September 18, 2012

Maple Leaf Rag:

As I have already stated, I have recently began a fan of ragtime music so I thought it would be easy to post something about a very well known piece of ragtime music called "Maple Leaf Rag". This ragtime was created around 1898 by the father of Ragtime, Scott Joplin. This piece is probably his second most well known piece of music after "The Entertainer", which is heard from time to time in the media even to this day. Maple Leaf Rag, like most ragtime is broken up into four different sections consisting of 16 measures in duple meter. The four sections are labeled as A, B, C, and D and the structure of the piece is AABBACCDD. The left hand has a constant difficult part, which requires the performer to jump from back and forth in an interval of about an octave, while the right hand plays a syncopated melody like most ragtime pieces. This is the reason why it is called ragtime, due to the fact that most melodies were considered "ragged", since the melody often were not always played directly on the beat. There isn't much I can say about why I like this piece. It is generally just a good piece of music, which a lot of people seem to enjoy reguardless of their taste in music. It is a difficult piece for beginers, but not insanely difficult that people will avoid trying to learn it, and its entertaining to play.