"Peony Posies" - Ragtime Two-Step for Piano (2009-2020)

“Peony Posies”

Ragtime Two-Step for Piano - In humble homage to American composer Scott Joplin (1868-1917).

Composed:  November 29 - December 4, 2009; extensively revised and refined August 1 - 2, 2020.

Style:  American Ragtime, ca. 1905.

Form:  Through-Composed (A B C D).

Recording:  MP3 of electronic rendering by Finale 26 “Human Playback” with NotePerformer 3 artificial intelligence assisted interpretation.

Ragtime.  Historically we haven’t seen or heard much of it on this board over the years; to my knowledge, only I and a small handful of others have ever posted any original ragtime compositions here (unless there’s treasure trove of them somewhere I haven’t seen), so I reckon it’s high time there was a small change to that state of affairs, even if I'm the one to do it yet again.

What I’m posting here is a Ragtime Two-Step for Piano of my composition, more commonly called a “piano rag” – of the kind that Scott Joplin and his contemporaries were writing roughly between 1895 and 1919, and which enjoyed immense popularity in their day.  The Two-Step was a dance that was also popular at the time.  Wikipedia has a far more descriptive article about ragtime than anything I could write here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragtime    

This piece was originally composed in 2009 and titled “Harlem Nights,” because the it was inspired by a 1988 film of the same name.  Jazz great Herbie Hancock had written the score for the film, and for its opening sequence, set in 1918, he had provided a rather nice little ragtime tune that sparked my imagination.  I decided to write my own piano arrangement of Hancock’s tune and use it as the introduction and A-section of a piano rag, the rest of which I would compose myself – a sort of “unauthorized collaboration,” if you will.  I posted the resulting piano rag here as soon as I completed it, and here’s a link to that original post for more information/context: 

I was uneasy about the “unauthorized collaboration” from the start, to quote from my original post: “Now that the piece is finished, I’m more than a little uncomfortable that the A-section is not of my own composition, even if the rest of the piece is my own…so I may yet replace it with something I wrote myself.”  Evidently my discomfort was not sufficient to light the fire of immediate action under me, and besides, truth be told, Hancock’s material was pretty good, which gave me doubts as to whether I would be able to write something worthy of replacing it, so I set “Harlem Nights” aside and all but forgot about it for nearly 11 years. 

Finally, Saturday morning, August 1, 2020, out of a clear blue sky I decided the time had come for me to make “Harlem Nights” entirely my own composition.  I puttered around a bit, hoping an idea for a new A-theme would come to me… then suddenly, the first four measures of an idea flashed in my head out of nowhere!  I immediately knew I was onto something, so I quickly began jotting it down in my musical shorthand; as I did so, the next couple of measures came to me, and just as I was finishing writing them down, the next two measures came to me, and so on in succession – almost as if was taking dictation – until the entire 16-measure idea was complete.  Within a couple of minutes, I had what looked like a very satisfactory replacement A-theme melody sketched, and an idea on how to rewrite the introduction had occurred to me as well, to make that too my own.  I pulled up the old Finale file and plugged in the new material where Hancock’s had been, and after a few hours of further revision and refinement, I finally had something I was really happy with - and it was all my own work, from beginning to end. 

For various reasons, not the least of them being the ascendancy of the “Black Lives Matter” movement and the awareness of systematic racism it has promoted, I felt uncomfortable as a white composer retaining the “Harlem Nights” title, as if by so doing I would be exploiting it somehow, so I resolved to rename the piece.  I recalled that Joplin had given some of his rags pretty names with floral references, such as “Heliotrope Bouquet” and “The Chrysanthemum,” and no sooner had I conceived the notion that I could do the same when a pleasing idea for a new title flashed in my head as well!  And so, what had been called “Harlem Nights” – a bit of a Frankenstein monster born of an unauthorized and ill-advised collaboration – was reborn as the “Peony Posies” Rag, and I couldn’t be more pleased or proud!

Incidentally, this was my first attempt at composing ragtime - though probably not my last - and all things considered, it could have turned out a lot worse than it did, so I'm grateful.  And the more I listen to my newly rewritten A-section, with its gentle chromaticism and rather unexpected harmonic progression, the more I'm convinced that it is one of my more inspired and evocative melodies.  

Hope you enjoy, and I will look forward to your comments as ever.  MP3 and PDF score both provided.    

I love ragtime, and I have no idea why. I never listen to it, but something about a jovial tune in a brothel makes me happy haha. The chromaticism was a treat to hear, and overall this piece flows extremely well. I found myself getting lost in the music as I was trying to listen with a critical ear. 

Maybe it's just me, but I can't get the score to load. Usually I won't listen if I can't see the score, but with this one I'm very happy I stopped by. I applaud you for going back to revisit some of your older works; one day I'll do the same. 

Thanks for sharing, seeing you around brings back memories from my younger days here, glad to see and hear you're still around! Take care, Mr. Graham, wonderful display of your craft with this one. 

Hey Thatguy, thanks very much!  Hearing that you really enjoyed it is music to my ears, and I'm so glad - though if you'd been able to download the score (!), you might have noticed that the direction at the beginning of the piece is "Moderate Two-Step: with spirited elegance" - hence what I had in mind was less an ordinary brothel, and more a swanky uptown bordello, with a high-class courtesan lounging on the blood red velvet settee in the parlour, eagerly waiting to indulge your every lascivious desire.  😉  Yeah, I still get back here once in a while... I've been coming to this particular "house of ill repute" for over 20 years, and I can't seem to completely break myself of the habit.  😄 

6 hours ago, Thatguy v2.0 said:

I applaud you for going back to revisit some of your older works; one day I'll do the same. 

You know, I used to be the kind of composer who would dash off a piece and be perfectly content to let my first draft stand as my final statement, only rarely making revisions, believing that by so doing I was  preserving a permanent record of my development for posterity (yeah, I was actually egotistical enough to entertain the illusion after they shovel me into a grave, some future scholar is gonna actually care about how I developed as composer).  Over the last year or so, however, unexpectedly and organically, I've been gradually transitioning into a more Beethovenian composer in my method, in that my first draft is just that, and far from final, becoming more and more obsessive about repeatedly revising and tinkering with my stuff, both in the process of composing and after I've ostensibly put the double-bar on - beating the crud out of everything I write until I'm finally happy with it.  As a result, I've been revisiting a number of my earlier works with a critical eye lately; they may only need a little fine tuning, or sometimes an extensive overhaul (as with this piece), but the invariable result is that I leave everything better than I found it, and that makes me happy.  I still preserve original versions of all the pieces I revisit in this manner though - again, for posterity, as I still haven't entirely disabused myself of the vain notion that it might matter to someone someday.

You may want to try again to download a score, as I made a couple more very minor revisions this afternoon and I've posted new MP3 and PDF attachments.  Thanks again!  Cheers!      

Lovely piece, I like ragtime. Also the sound you chose is beautiful.

Thanks, Luis!  Glad you enjoyed it, and thank you for the compliment.  

On 8/4/2020 at 2:23 AM, Luis Hernández said:

Also the sound you chose is beautiful.

By this I assume you mean the sound samples I used for playback: I'm actually using something new that I am really happy with!  I am a Finale user, and for many years now, Finale has come paired with a full set of samples from Garritan Personal Orchestra, and I have been happy enough to use those - they cost me nothing extra, were easy to use, and compared to the old SoftSynth MIDI sounds we used to have to put up with, Garritan's samples were infinitely better.  Then recently a colleague of mine, a professional composer, suggested that I try an application called NotePerformer, which was what he used to get more realistic playback.  NotePerformer's built in samples are first rate, markedly better than Garritan's, but more than being just another set of samples, NotePerformer is an "artificial Intelligence-based playback engine for musical notation," as the described on their website, designed to provide the most realistic score interpretation and playback possible.  There are three versions of NotePerformer, one each to work with Finale, Sibelius, and Dorico notation software; the Finale version works in tandem with Finale's "Human Playback" function and greatly enhances it.  So, it was NotePerformer that I used to produce the recording I posted.  If you liked what you heard, I would really recommend giving NotePerformer a try.  They offer a 30-day free trial, and if I remember rightly, I think it costs about $175.00 to purchase it - for some reason I can't remember clearly, I'm sorry - which is not exactly cheap, especially for students and young people on a tight budget, but it was some of the best money I ever spent on music-related software of any kind.   

4 hours ago, J. Lee Graham said:

Thanks, Luis!  Glad you enjoyed it, and thank you for the compliment.  

By this I assume you mean the sound samples I used for playback: I'm actually using something new that I am really happy with!  I am a Finale user, and for many years now, Finale has come paired with a full set of samples from Garritan Personal Orchestra, and I have been happy enough to use those - they cost me nothing extra, were easy to use, and compared to the old SoftSynth MIDI sounds we used to have to put up with, Garritan's samples were infinitely better.  Then recently a colleague of mine, a professional composer, suggested that I try an application called NotePerformer, which was what he used to get more realistic playback.  NotePerformer's built in samples are first rate, markedly better than Garritan's, but more than being just another set of samples, NotePerformer is an "artificial Intelligence-based playback engine for musical notation," as the described on their website, designed to provide the most realistic score interpretation and playback possible.  There are three versions of NotePerformer, one each to work with Finale, Sibelius, and Dorico notation software; the Finale version works in tandem with Finale's "Human Playback" function and greatly enhances it.  So, it was NotePerformer that I used to produce the recording I posted.  If you liked what you heard, I would really recommend giving NotePerformer a try.  They offer a 30-day free trial, and if I remember rightly, I think it costs about $175.00 to purchase it - for some reason I can't remember clearly, I'm sorry - which is not exactly cheap, especially for students and young people on a tight budget, but it was some of the best money I ever spent on music-related software of any kind.   

 

Yes, I understand.

I also use NotePerformer, but with Dorico, which is the software I'm using ... I know the sound can be more perfect with DAW intervention, but for me it's enough.

I love ragtime and I think it's not easy to write convincingly in style.

On 8/10/2020 at 5:24 AM, Luis Hernández said:

I know the sound can be more perfect with DAW intervention, but for me it's enough.

You mention DAW, but I have no idea what you mean.   Would you mind enlightening me?  A new sample set, or app?  

On 8/10/2020 at 5:24 AM, Luis Hernández said:

I love ragtime and I think it's not easy to write convincingly in style.

No, it's not an easy style to emulate effectively.  Is it something you've tried yourself before? 

In my case, as with just about everything else I know about music and composition, I had to teach myself how to compose Ragtime.  I fell in love with it when I first heard it as a young boy, and I listened to a lot of it over the years - mostly Scott Joplin, (1868-1917), as he was the greatest of the Ragtime composers in his day, though I did hear others - and by listening intently and repeatedly, my mind began to internalize the style - the characteristic elements of it, which can be difficult to define and quantify, as with many other styles, but if given enough time and exposure to something, I will usually come to make sense of it.  Eventually, I began having my own original Ragtime ideas, which I mentally compared to works from the existing repertoire that epitomized the style, knowing I would probably compare poorly; at first this was true, but over time, I internally compiled enough of a mental "style rule book" that more and more of my ideas in that vein met the necessary criteria for acceptance...and by the time that happens, I can usually tell immediately if they do or not.  It was only once I had reached that point that I felt confident even to attempt to composing in Ragtime, and that was only relatively recently.

I could go on and on forever about my autodidactic processes for emulating various historical styles, but I'll save that lecture for another time.  The truth is, I might have become a good deal more accomplished much earlier as a composer if I'd had the benefit of a formal education in music theory and composition; but alas it was not to be for me, but I wasn't about to let that stop me from doing what I wanted to do with music, so I've taught myself nearly everything I know and kept forging ahead - slowly but surely.  This of course requires a great deal of trial and error, seeing and hearing what works musically and technically, and what doesn't, and especially early on, there were far more failures than success - to which my several boxes crammed with basically worthless juvenilia can eloquently attest.  But the wealth of knowledge  and experience I've gained the hard way over the years has made it possible for me to compose with relative facility, and in many cases the process of emulating an historical style I haven't attempted before has become quicker and easier - though probably not for something really esoteric and complex like Gagaku Imperial Japanese Court music, for example...but you get the idea.  😉  

Understandably, if one wants to know anything about what Ragtime was in its purest and best expression, the go-to composer is the aforementioned Scott Joplin, who is almost universally acknowledged as the supreme master of the style; he didn't invent it, but he wrote more of it, and of better quality, than just about anybody else, and his active career spanned all but a few years of what is generally accepted to have been the heyday of Ragtime - from the "Maple Leaf Rag" in 1899, which established his fame, to the "Magnetic Rag," the last he ever published, not long before his death in 1917.  But there were a great many other Ragtime composers active during that heyday, and there were even some still composing it after it went out of fashion and into obscurity for more than half a century.  I don’t know if you’re familiar with who I’m about to mention, but among the late 20^th Century living composers who have written Ragtime works, perhaps the most accomplished is Pulitzer Prize winner William Bolcom, who taught composition at the University of Michigan for 35 years before he retired in 2008, having composed prolifically in multiple genres - and his Ragtime works are absolutely the real deal.  The works for solo piano in his extensive catalogue include no fewer than 27 original rags, a pretty impressive number; but the most celebrated of these by far, and I think rightly so, is his “The Graceful Ghost Rag,” one of three “ghost rags” he composed in 1970, just before the popular revival of Ragtime a few years later.  Of all the piano rags I have ever heard, by anyone, “Graceful Ghost” is up there with the best and most effective – technically, stylistically, and structurally flawless, and as haunting and emotionally affecting as its name suggests – and in my opinion, it may actually be one of the greatest works of its kind ever written.  I’ve included a link to it below if you’d like to hear it… I really recommend it, and I think you’re in for a treat!  Scored in rarely heard, mournful B-flat minor, with the Trio section in G-flat major, even the chosen keys are perfectly calculated for effect, as is the decidedly unhurried tempo.  Here it is link below, and I hope you enjoy!  Excuse my long-winded effusion, but this subject is something I’m fascinated by and passionate about!  Cheers!