Klaus Döring's Classical Music/Klaus Döring's Klassische Musik

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 musi...

Maple Leaf Rag was Scott Joplin’s biggest hit in his lifetime.  Picture: Getty By Maddy Shaw Roberts, ClassicFM London   From piano rags to rich opera overtures, here’s a look at Scott Joplin’s greatest works. Since the revival of his music in the 1970s, history has remembered  Scott Joplin  as “the King of  Ragtime ”. His collection of rags is utterly identifiable, their sound joyously distinctive, and their complex bass patterns and sporadic syncopation still imitated by composers today. But what’s also true is that Scott Joplin was one of the landmark American composers of the  20th century . From his Pulitzer-winning opera to a rag-inspired classical waltz, here’s the very best of one of music history’s most extraordinary  Black voices . The Entertainer (1902) Scott Joplin’s death in April 1917 marked a lapsed interest in Ragtime and his music. And it wasn’t until over half a decade later that people started to turn their ears back to Joplin’s catc...