Stravinsky's "Ragtime"

Synopsis

At 11 a.m. on today's date in 1918, the Allied powers signed a ceasefire agreement with Germany in a railway carriage in the forest of Compiègne in France, bringing to an end the enormous physical and emotional devastation of the First World War. And if one were looking for a precise point at which the world of the 19th century really and truly ended, this might be as good a one as any.

The post-1918 world was a traumatized new age, disillusioned with a tarnished past, and in the arts, figures like Igor Stravinsky and Pablo Picasso emerged offering new ways of looking and listening.

At the exact hour the Armistice was being signed in France, Stravinsky was in Switzerland, putting the finishing touches to a chamber orchestra piece he titled "Ragtime." This music was inspired by American jazz, and, just as the minuet seemed appropriate for the 18th century and the waltz for the 19th, Stravinsky seemed to be saying a jazz dance might be just the thing for the 20th.

Looking back at that moment, Stravinsky wrote, "Jazz meant, in any case, a wholly new sound in my music… and marks my final break with the Russian orchestral school in which I had been fostered."

It's lean, brash, and sharp-edged "modern" music. And when Stravinsky's "Ragtime" was published in 1919, it featured a lean, brash, and sharp-edged "modern" cover drawing for the score by Stravinsky's good friend and occasional collaborator, Pablo Picasso.

Music Played in Today's Program

Igor Stravinsky (1882 -1 971) Ragtime for 11 Instruments

On This Day

Births

• 1872 - German-born American conductor of the Chicago Symphony (and occasional composer) Frederick Stock, in Jülich;

Deaths

• 1936 - English composer Sir Edward German, age 74, in London;

• 1945 - American songwriter, Jerome Kern, age 60, in New York City;

• 1979 - Ukranian-born American film music composer Dimitri Tiomkin, age 85, in London;

Premieres

• 1727 - Handel: opera “Riccardo Primo, re d’Inghilterra” (Richard the First, King of England), in London at the King’s Theater in the Haymarket (Gregorian date: Nov. 22);

• 1866 - Brahms: String Sextet in G, Op. 36, in Boston, at a concert by the Mendelssohn Quintet Club; The European premiere occurred in Zürich, Swizterland, a few days later, on November 20;

• 1889 - R. Strauss: tone-poem "Don Juan," in Weimar, with the composer conducting;

• 1890 - Brahms: String Quintet No. 2 in G, Op. 111, in Vienna, by the Rosé Quintet;

• 1898 - Coleridge-Taylor: oratorio "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast," in London;

• 1899 - Leslie Stuart: operetta "Floradora" in London; This operetta was tremendously popular in England and America for many seasons, but is seldom heard today;

• 1906 - Ethel Smyth: opera "The Wreckers" (under its German title "Strandrecht") in Leipzig;

• 1923 - Bloch: Piano Quintet, in New York, with Harold Bauer piano, at the first concert of the League of Composers;

• 1952 - Stravinsky: "Cantata," by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra conducted by the composer;

• 1999 - Corigliano: "Vocalise," for soprano, electronics and orchestra, by Sylvia McNair, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Kurt Masur;

• 2004 - Augusta Read Thomas: “Dancing Galaxy” for wind ensemble, in Boston, Ma. by the New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble.

Others

• 1898 - Shortly after it was finished, the painting “Nevermore” by Gaugin is purchased by the English composer Frederick Delius; The painting was inspired by Poe’s famous poem and is now in the collection of London’s Cortland Gallery;

• 1922 - The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) begins daily radio transmissions; The BBC had been formed on Oct. 18, 1922, broadcast its first orchestral concert on Dec. 23, 1922, and on Dec. 24 its first radio play, “The Truth About Father Christmas.”