The impact of technology and prosperity on music affected music in the United States, especially the vernacular African American compositions that were vibrant and highly varied outside opera houses and classical concerts. Vernacular music was important in retelling the history of 20th-century compositions because of technological innovation in recording and dissemination of music.
During the 20th century, African American traditional bands played ragtime, a style played by both concert and brass bands. This style had a relationship between popular and musical composition. One of the greatest composers during this time was Scott Joplin, who blended classical music and European melodies and forms with African American styles to create ragtime composition. One of his popular piano rags is the Maple Leaf Rag (1899), which is an iconic masterpiece based on its high level of European classic for piano and craft in composition (Burkholder et al., 2019). The composition had characteristics of African American music in the repetition of short rhythmic patterns and multiple rhythmic layers. Therefore, while the left hand played chromatic motions, harmony, and pattern derived from European inspiration, the rhythmic elements played by the left hand had African roots, rendering the entire composition as an African American blend. During the 1910s, jazz evolved from various traditional compositions of different genres, styles, and social roles and had a mixture of dance and ragtime music. Joplin recreates a second strain of Maple Leaf Rag incorporating jazz elements as manifested by the anticipation of beats, uneven rendering of equal note values, singing, enriched harmony, added grace notes, and weaving of ragtime notes into continuous line (Burkholder et al., 2019). Rags composed by Joplin had elements of classical composers like Satie, Ravel, Ives, Debussy, and Milhaud who incorporated jazz and ragtime elements in their work.
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The popular and classical divide manifested during the 20th century led to the incorporation of African American styles and bands in compositions. Joplin’s compositions had characteristics of African American traditional music as well as classical elements. His Maple Leaf Rag piano variations had characteristics of African American music and European musical elements.
References
Burkholder, J., Grout, P., Jay, D., & Claude, V.P. (2019). A History of Western Music: Tenth International Student Edition. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company,
