Crazy for Ragtime
Notes, Dec, 1997 by Victor Cardell
Robert Winter’s Crazy for Ragtime was the first CD-ROM produced by Calliope Media, which the author founded with Jay Heifetz, son of violinist Jascha Heifetz. According to the information on Calliope’s Web site (http://www.calliope.com/about), the company’s mission is “to change the way people experience interactive media titles.” Winter has taken significant strides in helping Calliope fulfill its mission with Crazy for Ragtime, which both entertains and educates in a fascinating manner. Those familiar with Winter’s earlier products for Voyager, such as Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Antonin Dvorak’s New World Symphony, will again experience the author’s golden touch with multimedia and will be reminded why he is so highly respected as a teacher, performer, and historian.
The curtain frame begins by showing an old map of the United States as a ragtime piece plays in the background. From the map’s location of St. Louis, Missouri, often regarded as the birthplace of classic ragtime, emerges an image of a maple leaf, an obvious reference to Scott Joplin’s popular Maple Leaf Rag. A video box displays a series of brief excerpts from very old black-and-white silent movies, starting with rare footage of the dance known as the cakewalk. Still images of illustrated sheet music title pages and portraits of musicians flash across the motion-picture panel as the title frame opens. Users who want to proceed directly to the title frame can simply hit a key to escape from the curtain frame.
The title frame displays an interactive table of contents on the U.S. map, which now also contains a multiplicity of blinking city names. Clicking on a city displays a captioned illustration of a musician or a piece of sheet music associated with ragtime there. A collapsible menu bar offers options for a glossary, for a “Find” tool that allows keyword searching of practically the entire contents of the program, for an excellent contextual help function, for back-tracking, and for a table of contents for the CD-ROM’s seven major sections.
“The Ragtime Craze,” which is the historical portion of the program, traces the sociocultural and musical context of ragtime from minstrelsy, Victorianism, and salon music to dancing, Tin Pan Alley, and jazz. Winter does not neglect the influence of ragtime on vernacular music and on the works of such composers as Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, and Charles Ives. The stimulating and lengthy audiovisual presentation is accompanied by a script that one can peruse separately.
Among the strengths of the seven subsections of “The Ragtime Craze” is Winter’s treatment of coon songs, a turn-of-the-century genre that stereotypes African-Americans in a way that is now very offensive. The author approaches the subject clearly and cogently without being squeamish. Those unfamiliar with the history of dance will be enlightened by the subsection titled “Animal Dancing,” which discusses the cakewalk, turkey-trot, grizzly bear, and chicken scratcher, not to mention the foxtrot, which was named after the movie mogui Harry Fox. Accounts of ragtime performance at the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago are examined in an inquisitive manner without breaching the bounds of musicological objectivity.
One of the more intriguing subsections deals with the topic of women and music. Considering the seeming complexity of much of the recent discourse on gender and music, Winter opts to present the subject in a most logical fashion. He poses thought-provoking questions about the domestication of ragtime and why composers like Adaline Shepherd and May Aufderheide may have been permitted to compose in a style that was often connected with immorality during an era that was known for the genteel values of the female gender.
“Listening to Ragtime” uses a theoretical approach to ragtime, discussing the functions of syncopation, form, phrasing, variations, embellishments, and harmony. Winter compares classic rags with Tin Pan Alley rags, folk rags, and rag songs, and explains the differences between the New Orleans style of playing rags and the faster St. Louis style. He offers numerous excerpts from rag scores and performances. Even novices without the skills to read musical notation should be able to understand the concepts that the author so plainly sets forth.
In the section called “Let Me Perform,” Winter provides valuable suggestions for playing and singing rags and illustrates the popular dances of the ragtime era through graphics and original film
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