12/10/2023 0 Comments Rag time![]() ![]() ![]() David Jasen, an excellent contemporary ragtime scholar and pianist, is far more precise as well as more restrictive in his definitions of ragtime. I don't care whether it's Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody or Tchaikovsky in his Waltz of Flowers." This from a man who has been an active ragtime pianist and composer since before the beginning of the twentieth century. ![]() He feels that ragtime has once again become a popular mass music "because it had all the best things in music: rhythm, melody and syncopation." To this he adds, "Anything that is syncopated is basically ragtime. The famed nonagenarian ragtime pianist and composer Eubie Blake offers a much broader definition. The Larousse Encyclopedia of Music (1971) offers the following definition: "Ragtime is an early type of classical jazz, often for the piano, a rag being a piece of music in this idiom." A rather terse oversimplification, the definition hardly even suggests the breadth of the idiom, let alone the varied approaches that have emanated from the basic style. Ragtime's unique syncopation has developed far beyond mere piano solos, and its range extends vividly and spectacularly from country blues to jazz, from white and black string-bands and novelty players to vaudeville and opera. Ragtime is essentially a late nineteenth- early twentieth- century American musical phenomenon that has influenced virtually every popular idiom in American music. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |