Page 260 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

258

IN CONTEXT
LIFE IS A LOT FOCUS

Ragtime and jazz
LIKE JAZZ … influences

BEFORE
1895 Ernest Hogan publishes
IT’S BETTER WHEN “La Pas Ma La,” the first

ragtime sheet music.
YOU IMPROVISE 1908 Debussy publishes the
ragtime-inspired piano piece
Golliwogg’s Cakewalk.
RHAPSODY IN BLUE (1924), AFTER
GEORGE GERSHWIN 1927 Maurice Ravel completes
his jazz-inspired Violin Sonata
No. 2, which includes a second
movement called “Blues.”

1971 Polish composer
Krzysztof Penderecki and
American jazz trumpeter Don
Cherry perform the scoreless
Actions for Free Jazz orchestra.

he start of the 20th century
brought new genres and
T ideas to American music.
Many of them came from African
Americans, recently freed from
enslavement, whose dances
contained infectious and lively
rhythms that would grow into
ragtime piano and marches.
African American ideas combined
with Caribbean influences to
evolve into various forms of jazz.
As jazz spread to Europe,
classical composers were drawn
to it, but the improvisational nature
of this new type of music was not
a natural match for the carefully
notated and rehearsed world of the
concert hall. In the United States,
George Gershwin managed to
bridge the gap and incorporate
jazz on an orchestral scale with
Rhapsody in Blue. Others followed,
including composers who have

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