Ever Wonder How Musicians Get Orchestral Positions?

by Janet Horvath  

When you attend an orchestra concert you witness wonderful music-making from a singular group of musicians who seemingly play “as one.” If it’s an orchestra of stature some of the players will remain in their positions an entire lifetime—sometimes decades—and they learn to play together in a distinctive style and with uncanny telepathy. The members relate to one another as if they are a family, sharing not only the music, not only touring and traveling together but also important life events. But how does a musician get an orchestra position? Selection is usually based on a rigorous and often daunting audition process. Initially, once the musician wins an audition and signs a contract, he or she undertakes a probationary period of two years. During the trial period, the musician is evaluated for their playing in the larger context of the group as well as whether their temperament and personality are a good fit.

As you can imagine, the competition is fierce. Some of you may not know that each audition specifies repertoire to play, usually a dozen excerpts from the orchestral (or operatic) repertoire. Additionally, each candidate is also required to perform a concerto and a solo piece, usually solo Bach for string players. Like any competition, there are various rounds as each candidate is evaluated, starting with preliminary auditions, and ending with finals when the conductor is usually involved. The auditions are often held on the stage and initially, the candidate will play the first round behind a screen to maintain anonymity.

The committee that selects the candidates is comprised of eight to ten members of the orchestra—representatives of the section in which the opening has become available, and other musicians who are in that family of instruments. In the case of the French horns, it would be other French horn players, other brass musicians, and when the position is a principal position, the concertmaster, and other leading members.

There are exceptions of course. Some orchestras allow a tape recording for the preliminaries, and in the case of the Berlin Philharmonic, all musicians are in on the decision to hire a new player.

How does someone who has taken multiple auditions without a win, keep going and maintain motivation and a positive attitude? It’s important to take advantage of the resources that are available. Before the internet, when I took my auditions in the 1970s and 80s, the only way to get help was to have some lessons from an orchestral player.

One of the best online resources is Rob Knopper’s AuditionHacker.com, a Metropolitan Opera Orchestra member who knows what winning looks like. Rob’s inner circle is a nine-month commitment of Intensive audition coaching. Winning an audition comprises common sense details, persistence, dedication, and deliberate practice. A successful candidate understands that it’s about the process—learning how to perform the same way you do when you practice, to manage your nerves, to be organized, and to achieve the mindset required to play your best in the fifteen or so minutes you have.

If nerves get the better of you, and who among us hasn’t experienced the jitters, I recommend Noa Kageyama and The BulletProofMusician.com. Noa was a violinist plagued by performance anxiety before he became an expert sports psychologist and a faculty member at Juilliard School of Music. His site offers courses that can help.

When I performed my auditions sometimes the music was difficult to acquire. Today there are online resources with not only downloadable sheet music but also recordings of how these standards are typically played. OrchestraExcerpts.com features the standard excerpts by instrument. Music can also be found on IMSLP.

AuditionPlaybook.com offers individual coaching, guidebooks, interviews, and articles, including thoughts on meditation and mindfulness, practice hacks, even suggestions for pivoting to a career in music that isn’t in an orchestra.

Some professionals I know offer weekly virtual meetings to assess your audition preparation, but individuals can reach out to others to play for each other and give feedback. Weekly mock auditions virtual or otherwise are essential to learn what works and what doesn’t in your preparation. Other sites such as Stagetime, a performing arts hub, offers insider tips, advertises current opportunities and openings, and even offers some Audition Travel Stipends.

A successful audition boils down to these elements:

A decisive audition preparation schedule. Make certain you have plenty of lead time to master all the repertoire. Decide well in advance what your solo will be, choosing a work that is “in your fingers.” Avoid trying something new for an audition.

Determine how to play consistently. This will entail challenging yourself to play under varying conditions. Hold mock auditions enlisting your scariest friends, colleagues, or teachers. Tape yourself and listen for unintended variations in tempo or rhythm, unintended interruptions of the line due to breathing, bow changes, or inefficient shifting, and issues with dynamics.

Aim for peak performance. This will include determining what works in your routine that you can control in an audition setting for your body and mind. Choose foolproof fingerings. Make certain you are using standard bowings, tempos, phrasing, and dynamics for each excerpt.

Practice with a metronome. Intonation is of course essential but rhythmic steadiness and accuracy are crucial in an audition.

Study the music making certain you are not missing indications in the score such as dynamics, crescendos, accents, and phrasing, as well as interpretive musical terms. You should play Mozart differently than Strauss; Debussy differently than Brahms, but also a dolce passage differently than a passage marked espressivo; poco marcato differently than lebhaft. When an audition isn’t imminent become familiar with and practice the excerpts that show up at auditions time after time such as Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade movement II, K to L for the horns, Mahler Symphony No. 3, the opening of the second movement for the oboe, or Brahms Symphony No. 3 movement III the opening melody for the cellos. 

Do your research. Listen to the excerpts. Where does your line fit in? What can you learn about the style of the orchestra you’re auditioning for? Who is their conductor and what can you glean about his or her approach? Every bit of knowledge will help you.

Most important play musically and try not to get discouraged if you don’t succeed initially. Winning depends on so many factors both internal and external. Whenever you play your best it’s a cause for celebration.

Happiness in Love: Debussy’s L’isle Joyeuse

by Maureen Buja, Interllude

The Fêtes galante style was a term specifically created by the French Academy in the early 18th century to describe Watteau’s paintings of country or parkland parties. It was his way of giving his patrons what they wanted, namely, pictures of themselves, and of giving the Academy what they wanted, namely, pictures on historical or mythological themes. The Academy disapproves of straight portraiture, but a patron has demands he will make on a poor painter, so what was Watteau to do?

Watteau: Embarkation for Cythera (1717)

Cythera, or, in modern Greek Kythira, is the Ionian island where Venus / Aphrodite was born, so would have been a destination for lovers everywhere.

Lancret: Conversation galante (1719) (The Wallace Collection)

The painting is everything a patron could want in a work – beautiful landscape, beautiful figures in beautiful clothes, beautiful statuary, and cupids everywhere. For the Academy, it’s a classical scene with mythological overtones. For the viewer, we have so many expressions of joy in the work: the couples in the middle of the work give us three stages of love – one couple in front of the statue is still engaged in their tryst, the three couples under the trees are in the acts of disengaging, while the couple walking down the hill are looking back in memory. More couples down by the boat are embarking for their voyage back to home. There’s no sorrow, no sadness, just a happiness and satisfaction in a perfect world.

Other painters, such as Fragonard, Lancret, and François de Troy also painted works in this heightened style, but the style itself was gone by the mid-18th century.

Jean François de Troy: La Déclaration d’amour (1731) (Berlin: Charlottenburg Palace)

The French composer Claude Debussy (1862–1918), known for his mastery in making one genre of painting, French Impressionism, into music, took up Watteau’s pastoral ideals with a work from 1904, L’isle Joyeuse, that gave a modernist twist to the older genre. First written for piano, it was later orchestrated with Debussy’s permission by the Italian conductor Bernardino Molinari. The orchestral work had its debut in 1923.

The piano version seems like it starts us at a precarious landing. The dancing rhythms carry us onto the island and up to the grove of Venus, where all delights await. It’s very much a personal piece, as though we are looking through the eyes of a character to see what’s around us. 

As an orchestral work, there’s a larger scope for setting the scene. More than just involving an individual character, the orchestra can provide a whole world of people. The celebration is heightened, and there’s more details in the sound picture – the woodwinds flitter Cupid-like, the harp adds another voice, and with the brass sound, it’s as though the whole world glitters. 

Conveying a picture in music is difficult but, in this work, Debussy and his orchestrator Molinari give us a world we wish we could just step into.

Debussy - Arabesque No.1 and No.2

The Two Arabesques (Deux arabesques), L. 66, is a pair of arabesques composed for piano by Claude Debussy when he was still in his twenties, between the years 1888 and 1891. Although quite an early work, the arabesques contain hints of Debussy's developing musical style. The suite is one of the very early impressionistic pieces of music, following the French visual art form. Debussy seems to wander through modes and keys, and achieves evocative scenes through music. His view of a musical arabesque was a line curved in accordance with nature, and with his music he mirrored the celebrations of shapes in nature made by the Art Nouveau artists of the time. Of the arabesque in baroque music, he wrote: “that was the age of the ‘wonderful arabesque' when music was subject to the laws of beauty inscribed in the movements of Nature herself.”

Dancing the Classics: Bach, Schubert, Debussy and Mozart

by Hermione Lai 

Bodily movement is such a natural and emotional response to music. I think that dance has been a part of human culture since the very beginning. It is a way of communicating, celebrating, and expressing an infinite number of feelings, moods, and emotions. And you don’t need to be a professional, as anyone can dance. When people dance, they express feelings and emotions, and if that particular dancing is happening on a stage, they communicate that message to the audience. For some professionals, choreography “is an art form intimately connected to the human form, and it will tell a human story regardless of whether you intend to create a story or not.” Dancing, at least to me, seems a much more direct and natural way of communicating emotions than language or writing.

Some classical music has been specifically written to accompany dance, such as the Baroque dance suite, but I am more interested in dance interpretations of classical music that originally had little or no connection to bodily movement. 

The story goes that Johann Sebastian Bach composed his Goldberg Variations for the Russian ambassador to Saxony. Count Kyerslingk suffered from extended bouts of insomnia, and to ease his torment, he instructed his private harpsichordist Johann Gottlieb Goldberg to play for him. Goldberg was a former student of J.S. Bach, and he approached him to compose a piece “which should be of such smooth and somewhat lively character that he might be a little cheered up by them in his sleepless nights.” Bach went to work and composed a variations set that has been called “one of the most sophisticated works ever written for the keyboard.”

Tap dancing

The Goldberg Variations have been called “sublime and compassionate, graceful, warm and relentlessly intricate.” There is nothing sleepy whatsoever in the Goldberg Variations when the hands of composer Conrad Tao and the feet of tap dance Caleb Teicher get involved. The supposedly calming music becomes a celebration of being awake. There is nothing but pure happiness in the aria followed by an explosion of rhythmic vitality in the variations. There is no doubt in my mind that this particular version would have greatly cheered up Count Kyerslinn.

Franz Schubert based the concluding song of Winterreise on one of the most powerful poems by Wilhelm Müller. The “Hurdy-Gurdy player” presents a very disturbing picture of the alienation of humanity. As a barefoot man is standing on the ice, even music, “often considered a link with the divine, has become monotonous, automated and indifferent.” A contemporary critic wrote, “Schubert’s music is as naive as the poet’s expressions; the emotions contained in the poems are as deeply reflected in his own feelings, and these are so brought out in sound that no one can sing or hear them without being touched to the heart.”

To me, Schubert’s music presents a melancholic aura that creates a sense of ultimate desolation. This overbearing sense of anguish and despair becomes visible in the movements created by the featured Saarländisches Staatstheater Ballet production. There is a lot of focus on bare feet, and what a powerful and highly emotional way of expressing that the plate of the hurdy-gurdy player will remain empty forever. 

The French poet Paul Verlaine wrote his poem “Clair de lune” (Moonlight) in 1869. It is an ambiguous description of a moonlit masquerade ball, alternating moments of joy and sadness. The poet takes us on a journey of self-discovery as he gets in touch with his soul in hopes of finding himself. He is looking for all kinds of distractions to feed to his soul in the form of masks, singing, and dancing. The second stanza is devoted to ease his soul with the sound of melody, and in the concluding stanza the poet acknowledges the picturesque beauty of the moonlight. Claude Debussy composed two settings of “Clair de lune,” plus an instrumental version for his Suite bergamasque. Without doubt, it is the composer’s most famous piece for piano, and it further inspired the French dancer, choreographer, and artist Yoann Bourgeois. He has been called a “dramatist of physics,” and his gravity-defying performance transports us to a place and time “where time has no meaning.” Will he find what he is looking for? 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his cantata Davide penitente on commission from the benevolent society for musicians. The text expresses repentance during Lenten season, and it supposedly helps to recognize our sinfulness, express our sorrow and ask for God’s forgiveness. In the mind of the French horse trainer and film producer Bartabas, born Clément Marty, Mozart’s cantata was the perfect match for an equine ballet; that’s right, a ballet performed by the horses and riders of the National Equestrian Academy of Versailles.

Equestrian Ballet © Bruce Adams

He placed the performance into the “Felsenreitschule,” a 300- year old Salzburg venue that was originally built for equestrian performances. Once you place a period instrument ensemble and vocalists in the former audience arcade, you experience a “performance submerged in an atmospheric darkness, lending it something of the sacred.” It certainly is a fascinating interplay between horse and human, music and movement, and light and costumes. Personally, I love it!

The Invisible Force: Wind

by Maureen Buja, Interlude

The elements of nature frequently are represented in music: water, snow, and, of course, wind. We looked at a number of different works that might, literally, blow us away. We never see the wind but only the effect of the wind. Composers give us the added dimension of being able to hear the wind.

In Lully’s 1674 opera Alceste, which tells the story of the Queen of Thessaly, Alceste, who has been abducted by the King of Scyros, together with the help of a sea nymphs and Aeolus, the god of winds. The North Wind is summoned to create a violent storm to help the kidnapper get away by sea and arrives with a swoosh.

Following this, the god Éole intervenes to calm the storm by sending the gentle West Wind to disperse the violent North Wind.

Lully: Alceste: The gods, the mortals, and the winds, 1708 (score, Paris, 2nd edition)

One of the common ways to show the winds was to combine them with a storm – we hear this in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and in Justin Heinrich Knecht’s orchestral work Le portrait musical de la nature (The Musical Portrait of Nature). Written in 1784–85 as a pastoral symphony, the symphony ends the second movement with a gathering of storm clouds and it is in the third movement that the storm breaks, with the wind whistling through the trees, and rain descending in torrents.

For Debussy, in his Préludes, Book 1, the West Wind is violent and savage. Moved from its piano original to the orchestra, the work seems to grow in stature. The title, Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest, makes us imagine just what is the West Wind bring with it: a storm and rain beat against a cliff. Nature is unleashed and all we can do is endure.

Storm

The French composer Tristan Murail picks up from Debussy’s vision of the west wind and gives us Dernières nouvelles du vent d’ouest (Latest News from the West Wind). The West Wind strikes France in Normandy and the news it carries from across the Atlantic isn’t always the best.

The Wind in Brittany

French composer Philippe Chamouard sought inspiration for the 1997 work Poème du vent (The Poem of the Wind) in a poem by Oshikhoshi Mitsume, which contrasts the scarlet leaves that are blowing in the wind with the image in the still water of the leaves still on the tree. The music makes the leaves fall downward to float away on the mirroring water.

Red leaves in water

Some composers don’t focus on one wind but invoke the wind from all directions. In his guitar work Si le jour parait… (If The Day Seems…), North African composer Maurice Ohana gives Jeu des quatre vents, the game of the four winds. He also pays tribute to Debussy’s piece to the west wind, by instructing the performer with these directions: Animé, tumultueux, commencez un peu au-dessous du mouvement (Animated, tumultuous, begin a little below the tempo), the same words used by Debussy in his score.

In the fifth of his Six Sonnets for violin and piano from 1922, Catalan composer Eduardo Toldrà invokes a sonnet by the poet Padre Antonio Navarro in his Dels quatre vents (Of the Four Winds). At the beginning of the score, Toldrà gives us the 14-line sonnet that inspired him (‘Dia fervent d’agost era aquell dia…’) invoking a hot day in August, under a serene blue sky, with cicadas singing and two white doves overhead.

The winds blow, sometimes violently and sometimes gently, but always invisibly. We can only see the effect of the wind, not the wind itself.

Dolphins behave better after listening to Bach and Beethoven, study finds

Bottlenose dolphins enjoyed listening to Bach as part of the study. Picture: Getty

By Sophia Alexandra Hall, ClassicFM

@sophiassocials

 

Beethoven’s ‘Almost a Fantasy’ and ‘The Swan’ by Saint-Saëns are just some of the pieces of classical music enjoyed by Italian dolphins involved in this latest scientific study. 

Most scientists agree that dolphins are very intelligent creatures. The species have demonstrated in multiple studies that they are quick learners, empathetic, self-aware, and great at problem solving.

But a recent study published in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science has now proved that dolphins are also music lovers, and that classical music specifically could improve social behaviours of the aquatic animals.

Researchers at the University of Padua in Italy found that playing classical music resulted in the dolphins showing more interest in each other, giving more gentle touches and swimming in synchrony for longer.

Eight dolphins in the eastern beach-front city of Riccione, Italy, were played 20 minutes of classical music a day via an underwater speaker for seven sessions. The aquatic mammals heard a number of pieces of classical music including Bach’s Prelude BWV 846, Grieg’s ‘Morning Mood’ from Peer Gynt, Debussy’s Reflets dans l’eau, Beethoven’s Almost a Fantasy, and ‘The Swan’ from The Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns.

Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) in the Caribbean Sea. Picture: Getty

On other days, the dolphins were played the sound of rainfall for 20 minutes (auditory stimulus), given floating toys to play with for 20 minutes (an already known form of enrichment for the animals), or shown natural environments on television screens for 20 minutes (visual stimulus).

The group of dolphins was made up of five female and three male dolphins between the ages of five and 49 years old. Three of these dolphins, which are housed at a dolphinarium in Riccione, were born in the wild.

The researchers found that only the music had a long-lasting positive effect on the dolphins’ behaviour. As only classical music was used, the researchers admitted the results may not be specific to just the classical genre, but that classical music could be particularly useful when improving social behaviours in dolphins.

The use of music was also a particularly useful tool for when the animals were under stress or in situations that could lead to increased conflicts.

 Lead researcher Dr Cécile Guérineau said the way the dolphins acted, suggested they were showing happiness.

“This system is linked to reward, social motivation, pleasure and pain perception,” explained Dr Guérineau. “Activation of opioids receptors is correlated with a feeling of euphoria. [And] we know that in a wide range of animals – from mammals, monkeys, dogs, rats etc, to non-mammals, birds – endorphins, i.e. one type of endogenous opioids, are related to social bonding.

“Dolphins may also be able to perceive rhythm because they are a vocal-learning species. It may be that, similar to how dancing at a party makes us feel good and helps people to bond, when dolphins synchronize to a beat, they also feel good and connect with their fellow swimmers.”

10 of Claude Debussy’s greatest pieces of music

Debussy’s greatest masterpieces. Picture: Alamy

By Siena Linton, ClassicFM

 

From lazy woodland creatures on a hot summer’s day to the plains of southern Spain, Claude Debussy is the unparalleled master of evocative musical imagery.

Forever entwined in the imaginations of his admirers with lethargic fauns, and idyllic woodlands thick with summer haze, Claude Debussy was classical music’s answer to the impressionist art movement which took Paris by storm in the mid to late 19th century.

As Monet, Cézanne and Renoir were masters of the visual arts, so Debussy was a master at crafting intricate and mesmerising soundscapes, transporting his audiences to dream-like worlds with his musical reveries.

1. Petite Suite (1907)

   Originally written for piano with four hands, Debussy’s Petite Suite was orchestrated by his colleague Henri Büsser in 1907. Made up of four movements, the first evokes a picturesque seaside vista. Titled ‘En bateau’, or ‘Sailing’, it’s easy to imagine boats and dinghies bobbing over gently rocking waves, as a flute melody soars over sighing strings and harp glissandos.

   
   

2. Jeux (1913)

   Debussy’s Jeux is a one-of-a-kind piece of music. Premiered in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 1913, just two weeks before Stravinsky’s riot-inducing Rite of Spring, it was described by the composer as a ‘danced poem’. The piece was written at the request of dynamic ballet duo Sergei Diaghilev and legendary choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky, to be performed by Diaghilev’s company, Ballets Russes. It follows a vague storyline of a boy, two girls, and a tennis ball, which goes ultimately unresolved – much like many of Debussy’s harmonies.

   
   

3. Ibéria (1912)

   The second movement of Images pour orchestre, ‘Ibéria’ consists of three movements itself, each depicting images of Spain: its streets and paths, the scents of night, and the ‘morning of a festive day’. It’s an adventurous musical wonderland of jingling percussion, clacking castanets and chiming church bells, evocative of the sunny Iberian peninsula.

4. La fille aux cheveux de lin (1910)

   Debussy wrote two books of solo piano preludes, the first in 1909-1910 and the second in 1912-1913. By far the best known, is La fille aux cheveux de lin, or ‘The Girl with the Flaxen Hair’. With a performance marking meaning ‘very calm and sweetly expressive’, it’s a short and simple work that, over the course of just a few minutes, perfectly depicts the soft innocence that is often associated with golden hair in fine art.

5. Rêverie (1884)

   Debussy’s Rêverie is another one of those beautifully dream-like solo piano pieces that cements its composer as one of the 20th-century greats. With gently oscillating motifs, contrasting rhythms in the left and right hands, and plenty of rubato, the music creates a blissful sense of floating and weightlessness.

   
   

6. Pelléas et Mélisande (1902)

   Although he began to write several, Pelléas et Mélisande is the only opera that Debussy completed. As a young composer Debussy was in awe of Wagner’s operas, traveling to the Bayreuth Festival to see them. And yet, as he told a friend, he had to be careful not to allow the 19th-century opera titan’s works to influence him too much: he had seen fellow French composers attempt to imitate the style, and thought it “dreary”. And so Pelléas et Mélisande is the perfect melting pot of laissez-faire French impressionism and Wagnerian drama.

7. La mer (1905)

   La mer, which translates to ‘The Sea’, was first performed in Paris in late 1905. Inspired by artists’ depictions of the sea rather than the sea itself, one of the criticisms following an icy reception at the premiere was, “I do not hear, I do not see, I do not smell the sea”. Other critics wrote that it did not depict the sea, but rather “some agitated water in a saucer”. Nevertheless, on consecutive performances the piece was much more favourably received, and remains a favourite among the world’s top orchestras to this day.

8. Clair de lune (1905)

   Think of relaxing piano music, and Debussy’s gorgeous ‘Clair de lune’ probably comes to mind. It’s the third, and most famous, movement from Suite bergamasque, which Debussy began writing in 1890 and ultimately finished in 1905. So the story goes, Debussy didn’t originally want these early pieces made public, but eventually accepted a publisher’s offer – and thank goodness he did.

   
   

9. Deux Arabesques (1891)

   Debussy wrote his Deux Arabesques for solo piano while still in his 20s, between 1888 and 1891. Despite the composer’s young age, the whimsical and dream-like character his music would come to be known and loved for can already be heard, carving the way for French Impressionism in music.

10. Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894)

    Beginning with one of the most iconic orchestral flute solos ever written, Debussy wrote Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (‘Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun’) in 1894. His inspiration was a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, in which a faun awakes from his afternoon slumber and recounts a series of rendezvous with forest nymphs. Debussy’s meandering score and rich orchestration captivates his audience and brings them to the heart of the forest on a balmy summer’s day, to hear the tales of the faun’s afternoon amidst the heady pinewood scents, floating through the breeze.

    
    

Satie Discovers Ragtime

By Maureen Buja, Interlude

James Reese Europe returning to the US
with his 15th New York band

Although we associate ragtime music with composers such as Scott Joplin and Joseph Lamb, we rarely consider what effect this new musical style might have had internationally. Through performers such as Jelly Roll Morton and band leaders such as W.C. Handy and James Reese Europe the music emerged from the bordellos and into mainstream acceptance.

Erik Satie (ca. 1900)

Ragtime moved to Europe on the boats that moved people across the Atlantic, which needed the latest music to entertain their passengers. James Reese Europe’s 369th Regiment band toured France in 1918 to great approval. They made recordings for the French Pathé company, including some syncopated numbers, such as The Memphis Blues, that were credited as starting ‘….ragimitis in France.’

Hello Ma Baby sheet music (1899)

American band leaders such as John Philip Sousa, who toured internationally, also brought American music to other shores. Combining his usual straightforward march tempos with the syncopations and polyrhythms of the new ragtime style brought his music to the latest style.

Satie and Debussy in Debussy’s home (1911) (photo by Igor Stravinsky)

Erik Satie (1866-1925) led the French avant-garde in music, anticipating many late 20th century artistic developments such as minimalism. When ragtime turned up, he started incorporating it into his style.

Two works show the influence of ragtime, with its emphasis on syncopation, on Satie. The first was in his 1900 work La mort de Monsieur Mouche (The Death of M. Mouche). It was originally written as incidental music for a 3-act play by Satie’s friend, the Spanish poet Patrice Contamine de Latour, writing as ‘Lord Cheminot.’ All that remains of the incidental music is this Prélude, which is evidence of Satie’s first experiments with ragtime.

Kitten on the Keys sheet music (1922)

A work from 4 years later, Le Piccadilly, is much more straightforward ragtime march. The original title was La Transatlantique, the nickname for the American heiresses who were flocking to Europe to marry impoverished aristocrats. Some examples include the Princess de Polignac, born Winnaretta Singer of the sewing machine fame. Winston Churchill’s mother, Jennie Jerome, was another of these American ‘dollar princesses.’ The original title memorialized their mode of travel, whereas the new title Le Piccadilly, was more about where they arrived.

You can hear some links in the main theme with an 1899 song, ‘Hello! Ma Baby!’ about that new invention, the telephone, where the beloved is referred to as his ‘ragtime doll.’

Ragtime had its start in the late 19th century in middle American, in the black communities around St. Louis, Missouri, but by 1900 had become widely popular all across America. As mentioned above, it travelled to Europe and, along with infecting Satie, it also hit Debussy. In his piano piece Le petite negre, we can also hear the influence of the Hello! Ma Baby melody.

Ragtime faded as the new encompassing style of jazz became the popular favourite. Ragtime was taken over by novelty piano works such as Zez Confrey’s Kitten on the Keys, a work with intentional wrong notes and sudden key shifts that is actually quite difficult to play, particularly at speed.

As music goes around the world, each new country takes what it has received and creates its own version. Satie and Debussy’s takes on ragtime are uniquely French, while being at the same time, ragtime.