![]() But the Ragtime Age was still clinging to the last scraps of innocence left over from the 19th century… even as it paved the way for the faster, louder, more hedonistic future. Ragtime, propulsively syncopated musical style, one forerunner of jazz and the predominant style of American popular music from about 1899 to 1917. The Jazz Age signaled the collective loss of American innocence. It's also worth noting that ragtime music is totally a precursor to jazz. The emergence of mature ragtime is usually dated to 1897, the year in which several important early rags (musical compositions in ragtime) were published. ![]() the book's sentences are short and steady, like the "small clear chords" (21.8) of " Wall Street Rag." This period of time is kind of when America caught its breath, just before launching into the two World Wars, the craziness of cars and technology, and finally TV, computers and the smartphones we're all walking around with today.Įven the way Doctorow tells his tale matches the pace and style of Ragtime music. Ragtime began as a genre of popular song and, much like later jazz music, it is a hybrid of elements from white European music and black American music. ![]() As Scott Joplin, who composed the Maple Leaf Rag and other famous ragtime pieces, says in the epigraph of the book: "Do not play this piece fast. Doctorow named his novel Ragtime for a very valid reason: it represents the last time America moved at such a slow, measured pace. The defining characteristic of ragtime music is a specific type of syncopation in which melodic accents occur between metrical beats.
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