UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Date:___________________

I, _________________________________________________________, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of:

in:

It is entitled:

This work and its defense approved by:

Chair: _______________________________

_______________________________

_______________________________

_______________________________

_______________________________

A Style Analysis of William Bolcoms Complete Rags for Piano

A doctoral document submitted to the

Division of Graduate Studies and Research of the University of Cincinnati

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS

In the Keyboard Studies Division of the College-Conservatory of Music

2007

by

Yeung Yu

B.M., Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing, China, 1993

M.M., Texas State University, 1999

Advisor: Joel Hoffman, DMA

Abstract

William Bolcom: Complete Rags for Piano is a collection of twenty-two of

Bolcoms piano rags written between 1967 and 1993. In this research, the rags are

examined year by year; the stylistic analysis focuses on the use of form, rhythm,

harmony, melody, and musical texture in each rag. In these rags, Bolcom perfectly

blended a variety of musical styles and elements, including American traditional ragtime

styles such as classic rag and stride styles, the nineteenth-century romanticism of Chopin

and Schumann, and modern compositional techniques, such as tone clusters and atonal

passages. By means of these varied compositional techniques, the music acquires a

distinctive sound and identifies what has become known as Bolcoms unique ragtime

style.

iii

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the numerous people who helped make the completion of

this research possible. First, I would like to thank the members of my committee, Dr.

Joel Hoffman, Mr. James Tocco, and Professor Awadagin Pratt, for the time they spent

on guiding my research. I would like to thank Mr. William Bolcom for taking time and

offering me an extremely important face to face interview. I would also like to thank all

my dear friends who helped me on this research. Finally, I would like to thank my wife,

my parents, my parents-in-law, my children, and the rest of my family for their support of

my graduate study.

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: Introduction 1

Chapter 2: The Evolution of Ragtime. 3

Chapter 3: The Development of William Bolcoms Musical Style 23

Chapter 4: Bolcom Talks about Ragtime: An Interview with William Bolcom 32

Chapter 5: A Style Analysis of William Bolcoms Complete Rags for Piano... 45

Three Classic Rags 47

1. Glad Rag 47

2. Epitaph for Louis Chauvin. 51

3. Incineratorag... 55

Three Popular Rags 59

4. Seabiscuits.. 59

5. Tabby Cat Walk. 63

6. Last Rag. 66

7. California Porcupine Rag... 70

8. Eubies Luckey Day.. 77

vi

The Garden of Eden. 84

9. Old Adam.. 85

10. The Eternal Feminine 89

11. The Serpents Kiss 93

12. Through Edens Gates.. 105

13. Lost Lady Rag.. 109

Three Ghost Rags 116

14. Graceful Ghost Rag. 116

15. The Poltergeist. 120

16. Dream Shadows... 127

17. The Gardenia.. 132

18. Rag-Tango.. 135

19. Knight Hubert 144

20. Raggin Rudi. 151

21. Fields of Flowers... 153

22. Epithalamium.... 158

Chapter 6: Conclusion.. 163

Selected Bibliography.. 165

vii

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

William Bolcom (b. 1938) is known as one of the most important contemporary

American composers. His large body of musical work covers most of the important types

of musical compositions, including symphonies, operas, concertos, sonatas, chamber

music pieces and songs, and solo pieces composed for organ and piano. Bolcom is an

active composer; his compositions have been consistently performed in recent years, and

his new works are commissioned with premieres scheduled. His Seventh Symphony: A

Symphonic Concerto premiered at Carnegie Hall in New York on May 19, 2002,

conducted by James Levine; his Eighth Symphony for chorus and orchestra will be

premiered by the Boston Symphony in 2008. Following the positive reception of his

significant operas MC Teague and A View from the Bridge, Bolcoms most recent opera,

A Wedding, premiered at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in December 2004. Among

Bolcoms chamber works, his Eleventh String Quartet was first performed on

October 25, 2003. As a well-known pianist and composer, Bolcom has also greatly

contributed to piano music: two sets of Twelve Etudes for Piano continues the tradition of

Chopin and Liszt in which the Twelve New Etudes won the Pulitzer Prize for music in

1988, Nine Bagatelles for Piano was written for the 10th Van Cliburn International Piano

Competition in 1997, and his Nine New Bagatelles for Piano premiered in early

July 2006. Among Bolcoms great achievements in piano literature, his Complete Rags

for Piano is considered to be a major work, comprising twenty-two piano rags written

from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. These rags descend from the tradition of early

1

twentieth-century American ragtime, blending classic ragtime style with nineteenth-

century romanticism and modern compositional techniques.

In order to gain a detailed understanding of Bolcoms ragtime style, this paper

will be divided into several chapters: a summary of traditional ragtime styles, an

investigation of the development of Bolcoms musical style, an interview with Bolcom,

and the musical analysis of twenty-two of Bolcoms rags. This research will begin with a

discussion of a variety of traditional ragtime musical styles and musical dance forms

related to ragtime music from the late 1890s to the 1920s. For example, classic ragtime

style developed mainly in Missouri, absorbing many cakewalk and march music features,

whereas stride style was a popular East Coast ragtime style related to the development of

animal dances, blues, and jazz styles. Both classic ragtime style and stride style are

reflected in Bolcoms rags. The next chapter will discuss the development of Bolcoms

musical style, starting during his years as a student and continuing through the 1980s and

1990s. Following that is a transcript of an interview with Mr. Bolcom, discussing how he

came to be interested in rags and revealing his explanation of how to play his rags. Since

Bolcom absorbed various forms of traditional rag styles and infused them into his new

rags, a complete analysis of the forms, rhythms, harmonies, melodies, musical textures,

and styles of Bolcoms rags will be discussed in the last chapter of this research. The

goal of this research is to enable performers to gain complete understanding of Bolcoms

ragtime style and to allow them to interpret his rags authentically.

2

CHAPTER 2

The Evolution of Ragtime

Ragtime is regarded as the first truly American musical genre, and flourished

from the late 1890s to the late 1910s until it was replaced by jazz in the 1920s. The first

research book about ragtime was not published until the 1950s: They All Played Ragtime,

written by the earliest influential ragtime/jazz scholars Rudi Blesh and Janet Harris.

Beginning in the 1970s, more research was done studying ragtime, focusing on

definitions and more detailed discussions of the genre. One history of ragtime states:

Ragtime is a musical composition for the piano comprising three or four sections containing sixteen measures each which combines a syncopated melody accompanied by an even, steady duple rhythm.1

As ragtime features special forms and rhythms, its style is regarded as very unique:

Ragtime is unique in that it represents the first formal blending of European and West African musical elements. The form and harmony came from Europe; the rhythmic concept came from West Africa.2

Several different sources and styles constitute what is known as ragtime.

The term ragtime came from two separate words: rag and time. Time

refers to rhythm. A ragged time means that the rhythms are uneven. Thus, the term

ragtime stems from the musics most characteristic trait, its syncopated rhythm.3 The

term ragtime was commonly used after the 1890s, when the two separate words virtually

became one. The syncopated rhythm in ragtime has its origins in African-American

music. Before the term ragtime was applied to this particular kind of syncopated music 1 David A. Jasen and Trebor Jay Tichenor, Rags and Ragtime: A Musical History (New York: The Seabury Press, 1978), 1. 2 John Valerio, Stride & Swing Piano (Milwaukee: Hal Leonard Corporation, 2003), 4. 3 Edward A. Berlin. Ragtime and Improvised Piano; another view, Journal of Jazz Studies v.4 (spring/summer 1977): 4-5.

3

in the 1890s, people had already heard similar syncopations in some other African-

American musical forms, such as plantation spirituals, work songs, and minstrel shows.

During the evolution of ragtime, other rhythmic features such as the habanera or tango-

like syncopations also merged into ragtime, which indicates that ragtime could absorb

elements from Latin-American musical styles as well.4 Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-

1869), one of the most significant nineteenth-century American pianist-composers,

incorporated African, Caribbean, and Creole rhythms and melodies into many of his

works, such as Bamboula, with bold syncopations, which prefigured ragtime.5

Evidence indicates that ragtime existed long before the first so-called ragtime

song was published in 1896. In 1886, the ragged rhythm existed in African-American

dance music in New Orleanss Congo Square. In 1888, a Nebraska banjoist referred to a

kind of banjo music called broken time, which gives strong support to ragged time,

as the etymology of rag-time.6 At the Worlds Fair of 1893 in Chicago, people

reported hearing a kind of music with strong syncopations. Several years later,

newspapers referred to this as the first appearance of ragtime to the public.7

Ragtime vs. March, Cakewalk, Fox Trot and Other Dance Music

Most historians agree that the syncopated rhythm is one of the most important

features that can be used to distinguish ragtime from other American musical forms.

4 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. (London Macmillan Publishers

Limited, 2001), s.v. Ragtime, by Edward A Berlin. 5 Irving Lowens and S. Frederick Starr, Gottschalk, Louis Moreau, Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy, 25 March 2007 .

6 John Edward Hasse, Ragtime: From the Top, in Ragtime: Its History, Composers, and Music, ed. John Edward Hasse (New York: Schirmer Books, 1985), 6. 7 Ibid, 8.

4

Since the earliest ragtime music appeared, however, it has been associated with several

types of dances such as the march, the cakewalk, and the two-step, and to distinguish

among them technically is not easy. For example, some dance music was originally

unsyncopated, but later, when ragtime music was being played to accompany that

particular dance, people would dance to syncopated rhythms regardless of whether the

dance was originally syncopated or not. More often syncopated ragtime music coexisted

with the originally unsyncopated dances in the ballroom and they bore the same labels.8

Compared to several popular musical dance styles of the late 1890s, ragtime was a

more recently developed musical style. The march and cakewalk preceded the

appearance of ragtime by several years, and actually contributed to the formation of

ragtime. According to many musical researchers, several basic elements of ragtime

clearly came from march and cakewalk styles. 9 By the 1910s, as the march and

cakewalk dances gradually went out of fashion, new dances such as the turkey trot,

one-step, and fox trot took their places and the new musical dance styles further

influenced ragtime. The dances brought new features into ragtime, such as the dotted

rhythm, while ragtime started to lose some of its early basic features, such as cakewalk-

style syncopations.

The march was one of the most important musical forms that contributed to the

formation of ragtime. Many ragtime pieces carry a title or subtitle of march or some

performance instructions such as in the tempo of a march, indicating the close

connection between ragtime and the march. The march gained popularity in both

America and Europe because of the performances of John Philip Sousas band during the

8 Edward A. Berlin, Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1980), 13. 9 New Grove, Ragtime by Berlin.

5

late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Many people at that time believed

that Sousas band played the most authentic American ragtime music, because they

regarded the march as equal to ragtime. In fact, Sousas band played only a certain

number of rags, and Sousa, as the director, recorded only a few of them.10

The march shares many similarities with ragtime, and it definitely influenced

ragtime in many areas; in particular, it informed conceptions of form and tonal design.11

Like ragtime, the march comprises several strains, and the strains in the subdominant

keys are called the trio. One of the most commonly used forms for the march is

AABBCCDD; in ragtime, this is also a popular form. Another influence of the march on

ragtime was in the setting of tempo and meter. Early rags adopted not only march

tempos but also all of the meters of the march except 6/8 time.12 The march also heavily

influenced ragtime in other areas of rhythm; for instance, the oom-pah accompaniment

patterns of ragtime clearly come from the march. Although the march influenced ragtime

in many aspects, it is not identical to ragtime. One of the major differences is that ragtime

contains heavily syncopated rhythms, while the march does not. Once syncopations were

added to the march, it became ragtime.13

Cakewalk was another musical genre which significantly influenced ragtime. It

appeared somewhat earlier than ragtime:

Cakewalk preceded ragtime into print by five years (the first being Opelika Cakewalk in 1892), and their vogue lasted until about 1903. They were originally written as accompaniments to the traditional dance finale of minstrel shows, the high-kicking strut known as the walkaround.14

10 Berlin, Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History, 99-100. 11 Ibid, 100. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 David A. Jasen and Gene Jones, That American Rag: The Story of Ragtime from Coast to Coast (New York: Schirmer Books, 2000), xxviii.

6

Accompanied by cakewalk music, the cakewalk dance itself came from African-

American culture:

The cakewalk, a grand-promenade type of dance of plantation origins in which the slave couple performing the most attractive steps and motions would take the cake, enjoyed a dramatic revival shortly before the establishment of ragtime. Spurred by exhibitions and contests in the early 1890s, interest in the cakewalk eventually brought this plantation dance to the ballrooms of the United States and Europe, where it retained a following into the first decade of the twentieth century.15

Cakewalk music actually developed from the musical style of the march. For example, in

a cakewalk piece the left hand usually keeps steady march-style oom-pah musical

patterns which feature alternation between bass notes and chords as accompaniment to

the right hands repetitively patterned and occasionally slightly syncopated melody.16

Cakewalk influenced ragtime but is also distinct from ragtime in several aspects,

mainly in its musical functions and the musical complexities of the rhythms and

harmonies. In terms of functions, cakewalks were originally written for a specific style

of dancing, while rags were written for listening, playing, or more free-form dancing:

Cakewalks were written for the set of specific and well-known steps of this dance (as waltzes, tangos, and polkas had their own tempos and musical forms), and when partygoers heard a cakewalk, they knew exactly what to do (as they knew how to waltz, tango, and polka). When a dance ensemble played a rag, there was no set of specific steps, no particular rag dance, that came to mind.17

Just as their functions differ, ragtime also differs from cakewalk in its rhythms.

Comparing the rhythms in cakewalk and ragtime, the syncopations in cakewalk are more

repetitive and predictable, while the syncopations in ragtime are much more complex.18

15 Berlin, Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History, 104. 16 Ibid. 17 Jasen and Jones, That American Rag: The Story of Ragtime from Coast to Coast, xxviii. 18 Ibid, xxv.

7

Furthermore, cakewalk places more emphasis on melody than harmony, so its harmonies

are not as sophisticated as ragtimes, and its melodies are usually easier to sing or hum; in

contrast, in ragtime, not only are both the harmonies and melodies much richer, but also

the melancholy musical expression has no counterpart in the cakewalk.19

The confusion in labeling a piece as cakewalk or ragtime went in both directions

during the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. When publishers

promoted a new rag to the public, they would call it a cakewalk for better sales.20 Later

on, As ragtimes popularity grew (and as the cakewalk was fading), publishers

appended the words rag to the titles and subtitles of many of their cakewalk numbers to

get them out of the store.21 For example, in 1899, a cakewalk by the black Detroit

songwriter Fred S. Stone was published with the title of Bosn Rag.22 Since consumers

of the music did not really care about the technical distinctions between ragtime and

cakewalk or other musical dance forms, the publishers sometimes created titles randomly.

A single rag could bear multiple titles, such as Ragtime Cakewalk.

The foxtrot was another type of popular social dance that flourished at the

beginning of the twentieth century. The foxtrot and other dances including the turkey

trot, pony trot, and chicken scratch, are collectively referred to as animal dances.

Foxtrot, turkey trot, and other types of social dances at that time, such as one-step and

slow drag, became associated with ragtime after the 1910s. The turkey trot had only a

two-year life before it died out in 1914, the one-step lasted from 1913 to 1917, and the

slow drag never became a prominent genre. Only the foxtrot lasted for a long time and

19 Ibid, xxviii-xxix. 20 Ibid, xxv. 21 Ibid, xxix. 22 Jasen and Tichenor, Rags and Ragtime: A Musical History, 17.

8

therefore probably influenced ragtime the most amongst the animal dances. Some

musical scholars assume that dotted rhythms in ragtime after the 1910s came from the

foxtrot, because trot was usually dotted.23 When new characteristics from the foxtrot

merged into ragtime, ragtime gradually lost its basic identifying elements, such as

syncopated rhythms, and this process ultimately led to the disintegration of ragtime as a

distinctive musical type.24

Ragtime and Coon Song

Coon songs are short stories in song which existed in American minstrel and

vaudeville traditions long before the appearance of ragtime. Around 1880, coon songs

became popular. Coon is a derogatory term for African Americans and by extension

for music that used the rhythmic and harmonic style of African Americans but was often

set with broad dialect lyrics that caricatured their lives.25 Usually coon songs were sung

by white female coon shouters.26 For comic effects, their lyrics expressed African-

American culture in very negative ways:

Coon song lyrics were usually couched in minstrel-show dialect, and they dealt solely in black stereotypical character and situations: the eating of watermelon and possum, domestic fights, sexual boasting, and shenanigans in church.27

Coon songs were not only written by white composers but also by African-American

23 Berlin, Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History, 14, 149. 24 Ibid, 14. 25 Mary Kay Duggan, Coon, African Americans in California Sheet Music, 25 March 2007

. 26 Sam Dennison, Coon Song, Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy, 25 March 2007 . 27 Jasen and Jones, That American Rag: The Story of Ragtime from Coast to Coast, xxx.

9

song writers. A typical example is All Coons Look Alike To Me, which was written by

Ernest Hogan in l896.28

Coon song melodies contain syncopations, but the syncopations are relatively

simple and more like everyday speech. They usually emphasize the funny stories of the

lyrics more than the melodies. Surprisingly, despite this important difference in the

1890s, [coon songs] acquired the additional label of ragtime.29 During those years,

coon song and ragtime were often confused. One of the reasons was that publishers

tried to cash in on two fads at once by issuing rags that looked like coon songs and coon

songs that looked like rags.30 For instance, in 1898, Harry Von Tilzer published a coon

song under the title of Rastus Thompsons Rag Time Cake Walk.31 There are some major

distinctions between coon song and ragtime, though: coon song does not emphasize

sophistication in its melodic writing, while ragtime features more sophisticated melodies;

also, coon song relies on only one basic type of syncopation, while ragtime contains all

sorts of complex syncopations. For various reasons, after the turn of the twentieth

century, ragtime flourished while coon song gradually lost its popularity and finally faded

out around 1905.32

Instrumental Ragtime and Ragtime Song

Although instrumental ragtime and ragtime song gained popularity during almost

28 In Search of Coon Songs, Racial Stereotypes in American Popular Song, 2000, Parlor Songs,

25 March 2007, . 29 Berlin, Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History, 5. 30 Jasen and Jones, That American Rag: The Story of Ragtime from Coast to Coast, xxix. 31 Jasen and Tichenor, Rags and Ragtime: A Musical History, 17. 32 Jasen and Jones, That American Rag: The Story of Ragtime from Coast to Coast, xxx.

10

the same period, from the 1890s to the 1910s, they contain different musical features.

When used by modern historians, the term ragtime usually refers to instrumental ragtime

rather than ragtime song. Ragtime song has no fixed style. The earliest so-called ragtime

songs were actually coon songs, and during the 1890s, coon songs and ragtime songs

were not distinct in style.33 The first printed music which used the words rag and rag-

time was a coon song published in August 1896 by Ernest Hogan, called All Coons Look

Alike to Me, with an optional chorus titled Negro Rag Accompaniment.34 Some other

similar ragtime-coon songs from that time are still known today, such as A Hot Time in

the Old Town Tonight (1896) by Theodore and Hello! Ma Baby (1899) by Joe Howard

and Ida Emerson.35 After the 1900s, almost any American popular song with a lively

rhythm in duple or quadruple meter would be called a rag song, even a twelve-bar form

blues.36 For example, in 1912 Handys Memphis Blues was accepted as a successful

ragtime song.37

Ragtime song and instrumental rag have few characteristics in common. In terms

of musical forms, the two-section ragtime song, which includes a verse and a chorus,

does not differ from the forms of other types of popular songs at the time, while

instrumental rag always contains three, four, or more themes and strains.38 With regard

to rhythms, unlike instrumental rags, ragtime songs put little emphasis on syncopations.

One typical case is that the professed greatest ragtime song hit in 1911, Alexanders

33 New Grove, Ragtime by Berlin. 34 Hasse, Ragtime: From the Top, in Ragtime: Its History, Composers, and Music, 7. 35 New Grove, Ragtime by Berlin. 36 Edward A. Berlin, Ragtime Songs, in Ragtime: Its History, Composers, and Music, ed. John Edward Hasse (New York: Schirmer Books, 1985), 75. 37 New Grove, Ragtime by Berlin. 38 Jasen and Jones, That American Rag: The Story of Ragtime from Coast to Coast, xxxi.

11

Ragtime Band by Irving Berlin, actually has little to do with syncopations.39

However, ragtime song and instrumental rag could also be transformed into each

other; many rags were actually published in both instrumental and song versions. For

example, Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin was published in 1899 in a piano solo version,

but it was published in a song version in 1903. When instrumental rags were transformed

into song versions, some themes and strains were cut from the original version to fit the

new format. On the other hand, a ragtime song could also be played as an instrumental

piece.40 After World War I, instrumental ragtime was taken over by another type of

American instrumental music, jazz, while the ragtime song merged with other American

popular song forms.41

The Earliest Instrumental Ragtime

The purported first instrumental rag, published in 1897, was written by the

white bandleader William H. Krell and named The Mississippi Rag.42 Although the

publishers boasted that it was the first rag-time two step ever written, it contains more

features of cakewalk than rag: it starts in a cakewalk-style minor key, and its single-note

melody line is fairly simple, like a cakewalk melody; moreover, it contains only slight

syncopations.43 Another very early instrumental rag, Louisiana Rag by Theodore H.

Northrup, was published in October 1897 in Chicago. This rag differed significantly

from the cakewalks of the time by incorporating heavy syncopations and a multi-theme

39 New Grove, Ragtime by Berlin. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 Jasen and Tichenor, Rags and Ragtime: A Musical History, 17.

12

formal scheme that was adopted later by Scott Joplin in The Chrysanthemum (1904)44 In

the same year, the first instrumental rag by an African-American composer was published

in St. Louis under the title of Harlem Rag; the composer was a St. Louis saloonkeeper

named Tom Turpin. The musical writing of Harlem Rag demonstrates sophistication and

a maturity in style that surpasses any contemporary cakewalks.45 In general, Turpins

rags contain many folk materials, and that early rag style is directly linked to the later

classic rag style of Scott Joplin and other composers.46

Classic Ragtime

The term classic ragtime refers to the piano rag style of a group of ragtime

composers at the turn of the twentieth century, including Scott Joplin, James Scott, and

Joseph Lamb, among whom Joplin is regarded as the most prominent. Joplin was born to

an African-American family in northeast Texas in 1868, and he died in New York City in

1917.47 Joplin received some classical music training from a local German piano teacher

at a young age, and his studying of great works from J. S. Bach to Louis Moreau

Gottschalk later influenced his ragtime composing.48 Joplin spent most of his life in

citiesSedalia, St. Louis, Chicago, and New York Citywhere he composed, performed

and promoted his music. In 1899, shortly after Joplin began to sell music to the white

publisher John Stark in St. Louis, his Maple Leaf Rag became the best seller of the time.

44 Ibid, 17-18. 45 New Grove, Ragtime by Berlin. 46 Jasen and Tichenor, Rags and Ragtime: A Musical History, 21-22.

47 Edward A. Berlin, King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 4-5, 238. 48 Jerome J. Wolbert, The Ragtime Story, Style of Jazz: Ragtime 1995, 25 March 2007 .

13

All of Joplins rags have been called classic rags. This term was invented by Stark and

compares the superior musical quality of Joplins rags to that of European art music;

Joplin retained the term classic for his rags when dealing later with other publishers as

an expression of his artistic aspirations.49 Stark also used the term to describe rags by

other composers he published later. Among them, James Scott and Joseph Lambs rags

represent the most sophisticated writing styles. Scott was a close friend and colleague of

Joplin; Lamb was a white New York composer and a follower of Joplins rag style.

Classic rags have many stylistic features, and Joplins Maple Leaf Rag represents

an archetypal example of classic rag style. Maple Leaf Rag has four independent sixteen-

bar themes, which are also called strains or choruses; each strain or chorus includes

four four-bar phrases and often repeats completely one time. The form of Maple Leaf

Rag is AABBACCDD. About half of Joplins rags use this form. Other typical forms

for classic rags include AABBACCC, AABBCCDD, and AABBCCA.50 Like

Maple Leaf Rag, most classic rags are in major keys; minor keys are rarely used. The

first two strains are often in tonic keys: the A strain represents the basic characteristic of

the rag, while the B strain is often lighter and contrasts with the A strain in musical

character. The C strainalso called the triois usually in a subdominant key, and along

with the D strain it constitutes the development of the rag. The last strain, the D strain,

often represents the triumph of the rag: usually it is the climax of the piece and should be

played louder than the other strains. Sometimes it returns back to a tonic key, sometimes

not.51 Harmonically, major triads, minor triads, dominant seventh and diminished

49 New Grove, Ragtime by Berlin. 50 Ibid. 51 Guy Waterman, Ragtime, in Ragtime: Its History, Composers, and Music, ed. John Edward Hasse (New York: Schirmer Books, 1985), 46-47.

14

seventh chords are most common to classic rags.

In terms of rhythm, most of Joplins rags and other classic rags are in 2/4, and the

typical rhythmic feature is a syncopated right-hand melody against a march-style oom-

pah accompaniment pattern in the left hand: As a general rule, the left-hand part

reinforced the metre with a regular alternation of low bass notes or octaves on the beat

with mid-range chords between.52 Maple Leaf Rag includes a variety of syncopated

rhythms in each of the four themes; some rhythmic patterns are called tied syncopations

and some are called untied syncopations (Ex. 1a, b, c, and d). Tied syncopations feature

the use of ties between two musical notes. They are used flexibly in each individual rag,

because they vary according to the composers taste (Ex. 2a, b, c). Untied syncopations

do not have ties, and they emphasize the weak beats. Untied syncopations are related to

the cakewalk dance style of the 1890s; they gradually lost popularity after the 1900s.

Some untied syncopations contain eighth and sixteenth notes and are faster, while others

are slower because they use longer notes (Ex. 3).

Ex. 1a. The A theme of Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin.

52 New Grove, Ragtime by Berlin.

15

Ex. 1b. The B theme of Maple Leaf Rag.

Ex. 1c. The C theme of Maple Leaf Rag.

Ex. 1d. The D theme of Maple Leaf Rag.

Ex. 2. Tied syncopations.

Ex. 3. Untied syncopations.

16

In performance practice, Joplins rags must be played as written rather than with

improvisations. The performer should avoid frequent tempo changes, rubato, fast

tempos, and swing rhythms. In order to assist the performer in playing the rag properly,

Joplins musical scores often give performance instructions: Slow march tempo, dont

play fast, or Dont fake.53 In the last exercise of Joplins School of Ragtime, the

composer states:

We wish to say here, that the Joplin Ragtime is destroyed by careless or imperfect rendering, and very often good players lose the effect entirely, by playing too fast. They are harmonized with the supposition that each note will be played as it is written, as it takes this and also the proper time divisions to complete the sense intended.54

Therefore, distinction between classic rag style and other ragtime styles or jazz styles

relies heavily on the performers interpretations. Ragtime/jazz master Jelly Roll Morton

used to transform classic rags into jazz simply by adding decorations and changing

rhythms.55

Stride Style

In contrast to classic rag style, an outgrowth of ragtime style, stride style,

developed during the 1910s and was fully established in 1921 in Harlem, New York

City.56 According to some modern dictionaries, stride style can be defined as a solo jazz

53 Berlin, Ragtime and Improvised Piano; another view, 6. 54 Scott Joplin, School of Ragtime, in Scott Joplin Complete Piano Works, ed. Vera Brodsky Lawrence (Miami: Warner Bros. Publications, 1981), 286.

55 Jasen and Tichenor, Rags and Ragtime: A Musical History, 251. 56 Ibid, 240-241.

17

piano style.57 The term stride originated because of the striding back-and-forth motion

of the left hand, also known as the oom-pah pattern in ragtime, in which the left hand

alternates between lower bass notes and chords on the middle register of the piano; the

term later was used to describe the new musical style in New York City.58 However, the

New York City musicians did not use the term stride in referring that style. Instead,

they simply called that style ragtime or shout. In the opinion of Eubie Blake (1883-

1983), who was a stride style master of the 1910s, all syncopated popular music could be

considered ragtime.59 Stride style, also called East Coast ragtime style by music

scholars, absorbed many classic ragtime elements while developing new features. In

contrast to classic rag style, stride style emphasizes improvisations over strictly following

the written music.60 Another major characteristic of stride style is that syncopations

often alternate between the left and right hands, creating counter melody lines.61 Similar

to classic rag style, stride style was led by a group of African-American musicians,

among whom the major figures included James P. Johnson, Luckey Robert, and Eubie

Blake.62

Compared to the slower march tempos of classic rag style, stride style highlights

faster tempos and more virtuosic piano styles. During musical contests in New York City

in the 1920s, in order to win, stride pianists usually played at faster tempos and used

dazzling piano techniques such as large leaps of chords, octaves, tenths, and glissandos.63

James P. Johnson, who has been called the father of stride style, referred to those

57 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. (London Macmillan Publishers Limited, 2001), s.v. Stride, by Robinson J. Bradford. 58 Valerio, 5.

59 Terry Waldo, This is Ragtime (New York: Da Capo Press, 1984), 104, 117. 60 Berlin, Ragtime and Improvised Piano; another view, 7-9. 61 Jasen and Tichenor, Rags and Ragtime: A Musical History, 240. 62 New Grove, Ragtime by Berlin. 63 Berlin, Ragtime and Improvised Piano; another view, 8.

18

brilliant stride pieces as rags in the 1920s:

I played rags very accurately and brilliantlyrunning chromatic octaves and glissandos up and down with both hands. It made a terrific effect. I did double glissandos straight and backhand, glissandos in sixths and double tremolos.64

In addition to their emphasis on speed and techniques, stride pieces differ from classic

rag pieces in that they often use 4/4 time instead of 2/4 time. The change is extremely

significant: once 2/4 becomes 4/4, there is no division of strong and weak beats. All four

beats become equal and can be stressed; that is the basic foundation for swing.65

In their harmonies, stride pieces are much more complex than classic rags.

Seventh and sixth chords appear frequently; extended harmonies such as ninth, eleventh,

and thirteenth chords feature occasionally. In classic ragtime, the bass line contains

mostly single notes or octaves, whereas in stride style, the bass line uses tenths and fifths

more often.66 Another notable difference is that stride pieces extensively use blue notes,

which are the flat third and flat seventh notes of a major scale. In early blues singing

style, before they were applied to the keyboard, the blue notes were actually located

between the natural and the flatted pitches of the notes. To gain the same effect on the

piano, minor thirds (blue notes) are often used as grace notes to inflect the major third,

and sometimes the crushed minor second is created between the flat third and the natural

third on a major scale.67

In terms of rhythms, stride pieces use swing and dotted rhythms to a great extent.

Swing rhythm, which interprets even eighth notes and sixteenth notes as triplets during

64 Tom Davin, Conversations with James P. Johnson, in Ragtime: Its History, Composers, and Music, ed. John Edward Hasse (New York: Schirmer Books, 1985), 174. 65 Valerio, 26. 66 Ibid, 44-45. 67 Ibid, 18-19.

19

performance, is a main feature of jazz, while dotted rhythms are associated with foxtrot

and other dances from the 1910s.68 A more specialized technique used in stride style is

call and response, which is another typical jazz technique. In a jazz band, after one

player or one section of players presents a phrase which represents the question, the

other members of the band play another phrase to answer it.69 In stride piano pieces,

the call can be a short phrase played in a higher register, and then the response might be

played in a lower register, sometimes by the left hand.70

Since many stride style masters did not read music, their pieces rely heavily on

improvisation. Unlike the precisely noted music of classic ragtime, improvisations in

stride pieces are not usually reflected on the published musical scores, so the transmission

of stride pieces mainly relies on piano rolls and recordings.71 Stride style had a

significant influence on jazz. For example, Johnsons recordings were studied by a series

of jazz pianists such as Willie The Lion Smith, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fats

Waller, and Thelonious Monk.72 Therefore, stride styleimprovisational ragtime style

is regarded as a direct forebear of later jazz piano style.73

Novelty Piano

Novelty piano is a semi-virtuosic musical style which evolved from ragtime in the

68 New Grove, Ragtime by Berlin. 69 Mark Gridley, Jazz Styles: History and Analysis, 3rd ed. (New Jersey: Prentice Hall: A Division of Simon & Schuster Englewood Cliffs, 1988), 53. 70 Valerio, 38.

71 Berlin, Ragtime and Improvised Piano: another view, 7. 72 Jasen and Tichenor, Rags and Ragtime: A Musical History, 240. 73 New Grove, Ragtime by Berlin.

20

1920s.74 The majority of novelty piano composer-performers had training in classical

music, so their pieces often contain extremely complex rhythmic patterns and harmonic

progressions. Early novelty pieces present many characteristics of classic ragtime, but

also display some influences from the French Impressionism of Debussy and Ravel in

their extensive use of combinations of the chromatic scale, whole tone scale, and

consecutive fourths.75 One of the most famous novelty pieces, Kitten on the Keys,

written by Zez Confrey (1895-1971) in 1921, illustrates the typical features of early

novelty piano style, which uses classic rag style tied and untied syncopations, and

impressionistic parallel fourths. Later, novelty composers developed the style in new

directions which went far beyond the limitations of ragtime.76

The Transition from Ragtime to jazz

After the 1910s, different musical features such as dotted rhythms, swing, and

blues harmonies merged into ragtime from other musical forms and became widely

accepted; ragtime gradually lost its identity. Because of this, for a certain period, the

terminology was quite confusing. For example, a single piece could bear the multiple

descriptions of rag, foxtrot, blues, and jazz.77 Ragtime was finally replaced by jazz after

World War I. The transition from ragtime to jazz was not a distinct break in musical

style; in fact, many ragtime musicians simply began to call themselves jazz musicians

after 1920. Jelly Roll Morton, one of the greatest New Orleans jazz masters, contributed

74 Berlin, Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History, 162. 75 Jasen and Tichenor, Rags and Ragtime: A Musical History, 214-215. 76 Berlin, Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History, 162-166.

77 Ibid, 160.

21

to the transformation of ragtime into jazz by adding new jazz features to traditional

ragtime.78

Ragtime Revival

The last part of the 1920s and the 1930s comprised the swing era of jazz, while

ragtime lost its popularity.79 In New York City, the stride style pianist-composer Eubie

Blake did not write any new rags between that period and 1942. In 1929, ragtime was

considered a thoroughly dead issue.80 It was not until the 1940s that a group of white

jazz musicians, Lu Watterss jazz band, started to play some traditional rags.81 In 1950,

the scholars Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis published the first ragtime research book, They

All Played Ragtime, the earliest historical study of the genre.82 In the late 1960s, William

Bolcom became the earliest academic musician to rediscover Joplins rags and pay great

attention to them. Bolcom and his colleague William Albright (1944-1998) started to

perform classic rags in public, pushing their acceptance as art music.83 Their actions

soon aroused other academic musicians interest in ragtime and gave rise to a ragtime

revival. Joshua Rifkin and Gunther Schuller orchestrated Joplins rags and made

recordings of the rags by treating them like classical music. The revival reached its peak

in 1973 when Joplins rags became very famous again in the film The Sting. At the age

of 90, Eubie Blake returned to the ragtime performing stage, and he worked with Bolcom

78 New Grove, Ragtime by Berlin.

79 Waldo, 133. 80 Ibid, 110, 117. 81 Ibid, 133.

82 New Grove, Ragtime by Berlin. 83 Nancy Malitz, Synthesizer, Opera News, November 1992, 15-16.

22

to contribute to the revival of traditional rags.84

CHAPTER 3

The Development of William Bolcoms Musical Style

William Bolcom was born in Seattle, Washington in 1938 and is known as one of

Americans greatest living composers. His major works include a large number of

symphonies, operas, choral works, concertos, sonatas, chamber works, songs, and piano

solo pieces, among which his Twelve New Etudes for Piano won the Pulitzer Prize in

1988. Bolcom is also regarded as the most unrepentantly eclectic composer; his

musical style blurs the boundaries between European classical musical styles and

American pop styles.85 Robert Carl wrote:

A typical Bolcom piece might begin with atonal flourish, develop along hyperintense expressionist lines, suddenly break out into a rag or blues, mix in elements of American pop songs, and conclude with a reference to a classical form (such as a fugue) or to its opening modernist elements. In short, the only element that was predictable was its unpredictability. It adhered to neither the uptown-serial nor downtown-minimal aesthetic.86

Thus the eclecticism, which came from his exposure to different kinds of music during

his childhood musical education, became one of the most important features of Bolcoms

musical style.

Bolcom came from a family with a strong musical tradition for generations.

Bolcoms grandfather, wealthy lumber-mill magnate William Marshall Bolcom, had

great enthusiasm for music:

84 New Grove, Ragtime by Berlin.

85 Robert Carl, Six Case Studies in Modern American Music: A Postmodern Portrait, College Music Symposium 30 (Spring 1990), 45.

86 Ibid, 59.

23

He indulged his hobby by conducting the Seattle Symphony in Sousa marches, importing opera troupes, and remodeling a wing of his Seattle mansion to house visiting concert artists. Bolcoms father, as a child, sat on Paderewskis knee.87

By the time William Bolcom was born, however, his familys economic situation had

declined; they had lost all their mills and wealth. As he remembers, they struggled to

make a living while he was young:

His fathertrained, as Bolcom says, to take over the mill we didnt havespent the rest of his life as a small-time lumber salesman, drifting from one shaky firm to another; Bolcom grew up in a succession of bleak, chilly mill townsEverett, Snoqualmie. Bellingham. Everett was the most putrid, smelly placeit had this peculiar sulfide smell from the paper mills. Everything was dingy and black from the pollutants in the air. We had little black spots on all our sheets.88

Living in such situations was not ideal, but the familys economic problems did not

prevent Bolcom from studying music. Both of his parents encouraged his early musical

education, recognizing its importance because of their own musical educations during

their youths: His mother, of German extraction, had grown up in South Dakota, where

her father sang tenor with the local Singverein.89 Probably under the influence of his

mother, Bolcoms musical life started when he showed interest in the piano at the age of

three.

When Bolcom was eleven years old, he started studying with teachers who had

studied under important early twentieth-century European musical figures and educators

such as Zoltan Kodaly (1882-1967) and Vincent dIndy (1851-1931). Bolcom commuted

from Everett to Seattle by bus to study composition with John Verrall at the University of

Washington. Verrall, who had been a student of Kodaly in Budapest, decisively

87 Micheal Feingold, Bolcom goes for the Gold, Village Voice, 1 September 1992, 89. 88 Ibid, 90. 89 Ibid, 90.

24

influenced Bolcoms early compositional approach. As Bolcom remembers, Verrall

aroused his fascination with mysticism and encouraged him to try different kinds of

music. Mysticism, one of the most important musical elements in twentieth-century

music, later influenced Bolcoms compositional style. While studying composition with

Verrall, Bolcom also took piano lessons with Madame Berthe Poncy Jacobson, a Swiss-

born pianist who was a pupil of Vincent dIndy. One of the most important things

Bolcom learned from her was his awareness of folk songs as the source of all music.90 In

addition to the study of classical music, Bolcom was also attracted to popular songs,

country music, jazz and rock and roll, and liked to spend hours listening to and playing

Broadway music as well. Bolcom said, I was trained as a classical musician all my life,

but I was always interested in popular music. According to my teachers it wasnt as

good, but I loved it anyway.91

During a summer festival in Aspen in 1957, Bolcom met the great French

composer Darius Milhaud (1892-1974), one of the most influential figures in twentieth-

century music: The urbane, prolific Milhaud was one of the great trying-anything

figures of 20th-century composing. He had introduced jazz and Brazilian rhythms to

French music.92 Bolcom very much admired Milhauds open-mindedness. Less than a

year later, in 1958, Bolcom turned down a full scholarship to study with Paul Hindemith

at Yale in order to study with Milhaud at Mills College and eventually abroad: When

Milhaud began splitting his time between California and the Paris Conservatoire, Bolcom

followed him.93 During Bolcoms years of study in Paris, he was naturally influenced

90 Ibid, 90. 91 Waldo, 180. 92 Feingold, 90. 93 Ibid, 90.

25

by the latest compositions of Messiaen and Boulez, and he also met influential modern

composers such as Berio and Stockhausen at conferences in Darmstadt. Although his

training focused on modern European compositional styles, Bolcoms own compositional

approach included American musical traits in even his earliest works. One of his early

string quartets contains rock and roll elements that caused controversy among the faculty

of the Paris Conservatoire, because bringing popular musical elements into classical

musical compositions was considered inappropriate by many faculty members at that

time.94 In the subsequent few years, Bolcom earned the degree of Master of Music from

Mills College and completed his doctoral studies at Stanford University in 1964.

The early 1960s was a critical time for Bolcom in both his musical life and his

personal life. For a period of time, he virtually stopped writing concert music. Bolcom

claimed, I thought Id like to be a pop musician.95 Bolcoms decision to change his

approach from classical composition to composition of pop music was partially due to

several frustrating experiences during those years, most significantly the unsuccessful

premiere of his opera Dynamite Tonite, one of his most important early works. Dynamite

Tonite was Bolcoms first collaboration with Arnold Weinstein, a famous librettist (with

whom he later wrote the operas McTeague (1992) and A View from a Bridge (1998-99)

which both were huge successes). Furthermore, Dynamite Tonite was one of Bolcoms

first major works combining a variety of different musical styles into a complete whole.

In this war opera, the musical styles range from the Viennese operetta to lounge-act

bop, 96 and the prisoner sings in Wozzeck schtyle, while all of the other characters sing in

the popular music style of 1912-1915. Despite Bolcoms hard work and innovative

94 Ibid, 89. 95 Ibid, 90.

96 Ibid, 90.

26

composition, Dynamite Tonite closed abruptly, its only performance being the premiere

on December 21, 1963. This made a huge impact on Bolcoms early musical career.

Bolcoms teaching experience at the University of Washington from the 1965-1966

academic year was not very encouraging, either: Its fatal to go back to where theyve

known you as little Billy.97 As for Bolcoms personal life, within a few years he

experienced two failed marriages (for one of which Bolcom later wrote a piano rag titled

Lost Lady Rag as a lament).

Things finally started to turn around in 1966 (Bolcom now terms 1966 as the

Crisis of 1966).98 That was the year he discovered the piano score for Scott Joplins

opera Treemonisha and several copies of rags from influential ragtime scholar Rudi

Bleshs collections, and found himself attracted to them immediately:

When I discovered ragtime, I discovered a kind of music that I could relate to in every way. I got knocked out by Scott Joplin. I think hes one of the greatest guys of all time. He interested me because he was the first American who was able to take all of these various sources of music and synthesize them. . . .99

Bringing ragtime music into the concert hall, however, was not an easy task; people in

the late nineteenth century held differing opinions about ragtime, and even into the mid-

twentieth century there was controversy about accepting ragtime as art music. Many

musicians felt that Native American (Indian) music was more suitable for the concert hall

than the lower-class music that had started with black slaves and then moved to bars and

saloons. Bolcom explained this in his article Song and Dance:

When Anton Dvorak came to the United States and confronted the musical community here, he begged to differ; the most fruitful style would be derived from Negro melodies, he felt, not Indian ceremonial music. . . . The

97 Ibid, 90. 98 Nancy Malitz, Synthesizer, Opera News, November 1992, 15-16.

99 Waldo, 180.

27

uproar against Dvoraks statement was ubiquitous and intense; how could anyone take the music coming out of honky-tonks and whorehouses seriously? Unlike the Indian evocations of Farwell and Edward MacDowell, it wasnt noble and it wasnt nice. Ragtime was not what you wanted your marriageable daughter to play; prospective suitors might get the wrong idea (and youd never get rid of them). . . . Try as we might to deal artistically with the American Indian heritage as part of the national psyche, the fact is that we have largely failed. . . . Dvoraks pronouncement has turned out to be true; in fact, American music is simply not American music without black influence.100

While Bolcom realized that the ragtime music was not considered noble by many

people, it aroused his interest because it links a variety of musical styles, allowing them

to talk to each other in an interesting way.101

Once Bolcom discovered the treasures of ragtime, he played rags everywhere,

even performing them in concert halls.102 Not only did he perform traditional rags, but

in 1967, he also started to write his own new rags for piano, at first mostly based on

Joplins classic rag style. A well-trained American composer, Bolcom noted that

European composers were borrowing the ragtime style.

It might be argued that the serious composers of Europe have been more able to draw from American sources than our own have. Ravels G Major Concerto draws heavily on Gershwin; Milhauds La Creation du monde is inspired by American jazz; Satie wrote a parody of an Irving Berlin tune to use in his ballet Parade; and Stravinsky was reportedly impelled by the lookonly the lookof a page of printed American ragtime to write his Piano Rag-Music, the rag in LHistoire du soldat, and other ragtime-flavored pieces. . . .103

Certainly as an American composer, he should appreciate ragtime more than the

Europeans, and it was only reasonable for Bolcom to go further in exploring ragtime

music.

100 William Bolcom, Song and Dance, in The Lives of the Piano, ed. James R. Graines, (New

York: Harper &Row, publishers, 1981), 157. 101 William Bolcom, quoted by Nancy Malitz, Synthesizer, 16. 102 Malitz, 15-16. 103 Bolcom, Song and Dance, 157.

28

Bolcom contacted musicians working in the field of ragtime and had numerous

opportunities to meet and play ragtime with them. One of his earliest collaborators was

William Albright (1944-1998), Bolcoms colleague at the University of Michigan. They

wrote rags together and also sent their individually composed new rags to each other for

their own amazement and amusement.104 Ragtime also connected Bolcom to James

Herbert Blake (1883-1983), better known as Eubie Blake.105 Blake was a master of

stride piano and the most influential living ragtime composer during the ragtime revival

in the 1970s. From Blake, Bolcom learned stride style, which is reflected in his later

piano rags. Blake also introduced Bolcom to the performance practice of ragtime; for

example, Blake suggested that Bolcom keep a steady tempo by tapping his foot.

Bolcoms comment about this was it works, by the way.106 In 1971, Bolcom made one

of his most important early ragtime recordings, Heliotrope Bouquet Piano Rag (H-

71257), which includes rags written by several traditional rag composers as well as his

own.

Bolcoms life, both musically and personally, began to blossom when he met the

actress-singer Joan Morris, who came from Oregon; they joined together to perform a

series of concerts and to record many albums of cabaret songs. Wild About Eubie,

devoted to Eubie Blakes music, is one of their most well-known albums. In 1975,

Bolcom and Morris were married in Ann Arbor, where Bolcom had begun teaching

composition at the University of Michigan. During the wedding ceremony, the brides

104 Waldo, 181. 105 Feingold, 89. 106 Bolcom, Song and Dance, 145.

29

walk down the aisle was accompanied by 92-year-old Eubie Blake playing

Mendelssohns Wedding March in ragtime.107

By 1975, Bolcom had finished twenty piano rags. His confidence bolstered by his

success at ragtime and improved personal life, Bolcom confidently returned to the field of

serious music and spent most of his time writing more ambitious concert pieces and

giving performances. Freely fusing popular musical elements into his serious music

became one of the hallmarks of Bolcoms musical style. One example of his

compositions fusing various styles is his major orchestral and vocal work Songs of

Innocence and Experience. Bolcom started this work as early as 1956, but did not finish

it until 1982, by which time he was incorporating various music styles into his work. A

setting of William Blakes poems, Songs of Innocence and Experience is two and a half

hours long and requires a large performance troupe, including an actor, eight solo singers,

a chorus of nearly two hundred singers, some jazz and rock instrumentalists, a madrigal

group, and a one hundred-piece orchestra.108 Although it was overlooked by the Pulitzer

Prize judges, Songs of Innocence and Experience won huge success immediately after its

premiere in 1984, and is the work that established Bolcom as a leading American

composer.

The compositional approach in Bolcoms later piano works differs in several

aspects from his earlier piano works. Firstly, the new works use tonality differently. For

example, Bolcoms old set of Twelve Etudes, composed between 1959 and 1966, are

dissonant and atonal. As Bolcom mentioned, they were really very much in the Boulez

107 Feingold, 89.

108 Leighton Kerner, William Bolcom, Burning Bright, Village Voice, February 3, 1987, 398.

30

tradition.109 Bolcom later composed the set of Twelve New Etudes between 1977 and

1986. Compared to the old set of etudes, these new etudes are much more tonal.110

Secondly, Bolcom freely introduced a variety of musical styles and elements into his later

works, especially American musical elements. For example, in Twelve New Etudes,

etude No.2 Recitatif contains a blues style melody, and etude No.8, called Rag Infernal,

combines ragtimes rhythmic patterns with extremely demanding piano techniques.

In taking about the American musical styles in one of his articles, Bolcom states:

The landmark American composers are those who have found ways of integrating the different faces of our messy culture. There arent very many of them. . . . Perhaps efforts by such composers as Frederic Rzewski, William Albright (particularly in his rags), and myself could be considered a revival of that self-conscious Americanism, except thatI hopethere is a difference in the recent works: instead of amplifications and variations on hymn tunes, square-dance rhythms, ant the like, some recent music shows a real desire to invent an independently American melody and musical diction, woven on a deeper level into the musical fabric. . . .

I am not a nationalistic composer or pianist or musician. By accident of birth, however, I am American, and for much of my life I have been fascinated by what that means. One cant be bound by it, but one ignores it at ones peril, for then the musician is fated to be nothing but a dispossessed European. Only by understanding it and accepting it can one transcend being American to make music that is truly universal.111

As an eclectic American composer, Bolcom not only found a way to transform

American ragtime into new art music but also established his own musical identity by

absorbing ideas and influences from different kinds of music. In Bolcoms view, a

successful composer had to be able to merge all sorts of musical elements and styles into

an organic whole, and an American composers compositions had to be deeply rooted in

the styles of his nation.

109 Bolcom, quoted by Mark Wait, Meet the Composer-Pianist: William Bolcom, The Piano

Quarterly 142 (summer 1988): 38. 110 Ibid. 111 Bolcom, Song and Dance, 158, 161.

31

CHAPTER 4

Bolcom Talks about Ragtime:

An Interview with William Bolcom

This following interview took place at William Bolcoms house in Ann Arbor,

Michigan, on May 16th, 2005.

Yeung Yu: You wrote so many wonderful piano rags from the late 1960s to the

early 1970s, which I think made a big contribution to the modern piano repertoire. As a

classically trained composer, how do you think about the style of your ragtime, which

seems to lie between classical and popular music?

William Bolcom: There are a lot of pieces that are somewhere in the middle

between classical and popular music. How about the members of Lyric Suite of Grieg,

which have both popular and classical elements? Or, I think, the Chopin mazurkas,

which are definitely popular dances, much more so than the waltzes, which always struck

me as more urban.

Yu: What interested you about Scott Joplins rags? And how did you start to

write your own piano rags?

Bolcom: I think what interested me about Scott Joplin and how I wanted to

suddenly find myself writing rags was that Joplin brought together so many different

elements of American music and married them in a real, organic way. . . .With Joplin, it

is integrated; it is very deep; it is right in the inside of the piece. So that is why I got

interested in writing them; they seem to be a simple fusion of elements, which is the

hardest thing to do. That is why I was interested in them: I like the simplicity. I like the

32

fact that they are so totally integrated that they struck me as very important for the history

of American music. We are still finding our nationalI wont say national stylebut

the kind of thing that a French composer or German composer or Italian composer takes

for granted, and is still being formed for us, so that was so important to see that Joplin

had done it. . . .

Yu: Other than Joplin, whose music evoked your interest about national musical

styles?

Bolcom: Ernesto Nazareth, the great Brazilian, whoactually Milhaud, my

teacher heardplayed in Rio de Janeiro and who was very formative, and also a very

strongly trained musician and was very prolific. He has something like eight hundred

pieces to the thirty or forty that we have from Joplin. . . . Ernesto Nazareth was the

foundation of Brazilian style, and in certain ways I think Scott Joplin has something of

the same function for us.

Yu: From Joplins classic rag style, how did you expand your rag styles?

Bolcom: I was interested in dealing with it [Joplins style], and of course I did do

different things. The very first ones I wanted to evoke Scott Joplin mostly. Then later I

began to look at, again, the things I knew, which were James P. Johnson and Luckey

Roberts. And they got interesting too, but you can see how the two were really very

linked. The difference is that when Joplin went to New York from St. Louis, he had a

problem, because the St. Louis and southern style was much simpler, and dance-like, and

not so showy. The New York performers were people like Luckey and Eubie Blake.

Eubie was a friend of mine, and we worked together quite a bit. I had very much to do

with the history of that music that was an urban thing. . . .He [Joplin] was always the

33

country man; he came from a small town. Even in St. Louis, his background was less

flashy. . . .You know the virtuoso James P. Johnson actually studied with Leopold

Godowsky, which is amazing. That is whole different kind of technique, and Fats Waller

further developed it. So the virtuosity was not Joplins thing. He was also physically

unable; he began to have trouble with motor control, because of the syphilis. But what

was important about him was he made these pieces that have such a deep fusion of

elements.

Yu: Did you experience some interesting things when you got deeply into the

ragtime?

Bolcom: What was interesting was that I didnt know until about 1967, when I

started writing these things and didnt even know the ragtime underground, that there was

this whole bunch of amateur pianists who got together and went to festivals every year,

and played for each other. You would see this guy who worked on one piece all year,

and his family up front, and he plays his one piece and everybody claps, and that was his

project for the year. . . .I thought that was wonderful; we havent had an amateur style

kind of historyit never would be the same way as, for example in Vienna, where you

had a very active amateur culture. . . one quite professional almost to the point of

criticizing each other. And the whole Viennese thing; for example, the big apartments

had huge living rooms, and I was wondering why; well, because if you were a doctor,

you would have weekends with your friends playing through Brahms chamber music, and

your friends would be there to listen and critique as you played. Now that kind of

amateur we have never had. But this is the closest Ive ever found to that kind of

amateurism. I found that was very interesting, and I was so glad to be there. Of course,

34

my rags are difficultnot everybody can play themthat is the trouble, but they like

them, they like listening to them, and they appreciated it when I got up and I could play

them!

Yu: Besides your own rags, whose rags do you really like to play?

Bolcom: Another person whos very importantyouve got to find his rags,

because I think a lot of it had to do with us exchanging ragsand that person was

William Albright (1944-1998). The Dream Rags for example are absolutely wonderful

pieces, and published in a set of three, one of which we cooperated on. And I think we

both had a lot to do with forming the whole curious number of people. Joshua Rifkin

played Scott Joplin and made quite a career for a short time doing that. But we were

composing them, so what we did do, Bill Albright and I, we played a joint concert in the

early 1970s in Minneapolis, the Walker Art Center, and this was the first time they used

that auditorium as a concert hall. And we had two pianos and played all kinds of rags

we had a whole list of many rags we might play frombut the main thing was to give

people an enormous list of rags that they could go find and start learning to play. There

was a lot of it and that whole particular thing got going around that time1969, 1970,

1971and then I think Bill and I both moved on to other things.

Yu: What have you done about ragtime after that period?

Bolcom: The rags I wrote after that were essentially because of occasions like

Max getting married.112 I wrote Epithalamium, which is a term for a poem one writes

it is an ancient Greek word; a poem one writes to celebrate somebodys marriage. So it

112 Max Morath (b.1926), Bolcoms close friend, is one of the most important ragtime revivalists

and well-known ragtime players. He got married with Diane Fay Skomars in May 24, 1993. Morath has recorded several American music albums with William Bolcom and Joan Morris.

35

was a rag, Epithalamium, that is what we call that. It sounded like that kind of fancy

name that wed find in the nineteenth century, so I like that.

Of course I went through different styles; I think some of the grander things Im

just now arranging; for example, the Garden of Eden suite. I had already arranged the

last two for two pianosThe Serpents Kiss and Through Edens Gates. . . . And I think

the other two should also be made for four hands, two pianos, because I am sure a lot of

people will want to do them. . . .While there was also something very surprising: Bill and

I both discovered that we can write new pieces and people immediately related to them.

Now ragtime was in places like Toronto, and the audiences liked them too. That was a

nice surprise for us to bring all this difficult modern music, and everybody says that was

very interesting. . . .

Yu: Most of your rags were written before 1974; why did you write few rags

after that time?

Bolcom: Well, a couple of things happened. First of all, I thought I had done it.

I thought I had basically finished them up, in this new collection of twenty-two. There

are some more that I wrote, but I didnt include them in the collections. Those in the

collections are the ones I think are the best ones. Some of them were occasional pieces,

like the Rag-Tango, which is not exactly a rag, and a piece I wrote for Tom Constanten,

Fields of Flowers, which is a kind of suite-set piece, like a bit of Grieg because of its

name. That was exploring outward, but I no longer felt I necessarily had to do them. I

thought the point was made; we had had the Joplin collected works published;

Treemonisha had been launched. In fact I had a lot of to do with that, because I found it

through Rudi Blesh. . . .We were very good friends.

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We have a recording coming out this year. Joanmy wifeand Max are going

to be in a piece that I am writing for Milwaukee for 2007, so after all these years we are

still very good friends, and working together. That is a long time; that is forty years

almost Ive been working with them. . . . From then on, there were the occasional pieces,

and Id go on to other things. . . .

But I felt that in the meantime, the good had been done: Scott Joplins name was

on the map; people began to appreciate how good that other group of people like James

Scott, and Joseph Lamb were, and how important they were to our history. . . .

Yu: As you mentioned, several major ragtime composers influenced your rag

writing, such as Scott Joplin, James Scott, Eubie Blake, and Luckey Robert. Since you

played and recorded so many pieces by George Gershwin, did his music influence your

rags?

Bolcom: Gershwin wrote real American folk songs as well as rags. I love

Gershwin, and I have always been interested in him, and there is some part of me looks at

music the same way . . . he has had an influence, but he is not a major influence, not on

the rags.

Yu: How about classical composers, such as Chopin and Schumann. Did they

influence your rags?

Bolcom: Chopin, and Schumann? Yes! Very much so! I think they probably

influenced Joplin somewhat, at least through Gottschalk, who had certainly been

influenced by them, because he was also connected with them in some kind of way, and

also it was the general style of that period which they grew out of.

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Yu: What is the reason you called some of your rags such as The Poltergeist

Rag Fantasy? Is there any special meaning for it?

Bolcom: That I think I probably got from William Albright. When you did a rag

which was kind of extended, and was a little bit more than the regular simple four-strain,

sixteen-bar piece, and it wasnt meant to be danced to, it became a rag fantasy.

The Poltergeist set of those three rags all have something to do with ghosts. I

didnt call them the ghost rags; they were called that by Paul Jacobs (19301983),

who was my very close friend, and a wonderful pianist. . . .

I wrote these three rags and recorded them. A poltergeist is a kind of spirit that

goes in your house, that knocks dishes off shelves, and slams doors, and does things like

that...just because they have this energythat is the poltergeist.

About the Graceful Ghost Rag: the use of the word ghost was meant to be the

seventeenth-century word ghost, which meant the same thing as spirit. . . . My father had

a very graceful spirit . . . I wrote the piece in memory of him. So I used the Graceful

Ghost as the title because both of the words started with G. Strangely enough, more

people have had trouble remembering that name correctly. I have a genius for picking

names that are too close to something else, Oh I love your Grateful Goat! Oh yeah!

Thank you very much! [Laughter] What can you do?

Yu: I heard somebody played your Graceful Ghost Rag in a very slow tempo,

and the mood was very melancholy, while I heard your recording, which doesnt feel that

way. It seems much happier and it wasnt that slow. How do you think about this?

Bolcom: IT IS A DANCE! It is a regular classic rag! There is a little difference

in the trio section, the third section, in which I added a couple bars at the end for the

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transition, which makes it really stand out as different. The rest of it is still very much of

a standard rag, with a varied trio in the middle, which is something Eubie Blake always

did. And I took that from his book. The whole idea of varying that trio was something I

had seen that Eubie Blake, James P. Johnson, Luckey Robert, and other people did. They

played the second time of the trio by making something different. And Eubie Blake did

that all the time in his rags, if you look at the early ones, which are wonderful pieces!

Dont Drag means DONT GO TOO SLOW! I mean, I think there is nothing worse.

What happened is that people usually play ragtime very fast all the time. . . . So then

people went to the other extreme. I remember one woman, she was playing Gladiolus

Rag of Joplin with all this rubato. . . . And I said, You cant do that! And she said,

Well, why not? It cries to be done that way. And I said, Yes, but you are making one

cry, not because of my mood but because I am angry! What is important about rags is

that youve got to keep that other thing. It is also true about the mazurkas of Chopin;

youve got to remember that it is first and foremost a dance! And it must feel like a

dance; you should still feel as if you could dance to it. . . . You want to feel the physical

dance in there somewhere or you are losing the point. . . . It should never feel like you

couldnt dance it! It may not be that simplest kind of cakewalk type of dance somebody

could take, and that is why so many choreographers have done that. There are all these

other things that apply, but it is still a dance, and that is very important!

Yu: I heard two different versions of your recordings of Graceful Ghost Rag, one

with swing rhythm for solo piano which was made in 1971 on the album of Heliotrope

Bouquet Piano Rag (H-71257), the other one without swing which was recorded in the

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late 1980s for violin and piano duo; which version represents your original ideas about

the rhythm?

Bolcom: Well, most of the time, I dont like people to swing it. But once in

awhile, you can swing very slightly. . . . I think one has to remember that there should be

some variety in performance. Just these last few months, I had the luck of being able to

play from the original edition of Francois Couperins suites on a very nice new

harpsichord in Berkeley. And what was quite clear is that he expected you to play

differently different times. And people always talk about the notes ingale, the unequal

notes. Most people play them equally unequal all the time. The point is that they are

varied all the time. [As a composer] It is a loss if sometimes you put more dots [rhythms

on the score] and sometime you dont. It depends on taste, and the same is true with

ragtime. You know sometimes, you like the kind of swing feeling, but I dont like

playing the du-ba, du-ba like triplets all the timethat is flat, and that has no spring to

it. The same as true with Couperin; he would say sometimes, Dont play this ingale!

Play them all straight! While other times he expected you to do it to a certain extent,

and slow a little bit more, but not mechanically.

Yu: The New York stride style is defined as an early jazz solo piano style in the

New Grove Dictionary, and many of your rags are based on that style. Do you think the

stride style was the bridge between ragtime and jazz?

Bolcom: The stride style was maybe on the way from ragtime to jazz, but not

necessarily. The fact is that all the styles were all around all the time, pretty much and,

they were all being developed. Boogie-Woogie for example, everybody talks about in

the 1930s.While it had existed already in the early part of the century, only certain people

40

played it, and they called it the sixteenth. It just got renamed Boogie-Woogie and it

became very popular at the end of the 1930s and the early part of the 1940s . . . so all

these things were concurrent; as ragtime, march, tango, and so on. You know in the case

of Nazareth, when he wrote tango, he meant you could dance it as a tango. When he

wrote a chro, a form he invented which is like the rag-fantasies that Bill and I used to

write, it was a freer thing. It was meant to be a little showier and not necessarily to be

danced. . . .

I think that James P. Johnson, certainly, by the time he talked about stride, people

normally put that into jazz. He talked about Fats Waller, for example, and MacDonald

Lambert, but what they really were was extended ragtime. And so with Eubie Blake, he

thought anything which involved syncopation was all ragtime, even jazz. He thought

even that there were things he could find in the pieces of Franz Liszt and Robert

Schumann which were like ragtime.

Yu: Rag-Tango has a very large form. How did you plan the form when you

wrote this piece?

Bolcom: If you look at Nazareths pieces, they have these long strains one after

another, sometimes five or six strains in the same piece, and it was something to do with

that. What is so strange is this: before I got to know Nazareth as well as all of that, I

wrote this piece in the form of a Nazareth tango. It is much more that, but it has rag

elements. . . . In the Nazareth tango, there are the same ragged rhythms as you will find in

Scott Joplin or anybody. There was a terrific explosion of piano music all about the same

time between about 1890 and about the First World War, and it all has certain elements in

common. . . .

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In tangos, you will have maybe six or seven different choruses, and some of them

are very long. In a Nazareth piece, you will make a whole circle, and you will go from

A-B-C-D-E-F to E-D-C-B and A choruses again. There is one I know that does that, and

there are things like that which were much more extended. But they are still sixteen bars

per strain or chorus or dance or what ever you want to call them depending on where they

came from. But it is something that was very common.

Yu: Dream Shadows seems to be a swing piece, but you didnt indicate that it

should be played in swing or straight; which way do you like it to be interpreted?

Bolcom: Dream Shadows is more swinging I think, because of the style which it

is a little bit closer to. But you can also do it straight; it is up to you. And that is whats

nice about these things, it depends on, sometimes . . . there are parts you want to swing a

little more and there are parts you can do straight; one should be flexible with these

things.

Yu: Some of your rags bear the subtitles such as two step or cakewalk. How

do these subtitles relate to the rags?

Bolcom: The titles like two step and cake walk are all dances which were

danced to rags. Two step was one of the dances; later it got replaced by the one step

in the 1920s, which was the beginning of a faster rhythm. When you got to Eubie, you

have these dancesI Am Just Wild about Marythat is a one step. . . . And there were

definitely many other dances; ones with names like turkey trot, chicken scratch and

buzzard lope. The only one of those that we had for many years after that was

foxtrot. You will see a lot of popular music in the 1920s and 1930s was the foxtrot,

because that became the dance. Most people played for dances; jazz played for dances.

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People didnt sit down in the concert hall and do that. The idea of sitting down and just

listening to jazz was something that came up in the 1950s. When Duke Ellington, or

Artie Charles, or all those people toured around United StatesWoody Herman, all those

Big Band famous people, Paul Whitneythey played mostly for dances. And you sat

there, if you wanted to listen to them. But in the mean time, you might be there with your

sweetie listening to these wonderful jazz pieces and dancing to them. It was much later

in the 1950s or early 1960s that the idea of going to a jazz club and just listening would

be common. And then it became a kind ofI am afraid in certain ways a little holy, and

that always bothered me, just like someone was going to the temple of art, you know. I

remember I went to see Thelonious Monk, who had become very amused at the whole

thing, and I could see him having fun with these people sitting there looking testy. . . . So

you have to remember these things which are very important: the dance has to be in there,

and you cant forget to dance to those pieces. . . .

Yu: I noticed that in your rags, the dynamic markings were very carefully

planned, especially the uses of different levels of pianissimo. Why are you in favor of

pianissimo?

Bolcom: The dynamic contrasts are very important to me. One of the days I

wont forget was in a class with Darius Milhaud. And one of my friends . . . was sitting

at the piano, and Milhaud said, I want you to play some Chopin Mazurkas for us. When

he started playing, Milhaud said, Be sureexaggerate the dynamics! . . . . So to get

people to change the dynamics is something very important.

Yu: Do you think the ragtime influenced your later composing?

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Bolcom: I suppose, but I dont know what the influence is, and I dont know

exactly how. I know my interest also in American popular music has a lot to do with my

vocal music. I began to take it seriously, and I thought it should be done right. That is

our patrimony; it is the foundation of what makes us Americans; and it is universal in a

way. . . . So I decided that was important for me to have ragtime up there as piano music

which has no parallel to it.

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CHAPTER 5

A Style Analysis of William Bolcoms Complete Rags for Piano

William Bolcom: Complete Rags for Piano consists of twenty-two rags written by

Bolcom between the years of 1967 and 1993. According to Bolcom, these rags do not

include all the rags that he composed during that period; instead, he chose only the

twenty-two rags which represented the highest quality of his ragtime-writing skill. These

rags are also Bolcoms favorite rags, which he believes contain more spirit than the

others.113 In this research, Bolcoms twenty-two