Ragtime

Ragtime, the descriptive term for a uniquely American style of popular music and, more broadly, for the time period (ca. 1890–1920) when it emerged and gained popularity. A colloquial contraction of “ragged time,” “ragtime” underscores the music's most identifying feature—its highly syncopated rhythms. The term also evokes the energy, optimism, and insecurity of the national culture during the transitional years between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, where ragtime first reached the general public, and the end of World War I, when jazz replaced it.

The earliest appearance of ragtime is impossible to date or place precisely, but itinerant African‐American piano players in such cities as St. Louis, New Orleans, and Baltimore in the post‐Reconstruction Era created a synthesis that by the early 1890s came to define a distinct style. Drawing from the ubiquitous brass bands and minstrel shows, as well as from traditional dance music, these performers developed a two‐handed, percussive approach that, once it became available through sheet music, piano rolls, and—eventually—recordings, offered a spirited change from the more sedate and sentimental styles of the period. At their most basic, ragtime rhythms consisted of a syncopated treble line (melody) juxtaposed against a regular bass and chord (harmony) pulse. By the mid‐1890s, such rhythms were being applied to both the standard form of the march and to the song form. The emerging popular‐music business, centralized in New York City after 1900, quickly appropriated both ragtime rhythms and the expression ( Irving Berlin's Alexander's Ragtime Band of 1911 is a notable example). In addition, beginning with the Cakewalk fad of the 1890s, the association of ragtime with new forms of social dancing made it a focus of the larger debate over changing patterns of urban social behavior.

Instrumental ragtime, the style's more enduring strain, evolved from the application of ragtime rhythms to the form and beat of the march. The first instrumental rag to appear in print, William Krell's Mississippi Rag (1897), was soon followed by Tom Turpin's Harlem Rag, the first by a black composer. In 1899, Scott Joplin (1868–1917) began publishing his ragtime compositions in Sedalia, Missouri, including Maple Leaf Rag, which became the most celebrated rag of all time. A formally trained serious musician, Joplin dominated ragtime composition during his lifetime, writing dozens of rags as well as two “ragtime” operas—The Guest of Honor (1903) and Treemonisha (1911). His compositions, along with those of his pupils, collaborators, and followers, comprise a body of work, often described as classic ragtime, intended to be performed as written—for piano, primarily, but also in orchestral arrangements.

By 1920 the term ragtime began to seem old fashioned, and both classic ragtime and the once‐popular ragtime songs and dances lost their currency. The music continued to influence American popular music, however, and was crucial to the emergence and diffusion of jazz. The mid‐1940s witnessed a modest revival of interest, and in the 1970s a more substantial and lasting reassessment was initiated by a series of best‐selling recordings of classic ragtime, a new production of Joplin's Treemonisha by the Houston Grand Opera (a work never fully performed in his lifetime), and the adaptation of Joplin's music for the movie The Sting, which received an Academy Award for best film score in 1974.
See also African Americans; Dance; Music: Popular Music; Popular Culture; Progressive Era.

Bibliography

Rudy Blesh and and Harriet Janis , They All Played Ragtime, 1950.
Edward A. Berlin , King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era, 1994.

Reid Badger