Louis to find Joplin and play some rags for him. Like Lamb, James Scott was born about 20 years after Joplin, and considered him an idol. He was a talented African-American piano player and composer who lived in Missouri (like Joplin). His rags aren’t wildly complex (both in playing or listening), but are very accessible and listenable. Lamb put melody first and technical difficulty second in his writings. This was the one he performed for Scott Joplin in person in 1908, and the tune that caused Joplin to recommend Lamb to his publicist. The song I want to show you by Joseph Lamb is his “Sensation Rag”. So Joplin set Lamb up with his own publisher, who he stayed with for a decade.Īround the time of Joplin’s death and the end of the ragtime era, Lamb decided to compose music as a hobby, opting to be on the business side of things as an accountant. In 1907, he met Joplin in New York City, and Joplin was impressed with Lamb’s tunes. He was born about 20 years after Joplin in New Jersey, and, as a self-taught piano player, was very passionate about Joplin’s music. Joseph Lamb is the only non-African American of the Big 3. In 1917, Scott Joplin died of syphilis, and his death marked the end of an era – the end of ragtime. Louis and New York – and attempted to break out of the ragtime box by writing operas, without much success. In Sedalia, there was a club called “The Maple Leaf Club” that Joplin frequently went to/played at, so he named one of his most favorite songs, The Maple Leaf Rag, after that club. You’ll notice the steady, leaping left hand and the catchy and syncopated right hand. Let’s listen to a little bit of the famous Maple Leaf Rag. When he published Maple Leaf Rag in 1899, it became a craze, bringing him fame and influencing other musicians, and the song stood as the definition of ragtime. It was there he started publishing music, and where he got a publishing deal. He grew up as a railway laborer, but he was lucky to have a musical family and good teachers, because he was able to travel around the south as a musician after deciding that hard physical labor wasn’t his cup of tea.Įventually, in 1894, he moved to Sedalia, Missouri, where he taught piano for a living (and trained future ragtime stars). He was an African-American songwriter and piano player, born in 1867 in Texas. These were composers who enjoyed popularity and wrote high-level ragtime music (not cheap imitation ragtime). It had this in common with Classical music. It was popular before recorded music became available, meaning it was mainly distributed via sheet music – and you’d hear it performed at bars and clubs. fiddle music/dances from the British Isles, like jigs syncopated styles like the cakewalk (predecessor) banjo playing (playing the piano like you would play the banjo) Precursors of ragtime musicīut since music is an ever-evolving beast, with one genre leading into the next, what forms inspired the creation of Ragtime? You wouldn’t be rolling in the dough, perhaps, but you’d make enough to get by. Louis was a popular center for ragtime – since it’s located in central USA, it was a hub for travelers of all kinds, and as a piano player you could make a living there. If you haven’t heard of Scott Joplin yet, we’ll be talking about him soon, since he’s the most famous name of ragtime. There’s an annual Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Sedalia, Missouri, because Joplin lived and taught there for a while (in addition to living in St. Though ragtime music spread across America, its central hub was Missouri. The idea was to play with machine-like precision. Ragtime is also very technically demanding to play – if you’ve attempted to play Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag, you will understand. It has that in common with Classical and Romantic music. Unlike some jazz, the way ragtime music was written on the page was exactly how it should be played – without embellishment or modification. For example, if you were in the key of C, you would be playing mainly C and G chords. Ragtime harmonic patterns are fairly simple, doing a lot of tonic-dominant movement. In ragtime, the left hand usually plays a bass note on beat 1 and 3, with a chord on beat 2 and 4. They music is fast and syncopated (“ragged”), with the right hand doing all the crazy rhythms and the left hand played steadily. Content provided by What is Ragtime music?
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