Ragtime

4 profiles tagged Ragtime, A-Z.

Ragtime developed in the 1890s and flourished through the 1910s, centered in Missouri and the American Midwest, as a written (rather than improvised) piano style built on syncopated, ragged melodies over a steady, marchlike left-hand pulse. As a fully composed music predating jazz's improvisational core, it is considered one of jazz's direct forerunners rather than a jazz style itself. Scott Joplin, composer of Maple Leaf Rag, along with James Scott and Joseph Lamb, were its most important composers.