David Schulenberg’s Ragtime Page
It is a little-known fact that certain Bach scholars play classic ragtime; some even compose it.
Below are links to sound files and scores for my own efforts to write ragtime. I wrote the first two of these while still in high school in the early 1970s, inspired by the efforts of one particular Bach scholar who had become famous for his ground-breaking recordings of piano rags by Scott Joplin.* The second of these owes its title to its dedication to the president of my high school’s Young Republican Club (an organization with which I otherwise had nothing to do). The Three Rags that follow were written somewhat later. I have also included a rag by my brother Ted Schulenberg, who became interested in piano ragtime at the same time I did. Please note: the audio files are midi output from Finale scores, so they sound like mechanical piano rolls.
All contents of these pages are (c) copyright 2017 by David Schulenberg (all rights reserved) and may not be further distributed, altered, published, or performed without the express written permission of the author (email me at dschulenATwagner.edu).
Rag no. 1
sound (midi)
score (pdf)
Rag no. 2 (Elephant Rag)
sound (midi)
score (pdf)
Three Rags
I. Augmentation Rag (so called because it contains lots of augmented-sixth chords of various types)
sound (midi)
score (pdf)
II. Currier Rag (composed during a summer when I stayed in Harvard’s Currier House)
sound (midi)
score (pdf)
III. Music-of-the-Future Rag (a Gesamtkunstwerk that includes a version of Tannhäuser’s Venusberg aria as Rossini might have written it and, in the course of tracing Western music history of the past hundred sixty years, demonstrates that the so-called Tristan chord is an inversion of the pc-set that comprises the dominant-seven chord)
sound (midi)
score (pdf)
Ted Schulenberg: Squirrel Race Rag
sound (midi)
score (pdf)
*Joshua Rifkin’s Scott Joplin: Piano Rags (vol. 1), originally issued as a Nonesuch LP, is now available on CD (Warner B000005IYF).