Page 261 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

MODERN 1900–1950 259

See also: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune 228–231 ■ Parade 256–257 ■ Ragtime and Joplin
Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima 310–311
For such a popular music form,
ragtime was a surprisingly
Gershwin’s best-known large-scale
work was used as the title for a film short-lived phenomenon.
about his life, made eight years after Although first adopted by
his death in 1937. Adding to the film’s musicians unversed in musical
sense of realism, some of Gershwin’s notation, it started to spread
friends starred in it as themselves. widely after 1895, when
Ernest Hogan published the
Ragtime piano swept America, sheet music for his dance song
but it was not until John Philip “La Pas Ma La.” Within a few
Sousa, an American of German, years, ragtime music had
Spanish, and Portuguese descent, become popular across North
brought his syncopated brass-band America, in part thanks to
marches across the Atlantic in 1900 Scott Joplin, whose Maple
that ragtime really had an impact Leaf Rag, published in 1899,
on European music. Coming at a earned him the title “King of
time when young composers were Ragtime.” Joplin, born around
looking for ways to break out of the 1868, wrote a string of popular
ragtime piano pieces, earning
traditions of Romanticism, the new him enough from royalties to
sound, with its direct and acerbic buy him the time to write two
style, quickly took off among the operas, including Treemonisha
French avant-garde. (1911). The newly emerging,
Composers such as Erik Satie more improvisational jazz
tried to achieve the seemingly and Claude Debussy heard Sousa’s scene overshadowed ragtime,
impossible by melding composed music at the 1900 Paris Exposition which by the time of Joplin’s
and improvisational music. and responded by experimenting death, in 1917, was essentially
with ragtime. While Satie used it a part of musical history.
Ragtime reigns ironically in works such as the song
In 1853, the American composer La Diva de l’Empire, Debussy pitted
Louis Moreau Gottschalk recreated it against the Liebestod motif from
African American banjo-playing Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in
techniques with amazing accuracy his Golliwogg’s Cakewalk, as if to
in The Banjo, a popular virtuoso announce the passing of the old
piano piece. However, it was the guard. The modernist significance
rise of ragtime, and especially the of ragtime, with its implicit ❯❯
work of African American Scott
Joplin, that brought an energetic
new flavor to classical music in
the early years of the 20th century.
The term “ragtime” referred to
the music’s ragged rhythm, known
as “syncopation,” in which a steady I frequently hear
beat is accentuated by surprising music in the
weaker off beats. This unfamiliar heart of noise.
style captured the dynamic spirit George Gershwin
of the New World and, in discarding
the long phrasings and flexible Joplin’s 1902 piano piece
tempos of the 19th century, ushered The Entertainer headed a 1970s
ragtime revival, led by the pianist
in the sense of a more modern, and conductor Joshua Rifkin.
mechanized world.

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