Piano-Rag-Music

This article is about Stravinsky's solo for piano. For Todd Bolender's ballet, see Piano-Rag-Music (Bolender). For Peter Martins', see Piano-Rag-Music (Martins).

Piano-Rag-Music is a composition for piano solo by Igor Stravinsky, written in 1919.

Stravinsky, who had, by that time, emigrated to France after his studies with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in Russia, was confronted with American jazz combos actively influential in Europe. Stravinsky's knowledge of stylistic jazz properties was at first limited to scores brought to him from the United States by his colleague Ernest Ansermet.^[1] However, he had managed to hear live jazz bands by the time he finished Piano-Rag Music.

Compositionally, Stravinsky interprets the ragtime in a rather cubist way, instead of directly imitating the style.^[1] Stravinsky incorporates elements from his Russian period (ostinati, shifting accents, bitonality) with rhythmic and harmonic fragments from ragtime. The irregular meters give the piece an improvisatory character.

Stravinsky wrote the piece for Arthur Rubinstein,^[1] but it was instead premiered by José Iturbi, on November 8, 1919 in Lausanne.

References

1. Allmusic. "Piano Rag Music" (Archive from 8 October 2007).

External links

• Piano-Rag-Music (Stravinsky, Igor): Scores at the International Music Score Library Project
• Joseph, Charles M. (Spring 1982). "Structural Coherence in Stravinsky's "Piano-Rag-Music"". Music Theory Spectrum. 4. Oxford University Press, Society for Music Theory: 76–91. doi:10.2307/746011. JSTOR 746011.(subscription required)
• Truslove, David (2008). "Stravinsky: Music for Piano Solo, Liner Notes for Naxos CD 8.570377". Naxos Records. Retrieved 2 January 2021.