Ragtime 4
Joplin and Stark were at pains to identify Joplin's works as "real ragtime of the higher class" (Joplin 1908). They wanted to distance themselves from the growing number of ragtime imitators, frequently White, and "novelties" like "ragging the classics," where performers and composers syncopated pre-existing opera and symphonic tunes, a practice decried in many music publications as disrespectful. Watch Adam Swanson demonstrate how "ragging the classics" works with a Civil War tune.
Adam Swanson LIVE ("Ragging the Classics"...and more!) [ 00:00-00:00 ]
The cover of the Treemonisha score, published in 1911
Stark's use of the "high class" label may have been a marketing tool to ensure the music's welcome reception in the middle-class parlor. However, Joplin's adoption of it reflected the aims of the concurrent racial uplift movement by emphasizing his education and his music's true pedigree. His usage likewise called into question beliefs about the suspect nature of ragtime and its supposed origin solely in sporting houses and brothels. These racial uplift and education themes became central to his opera Treemonisha (1911), whose eponymous heroine models educated enlightenment for her people while celebrating her vitality and power by leading her community in dancing and singing a syncopated "Slow Drag." Read additional information on the synopsis of this timeless opera, Treemonisha, by Scott Joplin. Also, watch the syncopated section of "Slow Drag."
Treemonisha [ 00:00-00:00 ]
John Philip Sousa included orchestrated versions of ragtime works such as Kerry Mills's "At a Georgia Camp Meeting" (1897) as part of his band's live and recorded repertory. His subsequent European tours in 1900-05 brought ragtime's distinctive syncopation to a larger, international audience. Musicians and audiences embraced the music and its connections with the cakewalk as distinctly "American" and worth imitating or, as in Claude Debussy's "Golliwog's Cakewalk" (1908), using it as a modernist compositional resource. In addition, the Continent would learn more about orchestrated ragtime through the presence of Black army bands during World War I, notably "The Hellfighters" led by the highly regarded James Reese Europe-which will be discussed later in the lesson.
Seong-Jin Cho - Debussy: Golliwog's Cakewalk (Children's Corner, L. 113) [ 00:00-00:00 ]