Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner - Non Classical Is ragtime classical, non-classical, or both?

Scott Joplin is in the "classical" section at Barnes & Noble, though I don't often think of ragtime or jazz as classical. I recently discovered Gershwin's song transcriptions in the classical section as well -- in the introduction to his book, Gershwin talks all about "popular music" (its history, his own influences, performance style, etc), but never once mentions the word "classical". A friend of mine at music school -- a classical piano performance major -- played some of Bolcom's rags at a recital of Byrd, Beethoven, and Chopin. So it seems that ragtime is becoming a part of classical repertoire-- and yet it seems to have always been non-classical.

Of course, there are words that we use for old popular music, including ragtime and jazz -- "oldies", "standards", even "classic"... but never "classical."

As "non-classical" musicians, what do you see as the fundamental differences between classical and non-, and what do you make of ragtime being labeled as classical?

I have always found ragtime to be a predecessor to jazz. Although nowadays, I often see it categorized as jazz and I believe it is on sheetmusicplus's website. Barnes and Noble, not being a music store, is really not the best way to base your general knowledge of. But to answer the question directly, ragtime is non classical in my honest opinion. If anybody wants to get scholarly about it, the classical era ended long back before the romantic and impressionist eras.

P.S-rags, especially those of joplin's, will always be classic although not classical.

...and yet, who on the non-classical forum discusses Chopin, Shostakovich, and Handel?

Yes, I agree with you -- "classical" is a technical term for the music of the late 1700s. But we won't get very far with that argument when most people who use the word "classical" don't restrict it to the late 1700s.

Thanks for a great reply, and I think you are right that Barnes & Noble might not be a big authority on the subject -- although there must be a reason why they have categorized the music as they have. (They also had a seperate jazz section.)

I'm curious why you believe that ragtime is non classical, and that especially Joplin's will be classic but not classical.

What is it about the music that makes it non-classical?

I believe that Joplin himself called ragtime American classical music.

While not in the classical era, I would still consider them classical music, because classical >> other music.

A classical is something made about 100 years ago that people still enjoy. It has passed the test of time.

It then seems to follow that even some rap will someday be considered classics, isn't it. NO, only if some rap passes the test of time, which I believe is rather unlikely for the vast majority of this scratches-drums-speech unmusical language...

ok, sorry for the rant, I can't seem to be able to stop beating the dead horse at every oportunity...

Beats me

Except that Joplin's more fun, IMHO -

Joplin certainly considered his music to be "serious" - composed with great care, with a particular form to fit into, a native American music in the same tradition with Bartok, or Dvorak, or other "classical" composers who used folk themes and "found" tunes in their works as he did. It both came from and turned in to the popular music of its time - dance music, too. I don't think he would have been upset if it had come to be thought of as part of the "classical" tradition - more likely quite the opposite. So why isn't his music considered classical, as is Aaron Copeland's? Maybe because only ballet dancers can actually dance to Copeland's music (and I happen to like Copeland's music).

Here's what I think - "classical" at this point in time is done in a concert hall where you sit and don't applaud until all 3 movements are done, and ragtime, even if it's in a concert hall, may have people dancing in the aisles. There really isn't a good reason, to me, to define Bach's minuets and Purcell's dance music as something inherently different from Joplin's or Duke Ellington's, or Strauss's waltzes,particularly since I and many others still dance to Bach and Purcell and Strauss. "Classical", in the non-technical sense of the word, I think has come to mean something closer to "academic, old, (snobbier ), non-popular with the masses." Obviously Joplin's music is different in some structural ways from the music that is *technically* "classical", just as Baroque or Romantic or rock n roll is. But to ask why Joplin isn't considered "classical" in the non-technical sense of the word seems to me to be a social/cultural question rather than a musical one. I think mostly "classical" in that sense attempts to make a distinction between what the "masses" like and what the "cultured" folks like that is not sustainable by anyone that has their ears open - one only has to listen to cartoons, or go to an orchestra concert that also includes a mariachi orchestra, to realize that "classical" vs "everything else" is a false dichotomy.

So, for me, the question "what is it about [Joplin's] music that makes it non-classical" if one is using classical in the non-technical sense is, from a musical standpoint, not an answerable question, because, I think, "classical" in the non-technical sense, is a social, rather than a musical, distinction.

Someone in another thread suggested that we label our posts "F" for factual, "O" for opinion, and "G" for guess. This one's an "O"

Cathy

I think it's both.

O

Ragtime is pop music: 90-year old pop music.

Gershwin wrote music in both the pop and classical forms and the classification of his work into either category really depends on exactly which work we are discussing: Rhapsody in Blue is classical, and Fascinating Rhythm is not.

Barnes and Noble categorize their music products based on their customers' preferences and sales patterns and should not be accepted as an authority on any the subject other than retail book sales.

I guess one could say that Liszt (for example) is 150-year-old pop music!

Now that Ragtime has got a bit of interest stirring, can anyone offer any advice on a good method book, with a CD if possible.

Google "perfessor Bill". His web pages are very interesting and informative.

I try to be more descriptive, rather than prescriptive in my thinking.

In other words, I look at what is out there and I try to understand it -- I don't look at what is out there and tell everyone they are wrong and should do it the "proper" way.

It might be true that certain labels are more fitting, but if they are being "misused" by so many people, then I'm curious why they are being "misused." Classical music might refer, as many musicians use the term, specifically to the end of the 1700s; on the other hand, a great very many people use it for much more music as well, and so -- at least to my mind -- it actually *does* mean something more than just the end of the 1700s. (It has 2 meanings.)

So that is why, when I try to find out what certain labels have come to mean in society, I look at how they are used in society.... not only how they are defined in the conservatory (which is interesting, too).

The same happens in jazz. It's often thrown around as a blanket term meaning "American popular music that isn't rock 'n' roll." But what people call "jazz" often encompasses:

1) Ragtime
2) Blues
3) Negro Spirituals
4) Dixieland
5) Swing Bands (which were divided along racial lines for many years)
6) Tin Pan Alley (Gershwin, etc...)
7) Bebop
8) "Cool" or West Coast (Miles Davis)
9) Latin (which can be broken down into things like Afro-Cuban, Brazilian/Jobim, etc...)
10) Progressive (Steps Ahead, etc...)
11) Avant-garde
12) Modern (?)

The funny thing is that I've found when most people say "jazz," they actually have a pretty specific idea of what they mean.

The same is true for classical, which most people use to mean common-practice-era Bach-Wagner with a little Debussy and Ravel thrown in. And even though most musicians use "classical" to mean the late 18th century, it too can be further divided into things like Rococo, Stile galant, Empfindsamer stile, Sturm und Drang, London School pianism (Cramer, Mocheles, Field - whom many consider early romantics), etc...

My thought is that rag straddles (almost said "strides") both camps. Look at Joplin's Bethena for a more classical example, which is marked "A concert waltz".

When I was working on this with my (very) Jazz teacher, he always referred to it as my "classical jazz" piece, and called it "well composed," which is something you'd often say about classical music.

While there is some room for added embellishments, it's not really about improvisation, which is what I think of as the hallmark of jazz.

Gilbert - I posted a link to Homespun tapes over in the ABF in your query there - you can Google Homespun tapes and go their series of piano/keyboard tapes and check out David Cohen's dvd's, as well as instruction tapes for many other kinds of music.

Cathy

When I said especially joplin, I meant that I prefer his to any of the other's and that they were more popular and categorized as 'favorites'. Also, I did imply they lasted the test of time when I referred to them as classic. I'm not huge on the structure of music, but it doesn't seem to use a lot of the same techinques as classical, romantic, or impressionist and sounds really different. There is a reason why an untrained ear can be confused b/t these 3 and baroque. When Joplin said that rag was an american classical type, i think he meant that it originated in America (to the extent of my knowledge) and was the first of any type of music to have american origins and not an overwhelming influence of European, Russian or anything else.

Kind of like the reason why an untrained ear can be confused b/t ragtime, jazz, swing, and bebop?

I wonder, if during music appreciation classes kids were *not* told that jazz is seperate from classical, and instead were taught that Joplin and Armstrong and Parker were all "classical", if they'd have trouble telling the difference between big band swing music and classical wind ensembles.

Perhaps a big part of it is programmed association.

I have a book written by the Belgian, 'Robert Goffin', (Doctor of Law,) in 1946. Entitled 'Jazz'.

Of course I cannot reprint the book here but it does quote Buddy Bolden in 1900 as having played 'the first stammering notes of Jazz'. Coincidental with the blues and ragged-time 'Ragtime'

I would define Jazz as a class of music in it's own right. No need here to re-write all the manifestations of the music and style. However,it has never deviated from being a music for freedom of expression and with roots in a 'beat' driven by the need to echo the heart beats of mankind.

The word jazz is surely a term that covers any music played in a style that's not reliant on convention but with the basic requirement of a solid beat. Abstractions are many and I think other terminology is needed rather than use the word 'Jazz' too loosely.

Am I being too pedantic or is this a fair statement?

I do think it correct to have some definition of the Jazz title and not group too many abstractions together as jazz. Let the other styles be defined by other non-classical terminology. such as Be Bop and all the others, than rather loose sight of Jazz origins as I stated at the beginning,ie; a solid beat, as in marching, which is how it all started in New Orleans.

Alan (swingal)

With respect Alan ... the essence of true jazz is
improvisation ... anything written down dilutes the sponteneity of the breaks.