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Ragtime

Article · January 2014

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Michael Conklin
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Ragtime

Ragtime, a style of American, popular music that flourished in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, was an amalgamation of African and European musical traditions. Its idiomatic
traits included a jaunty, syncopated (or ragged) rhythm with a march-based, multi-strain
song form.

On May 1,1893, the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, also known as The
Chicago World’s Fair, opened to over seven hundred thousand visitors. The occasion was
to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival to the new world.
The Exposition illustrated the cultural profundity and artistic merit that the United States
had acquired. Perhaps the singularly most fascinating attraction was a dance music
known as ragtime. Over the course of five months, twenty six million visitors were
exposed to this ebullient music that was once relegated to black, itinerant musicians.

First established in the red-light districts of African-American communities in New

Orleans and St. Louis, ragtime was disseminated through an oral tradition. The music was
learned by rote, but ultimately was passed on through a literal means of transcription.
With the advent of printed sheet music, the popularity of ragtime swept the nation. For
two decades after the Chicago World’s Fair, millions of copies of “rags” were printed and
purchased.

The first piano composition that employed the ragtime aesthetic was “Louisiana Rag” by
Theodore Northrup, a white composer from San Francisco, California. The finest, classic
ragtime composers, those for whom the music was considered formal and refined,
included Tom Turpin. It was Turpin’s “Harlem Rag” of 1897 that is considered the
earliest masterpiece of the genre and the first piano rag composed by an African-
American composer. For the first time, a black musical genre was America’s mainstream
music.

As ragtime grew in popularity, the practice of syncopating other musical forms became
the order of the day. Prodigious ragtime pianists were often called to improvise ragtime
versions of folk songs, hymns, and patriotic tunes. The added emphatic, rhythmic
juxtaposition between the treble and bass established a sense of polyrhythm and
syncopation that was necessary for dancing. While improvisation was a functional
element in this African-American music, the masters of classic ragtime strove to elevate
the music and equate it to the Western European classical canon. Consequently, they did
not consider improvisation to be proper or refined. The most significant purveyors of this
practice were Turpin, James Scott, Joseph Lamb, and Scott Joplin; these were the
pioneers of the Missouri School. The most historically significant of this proverbial
school was Scott Joplin and his “Maple Leaf Rag” of 1899 became the template for the
prodigious, musical style.

Born in the backwaters of Texarkana, Joplin was the son of a former slave and free-born
black woman. His mother, who believed musical literacy was the catalyst by which the
African-American population would transcend racial inequities, was intensely committed
to her son’s musical education and arranged for him to study with a German immigrant
named Julius Weiss. By the time Joplin reached his teenage years, he procured an
astounding pianistic technique; this allowed him to leave his home and tour as a pianist
on Mississippi riverboats. In 1894, he settled in Sedalia, Missouri – a small, but
burgeoning railroad town. He studied music theory at a local African-American college
and was spurred to compose; five years later, his masterpiece “Maple Leaf Rag,” which
was named after a Sedalia saloon, was published by John Stark.

By 1910, any American popular song with a propulsive rhythmic sensibility was often
described as “ragtime.” Thus a typical representation of the ragtime song was Irving
Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” from 1911. Although it was essentially without
syncopation, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” was viewed by the public as the greatest of
ragtime tunes. Similarly, as the blues began to promulgate, following the success of
W.C. Handy’s “Memphis Blues” in the following year, it, too, was dubbed “ragtime.”
The use of the term continued to be ubiquitous and arbitrary until it was replaced by
the term “jazz.”

The advent of 20th century technology, which included the player piano and the 78 rpm
record, provided methods other than sheet music for the dissemination of ragtime. By
the time Joplin died in 1917, recordings had surpassed sheet music sales and the
burgeoning industry began to market blues sides as well as early jazz; the Original
Dixieland Jazz Band is credited with the first jazz recording in the music’s history. The
interest in ragtime had waned.

Ragtime, since its inception, passed through several occasions of revived interest. The
first was in the 1940s, during the revival of traditional or “Dixieland” jazz. The
foremost proponent, Lu Watters, included many overlooked piano rags in his band’s
repertoire. Jazz critic and enthusiast Rudi Blesh collaborated with Harriet Janis on the
first historical and pedagogical study of ragtime with their 1950’s They All Played
Ragtime. But it was the work of several classical musicians and jazz scholars, focusing
primarily on the works of Joplin, which ignited the ragtime explosion of the 1970s.
Joshua Rifkin and Gunther Schuller were at the forefront of this movement. From these
sources Joplin’s music reached Hollywood, where it was used as the background score
in the highly popular film The Sting in 1974. Consequently, the composer’s rag, “The
Entertainer,” became one of the most performed pieces of the decade.

As jazz pedagogy has become more prevalent in the academe, ragtime is reclaiming its
place in the history of American music. Pianists, both classically-trained and jazz-
oriented, include works by Joplin, Turpin, Scott, and Lamb in their repertoire and
recitals. It is evident that through continued performance and study, ragtime will
remain a fixture in the American, musical landscape.
 Further Reading

Berlin, Edward. The King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1994. Print.

Berlin, Edward. Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History. Oakland: University of

California Press, 1980. Print. Reprint, 2002.

Blesh, R. and Janis, H. They All Played Ragtime. Rumson: Nelson Press, 2008. Print.

Hasse, John Edward. Ragtime: Its History, Composers, and Music. New York: Schirmer
Books, 1985. Print.

Schafer, William and Riedel, J. Art of Ragtime: Form and Meaning of an Original Black
American Art. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973. Print.

Michael Conklin
The College of New Jersey

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