://www.loc.gov/folklife/Gordon/sideBbandB4.html); an early ragtime song sung by Ben Harney in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on about September 9, 1925
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