| The Ragtime Dance | |
|---|---|
| by Scott Joplin | |
 Cover art for the 1906 sheet music | |
| Genre | Ragtime Folk Ballet |
| Form | A Stop-Time Two Step |
| Published | 1902& 1906 |
| Publisher | John Stark & Son |
| Instrument: Piano Solo | |
"The Ragtime Dance" is a piece of ragtime music by Scott Joplin, first published in 1902.
Although the piece was performed in Sedalia, Missouri on November 24, 1899, it wasn't published until 1902. John Stillwell Stark had planned publishing it in September 1899, [1] but had doubts about the marketability of the piece and delayed publication. When he eventually published it in 1902, at the urging of his daughter, it was a commercial failure. [2]
The 1902 arrangement was a short ragtime folk ballet suitable for stage performance, complete with narration and choreography. The narrator recounts a "dark town" ball that took place at 9 p.m. on a Thursday night and included a cakewalk. The choreography is for four couples.
Four years later, Stark republished the piece in a piano rag arrangement, stripped of its narration and choreography and substantially shortened. [2] The copyright for this arrangement was registered December 21, 1906. [3] The cover art for the 1906 sheet music featured an African American couple dancing in formal attire: the lady holds a fan, and the gentleman holds a top hat and cane.
Marvin Hamlisch incorporated "The Ragtime Dance" into a medley for the soundtrack of the Oscar-winning 1973 film The Sting . [4] The song also appeared in the soundtrack of the 1978 film Pretty Baby [5] and the 1980 Broadway musical revue Tintypes . [6]
The overall structure is: Intro AA BB CC D E F. [3]
It opens in the key of B-flat major, but modulates to E-flat major at the start of the "B" section.
The piece was subtitled "A Stop-Time Two Step". "Stop-time" refers to an unusual effect used in the second half of the piece. Starting with the "D" section, the pianist is instructed to "Stamp the heel of one foot heavily upon the floor" in time with the beat. Joplin reused this effect in his 1910 "Stoptime Rag".
In November 1970, Joshua Rifkin released a recording called Scott Joplin: Piano Rags [7] on the classical label Nonesuch, which featured as its third track "The Ragtime Dance". It sold 100,000 copies in its first year and eventually became Nonesuch's first million-selling record. [8] The Billboard "Best-Selling Classical LPs" chart for 28 September 1974 has the record at #5, with the follow-up "Volume 2" at #4, and a combined set of both volumes at #3. Separately both volumes had been on the chart for 64 weeks. [9] The album was nominated in 1971 for two Grammy Award categories: Best Album Notes and Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without orchestra), but at the ceremony on March 14, 1972, Rifkin did not win in any category. [10] 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." [11]
Ragtime – also spelled rag-time or rag time – is a musical style that enjoyed its peak popularity between 1895 and 1919. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by ragtime composer Scott Joplin and his school of classical ragtime which was survived by James Scott and Joseph Lamb after Joplin's death in 1917. Maple Leaf Rag, The Entertainer, Fig Leaf Rag, Frog Legs Rag, and Sensation Rag, among others, are among the most popular songs of the genre. Ragtime was an immediate precursor to jazz.
Scott Joplin was an American composer and pianist. Joplin is also known as the "King of Ragtime" because of the fame achieved for his ragtime compositions, music that was born out of the African-American community. During his brief career, he wrote over 100 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas. One of his first and most popular pieces, the "Maple Leaf Rag", became ragtime's first and most influential hit, and has been recognized as the archetypal rag. Joplin considered ragtime to be a form of classical music and largely disdained the practice of ragtime such as that in honky tonk.
The Sting is a 1973 American caper film set in September 1936, involving a complicated plot by two professional grifters to con a mob boss. The film was directed by George Roy Hill, who had directed Newman and Redford in the western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Created by screenwriter David S. Ward, the story was inspired by real-life cons perpetrated by brothers Fred and Charley Gondorff and documented by David Maurer in his 1940 book The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man.
Joseph Francis Lamb was an American composer of ragtime music. Lamb, of Irish descent, was the only non-African American of the "Big Three" composers of classical ragtime, the other two being Scott Joplin and James Scott. The ragtime of Joseph Lamb ranges from standard popular fare to complex and highly engaging. His use of long phrases was influenced by classical works he had learned from his sister and others while growing up, but his sense of structure was potentially derived from his study of Joplin's piano rags. By the time he added some polish to his later works in the 1950s, Lamb had mastered the classic rag genre in a way that almost no other composer was able to approach at that time, and continued to play it passably as well, as evidenced by at least two separate recordings done in his home, as well as a few recorded interviews.
The "Maple Leaf Rag" is an early ragtime musical composition for piano composed by Scott Joplin. It was one of Joplin's early works, and became the model for ragtime compositions by subsequent composers. It is one of the most famous of all ragtime pieces. As a result, Joplin became dubbed the "King of Ragtime" by his contemporaries. The piece gave Joplin a steady if unspectacular income for the rest of his life.
"The Entertainer" is a 1902 classic piano rag written by Scott Joplin. It was sold first as sheet music, and in the 1910s as piano rolls that would play on player pianos. The first recording was by blues and ragtime musicians the Blue Boys in 1928, played on mandolin and guitar.
Joshua Rifkin is an American conductor, keyboard player, and musicologist, currently a Professor of Music at Boston University. As a performer he has recorded music by composers from Antoine Busnois to Silvestre Revueltas, and as a scholar has published research on composers from the Renaissance to the 20th century. He is famed among classical musicians and aficionados for his increasingly influential theory that most of Bach's choral works were sung with only one singer per choral line. Rifkin argued: "So long as we define 'chorus' in the conventional modern sense, then Bach's chorus, with few exceptions, simply did not exist." He is best known by the general public, however, for having played a central role in the ragtime revival in the 1970s, with the three albums he recorded of Scott Joplin's works for Nonesuch Records.
Richard “Dick” Zimmerman is a ragtime performer, historian, author and producer. He is regarded as being one of the key figures responsible for the worldwide revival of ragtime. Zimmerman is the first pianist to have recorded the complete works of Scott Joplin and in 1987 was awarded the first place prize “Champion Ragtime Performer of the World”. Zimmerman was technical advisor for the film Scott Joplin. He is a founder of the "Maple Leaf Club", and is the editor of its publication, "The Rag Times". Zimmerman is also a professional magician. He has contributed many signature illusions to the field of magic and has acted as consultant for such magicians as David Copperfield.
"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.
"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.
"Root Beer Rag" is a composition from Billy Joel's 1974 album Streetlife Serenade. An instrumental track in a very fast ragtime style, it was later released as the B-side of several singles from Joel's 52nd Street album, including "Big Shot" in the US, "Until the Night" in the UK, and "Honesty" in Japan and some European countries. A live version was included with the DVD that was part of the 30th anniversary re-release of The Stranger.
"Weeping Willow" is a 1903 classic piano ragtime composition by Scott Joplin. It was one of Joplin's simpler and less famous ragtime scores, written during a transitional period in his life, and one of the few pieces that Joplin cut as a piano roll in a 1916 session.
"Bethena, A Concert Waltz" is a composition by Scott Joplin. It was the first Joplin work since his wife Freddie's death on September 10, 1904 of pneumonia, ten weeks after their wedding. At the time the composer had significant financial problems; the work did not sell successfully at the time of publication and was soon neglected and forgotten. It was rediscovered as a result of the Joplin revival in the 1970s and has received acclaim from Joplin's biographers and other critics. The piece combines two different styles of music, the classical waltz and the rag, and has been seen as demonstrating Joplin's excellence as a classical composer. The work has been described as "an enchantingly beautiful piece that is among the greatest of Ragtime Waltzes", a "masterpiece", and "Joplin's finest waltz".
"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.
Scott Joplin: Piano Rags is a 1970 ragtime piano album, consisting of compositions by Scott Joplin played by Joshua Rifkin, on the Nonesuch Records label. The original album's cover states the name as Piano Rags by Scott Joplin, as contrasting the album's spine. The record is considered to have been the first to reintroduce the music of pianist and composer Joplin in the early 1970s, initially gaining critical recognition and later commercial success after several of Joplin's compositions were featured in the 1973 film The Sting. It became Nonesuch Records' first million-selling album.
The New England Ragtime Ensemble was a Boston chamber orchestra dedicated to the music of Scott Joplin and other ragtime composers.
Elite Syncopations is a one-act ballet created in 1974 by Kenneth MacMillan for The Royal Ballet.
"Solace" is a 1909 habanera written by Scott Joplin.
Maple Leaf Rag is a storyless Martha Graham ballet set to ragtime compositions by Scott Joplin. The work premiered on October 2, 1990 at New York City Center with costumes by Calvin Klein and lighting by David Finley. Chris Landriau arranged the music and played piano at the debut. The dance is a jubilant self-parody and an homage, of sorts, to Graham's mentor and musical director, Louis Horst, who would play the rag for her whenever she fell into a creative slump. Graham was 96 when she created Maple Leaf Rag; it is her last completed dance. In 1991, she began another work, The Eyes of the Goddess, but it was unfinished at the time of her death.
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