| Magnetic Rag | |
|---|---|
| by Scott Joplin | |
 "Magnetic Rag" cover page | |
| Genre | Ragtime |
| Form | Rag |
| Published | July 21, 1914 [1] |
| Publisher | Scott Joplin Publishing Company |
| Duration | 5:11 |
| Instrument: Solo piano | |
"Magnetic Rag" is a 1914 ragtime piano composition by American composer Scott Joplin. It is significant for being the last rag which Joplin published in his lifetime, three years before his death in 1917. It is also unique in form and in some of the musical techniques employed in the composition.
"Magnetic Rag" was written by an ailing Joplin near the end of his career, when interest in ragtime was waning. He was suffering from the latter stages of syphilis, the disease from which he died only three years later. Possibly as a result of Joplin's mood at this time, the piece expresses a melancholy almost entirely unheard in his earlier works. [2]
While many of Joplin's piano rags fit the classic rag scheme, "Magnetic Rag" is unique in its form of AABBCCDDAA. Due to its novelty at the time, the form has been described as "progressive". [3] It has been suggested that Joplin was trying to merge ragtime elements with the classical sonata form. [4] The form is cyclic: that is, the opening melody is revisited at the end of the piece. Cyclic form is rare among Joplin's rags. [5]
Joplin's usage of Italian tempo indications in "Magnetic Rag" has been interpreted as his intention to give the piece a serious aspect in a similar manner to Treemonisha and "Scott Joplin's New Rag". [6] "Magnetic Rag" begins with the instruction "Allegretto ma non troppo" (moderately fast, but not too much) and continues in the D strain with "Tempo l'istesso" (tempo remains the same), a warning against slowing down for the minor-mode section. [6] Joplin also employed in "Magnetic Rag" the classic "common time" 4/4 time signature instead of the more usual 2/4 time of rag tunes. Simultaneously, Joplin doubled all the note values, effectively making the unusual 4/4 time signature have no practical effect on the way the piece sounded or the way it was performed. His publishing it in 4/4 was simply a way to connect the rag with classical and popular piano works of prior fame. [6] Since Joplin published "Magnetic Rag" himself, it has been suggested that the composition fully reflected his wishes and contained no compromises. [6]
Joplin produced "Magnetic Rag" during what several musicologists consider to be his experimental period. It was at this time that Joplin attempted to write rags that were not confined to the standard "oom-pah" left-hand beat and that incorporated several other novelties. [7]
Like the classic rag, "Magnetic Rag" begins with a four-bar introduction. Since it is featured at both the beginning and end of the piece, the melody of the A strain is possibly the most recognizable melody in the piece. Much of this melody is in the mode of B-flat major, the main key of the entire piece; however, during bars 11 and 12, the mode shifts to G minor. This shift demonstrates one of Joplin's late-life techniques: establishing a foreign key within the framework of a strain. [8]
The second, third, and fourth strains are what made "Magnetic Rag" unique among Joplin's rags. The B strain is written entirely in G minor. The darkening [9] tone generated by the minor scale stands out among Joplin's rags, and is revisited in the D strain. In contrast to the minor themes in the B strain, the third section is upbeat but with bittersweet harmonies, [10] returning once again to the key of B-flat major. Here, for the first time, the piece departs from the standard left-hand pattern that characterizes most ragtime. [3] This section of the piece has been compared to the style of twelve bar blues. [11] The C strain also represents the only known time when Joplin departs from the standard sixteen-bar form, being instead 24 bars in length [5] [12] with an uneven 14- and 10-bar division. Its first 12 measures parallel the 12-bar blues form and the next two measures extend the subdominant as a transition into the last ten bars. [13]
Of all the strains in the piece, the final D strain is perhaps the most interesting. It is written in B-flat minor. When Joplin used minor keys in the previous sections, he used the relative key of G minor (i.e., relative to the main key of B-flat major). However, in this fourth section, he instead used the parallel key. This strain also features sections where the right hand and left hand play notes in unison, and in which the standard 2/4 time left-hand beat is noticeably absent. [3] Most of Joplin's rags end with the last strain, but "Magnetic Rag" ends with a coda. This "smiling little coda" [10] expresses some of the tonalities and rhythms heard throughout the piece.
"Magnetic Rag" is widely understood to present a one-of-a-kind combination of moods, especially for ragtime, and has been described as a melancholic and "haunting" rag. [14]
With the Brahmsian darkness of . . . "Magnetic Rag," the last piece he completed, Joplin had pushed the music far beyond the boisterous beerhall ambience that characterized, for many listeners and players, the rag idiom. This was music on a large scale that was now being squeezed into the narrow confines of rag form—so much so, that the music often burst at the seams. [15]
Some music historians evaluate "Magnetic Rag", as well as other works from Joplin's late period, as being indicative of his unstable mental condition which resulted from the effects of syphilis. One of these is Martin Williams:
Joplin's "last period" is a strange collection of contradictions. Some of his rags reach more toward concert music than did any Jazz up to Lennie Tristano's, while others seem to revert to his 1900 style. Profoundly ambitious passages lie side by side with meaningless, mechanical ditties. It is not hard to find in these compositions a reflection of approaching derangement—he lost his mind in 1916. [16]
In This Is Ragtime, Terry Waldo criticizes this view:
To see Joplin's late rags as a "strange collection of contradictions" . . . misses the point. . . . "Magnetic Rag" does indeed include parts reminiscent of Joplin's 1900 style, but they serve to set up the "profound" parts. Here is a terrifying mixture of the familiar and the agonizing unknown. It is in fact more profound for being able to bring these opposites into focus. The music is heavy with the weight of Joplin's approaching schizoid nightmare—but that is not a weakness. [17]
In his biography of Scott Joplin, James Haskins writes:
Early in 1914 he completed what many consider his finest rag, "Magnetic Rag," which he published himself that same year. It has about it a gentle quality like "The Entertainer," and its distinctive form and range of moods suggest to some musicologists a breakthrough to a Chopinesque form of ragtime, albeit a breakthrough that came too late. [18]
Near the end of his life, Scott Joplin was taking ragtime in a new direction by adding emphasis on form and tonality, and attempting to combine the characteristics of classical Western music and traditional ragtime. [19] This is an entirely different direction than the one that jazz would take.
Jazz, seeking one theme as a center for improvisation, tended to weaken the sense of form that it inherited from ragtime. . . . Joplin's efforts obviously strengthen this sense of form. One has only to hear the blazing return of the first theme of Magnetic Rag—the restoration of major tonality, the momentum of the renewed beat—to recognize the power of recapitulation in ragtime. [5]
In the album notes to Scott Joplin: Piano Rags , [20] Joshua Rifkin describes the "Magnetic Rag" as a "valedictory work" with Joplin paying "tribute" to a "transplanted Middle-European dance music" and the European masters whom he tried to emulate. Rifkin speculates that the composition's short coda also "seems like a farewell, as if he knew how brief and bleak was the time still allotted him." [21] In 1979 Alan Rich in the New York Magazine wrote that by giving artists like Rifkin the opportunity to put Joplin's music on record Nonesuch Records "created, almost alone, the Scott Joplin revival." [22]
Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that had its peak from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott Joplin, James Scott and Joseph Lamb. Ragtime pieces are typically composed for and performed on piano, though the genre has been adapted for a variety of instruments and styles.
Scott Joplin was an American composer and pianist. Dubbed the "King of Ragtime", he composed more than 40 ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas. One of his first and most popular pieces, the "Maple Leaf Rag", became the genre's first and most influential hit, later being recognized as the quintessential rag. Joplin considered ragtime to be a form of classical music meant to be played in concert halls and largely disdained the performance of ragtime as honky tonk music most common in saloons.
James Sylvester Scott was an American ragtime composer and pianist. He is regarded as one of the "Big Three" composers of classical ragtime along with Scott Joplin and Joseph Lamb.
The "Maple Leaf Rag" is an early ragtime musical composition for piano composed by Scott Joplin. It was one of Joplin's early works, becoming the model for ragtime compositions by subsequent composers. It is one of the most famous of all ragtime pieces. Its success led to Joplin being dubbed the "King of Ragtime" by his contemporaries. The piece gave Joplin a steady if unspectacular income for the rest of his life.
Louis Chauvin was an American ragtime pianist and composer.
Classic rag is the style of ragtime composition pioneered by Scott Joplin and the Missouri school of ragtime composers. These compositions were first considered "classic" by Joplin's publisher, John Stark, as a way to distinguish them from what he considered the "common" rags of other publishers. Today, any composition fitting this particular ragtime structural form is considered classic rag.
"The Entertainer" is a 1902 classic piano rag written by Scott Joplin.
Joshua Rifkin is an American conductor, pianist, and musicologist. He is currently a professor of music at Boston University. As a performer he has recorded music by composers from Antoine Busnois to Silvestre Revueltas; as a scholar has published research on composers from the Renaissance to the 20th century.
The "Swipesy Cakewalk" is a ragtime composition published in 1900 by a musical duo consisting of Scott Joplin, who likely composed the trio, and the young composer Arthur Marshall, who most probably composed the rest of the piece with oversight from Joplin. "Swipesy" uses the simple syncopations of a cakewalk - the first beat being a sixteenth, eighth, sixteenth note division, and the second beat an even eighth note division. The style follows the AA BB A CC DD musical form common for both cakewalks and rags, particularly after the earlier publication of Joplin's hit "Maple Leaf Rag". Although called a cakewalk, it departs from the cakewalk form in favor of the more standard ragtime idiom at various points, most notably throughout the C (Trio) section. "Swipesy" was most likely written in the late 1890s when Joplin was living with the Marshall family and teaching Arthur composition.
"Original Rags" was an early ragtime medley for piano. It was the first of Scott Joplin's rags to appear in print, in early 1899, preceding his "Maple Leaf Rag" by half a year.
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"The Easy Winners" is a ragtime composition by Scott Joplin. One of his most popular works, it was one of the four that had been recorded as of 1940.
"Sunflower Slow Drag" is a ragtime composition by Scott Joplin and Scott Hayden. It is about four minutes long and has been described as "full of gaiety and sunshine".
"The Ragtime Dance" is a piece of ragtime music by Scott Joplin, first published in 1902.
"The Silver Swan" by Scott Joplin is a ragtime composition for piano. It is the only known Joplin composition to be originally released on piano roll instead of in musical notation.
Trebor Jay Tichenor was a recognized authority on Scott Joplin and the ragtime era. He collected and published others' ragtime piano compositions and composed his own. He authored books about ragtime, and both on his own and as a member of The St. Louis Ragtimers, became a widely known ragtime pianist.
The "Searchlight Rag" is a ragtime composition by Scott Joplin, first published in 1907. It was named after the town of Searchlight, Nevada, where his friends had gone prospecting, inspiring the title.
Piano Rags by Scott Joplin is an album by Joshua Rifkin consisting of ragtime compositions by Scott Joplin, released by Nonesuch Records in 1970. The spine of the original album and various compact disc reissues render the title as Scott Joplin: Piano Rags.
"Wall Street Rag" is a ragtime composition by Scott Joplin, first published in 1909. As indicated by the title, the theme is based on Wall Street following the events surrounding the Panic of 1907. This is represented in the musical structure along with its corresponding annotations.
