Sarah, who bore his child was resentful when he came to her. Actually the music which Schoolhouse Walker Jar. Laded one evening in the house where Sarah was shelters had a great impact on the audience: ‘Small clear chords hung in the air like flowers. The melodies were like bouquets. There seemed to be no other possibilities for life than those delineated by the music’. Everyone who was upstairs came down to see who was playing, to find the source of these magic sounds. Everyone except Sarah. Didn’t It touch her feelings?
I think It did. I haven’t read the whole novel unfortunately, but I know that later Sarah and Schoolhouse Walker will marry. And I suppose that the evening when he played In he living-room for the whole family was one of the crucial moments in their lives. But what kind of music was it? What ‘roused the senses and never stood still a moment’? What made ‘the entire room glow with its own being’? Actually it was ragtime, an American musical genre which enjoyed Its peak of popularity between 1899 and 1918.
It began as dance music In popular music settings years before It was published as popular sheet music for the Plano. As a matter of fact, ragtime was a modification of a popular march. It has had several periods of revival since the ass of he Sixth century and is still being composed today. It’s interesting to know that ragtime was the first truly American musical genre, predating Jazz. The defining characteristic of ragtime music is a specific type of syncopation in which melodic accents occur between metrical beats.
One of the best-known ragtime figure is Scott Joplin (Please Say You Will” (1895) “A Picture of Her Face” (1895), “The Entertainer”(1902), “l Am Talking of My Pleasantly Days” (1902), a musicals and a composer. He is regarded as one of the three most important composers of classic ragtime, along with James Scott and Joseph Lamb. Moreover, it is undisputed that Scott Joplin created a place for himself among the great composers of piano music in Western culture.
Joplin syncopated musical style found expression in the popular idiom of piano Ragtime, a style that flourished along the Mississippi river in the style until the end of World War l. To this improvisational genre Joplin brought great artistry, craftsmanship, and elegance. Joplin is claimed as an important contributor in both serious music and as an innovator in the development of piano Jazz. However, it is clear that Joplin himself considered his music to be in the classical radiation of Western art music since this was the music of his background and education.
In his compositions, Scott Joplin strove for a “classical” excellence, and he longed for recognition as a composer of artistic merit, rather than one simply of popular acclaim. After his death, Joplin music and the popularity of ragtime in general decreased as new forms of musical styles, such as Jazz and novelty piano emerged. A renewed interest in Joplin music began in the early sass, though such interest remained limited until the Ragtime revival of the sass, when most of his works were reissued, performed, and analyzed.