Back in
2020 I finally got around to a long-form project I called Ragtime and Sonata
Forms. The basic concept is in the title and the project was a mixture of
aesthetics, philosophy, music theory and a proposal that ragtime and sonata
forms are foundational compatible. In
the appendices I laid out a way of mapping the musical space of Joplin’s rags
so as to correspond with a recalibrated concept of sonata forms, drawing on
Hepokoski and Darcy’s taxonomy of Types 1 through 5.
What I did not manage to do back in 2020 was tease out the
implications and applications of my ideas in terms of concrete musical works,
whether in musical analysis of existing works or in the creation of works. I
also could have been better about clarifying a thought I have had across my
life, which is that I think the reason many bids at synthesizing ragtime and
sonata forms fall short is composers try to force ragtime as a style into the
Procrustean bed of concepts of sonata forms held over from 19th
century theoretical treatises.
