259
See also: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune 228–231 ■ Parade 256–257 ■
Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima 310–311tried to achieve the seemingly
impossible by melding composed
and improvisational music.Ragtime reigns
In 1853, the American composer
Louis Moreau Gottschalk recreated
African American banjo-playing
techniques with amazing accuracy
in The Banjo, a popular virtuoso
piano piece. However, it was the
rise of ragtime, and especially the
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
beat is accentuated by surprising
weaker off beats. This unfamiliar
style captured the dynamic spirit
of the New World and, in discarding
the long phrasings and flexible
tempos of the 19th century, ushered
in the sense of a more modern,
mechanized world.Ragtime piano swept America,
but it was not until John Philip
Sousa, an American of German,
Spanish, and Portuguese descent,
brought his syncopated brass-band
marches across the Atlantic in 1900
that ragtime really had an impact
on European music. Coming at a
time when young composers were
looking for ways to break out of the
traditions of Romanticism, the new
sound, with its direct and acerbic
style, quickly took off among the
French avant-garde.
Composers such as Erik Satie
and Claude Debussy heard Sousa’s
music at the 1900 Paris Exposition
and responded by experimenting
with ragtime. While Satie used it
ironically in works such as the song
La Diva de l’Empire, Debussy pitted
it against the Liebestod motif from
Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in
his Golliwogg’s Cakewalk, as if to
announce the passing of the old
guard. The modernist significance
of ragtime, with its implicit ❯❯MODERN 1900 –1950
Gershwin’s best-known large-scale
work was used as the title for a film
about his life, made eight years after
his death in 1937. Adding to the film’s
sense of realism, some of Gershwin’s
friends starred in it as themselves.Ragtime and Joplin
For such a popular music form,
ragtime was a surprisingly
short-lived phenomenon.
Although first adopted by
musicians unversed in musical
notation, it started to spread
widely after 1895, when
Ernest Hogan published the
sheet music for his dance song
“La Pas Ma La.” Within a few
years, ragtime music had
become popular across North
America, in part thanks to
Scott Joplin, whose Maple
Leaf Rag, published in 1899,
earned him the title “King of
Ragtime.” Joplin, born around
1868, wrote a string of popular
ragtime piano pieces, earning
him enough from royalties to
buy him the time to write two
operas, including Treemonisha
(1911). The newly emerging,
more improvisational jazz
scene overshadowed ragtime,
which by the time of Joplin’s
death, in 1917, was essentially
a part of musical history.Joplin’s 1902 piano piece
The Entertainer headed a 1970s
ragtime revival, led by the pianist
and conductor Joshua Rifkin.I frequently hear
music in the
heart of noise.
George GershwinUS_258-261_Gershwin.indd 259 26/03/18 1:01 PM