hello all chopin lovers....i'm back again with an unexpected question about chopin..
I guess most of you know of scott joplin and his tribute to ragtime music. anyway, as a big chopin fan i think it is clearly that he invented the style before joplin's time.
In chopin's butterfly etude, which everyone in this forum probably knows, i can hear every and every element in joplin's music, and i whould be bold to say that it's the first rag...

Just listen to it and afterwards to joplin and tell me what you think... I hope it's not to much farfetched.
have a nice day,
Shaul.

Dude common, seriously?

Let me tell you a little about ragtime and Chopin:

Scott Joplin didn't INVENT ragtime. Ragtime was invented a few years before him.

As far as Chopin, no Chopin didn't invent ragtime. Just because there are jumps in the left hand doesn't mean that its ragtime. Ragtime is a SYNCOPATED sound. Yes, jumps in the left hand are part of it, but not all of it.

And let me tell you a little about jumps:

Jumps have been incorporated in many classical composers music. There are jumps in Chopin, Liszt, Ravel, Beethoven, and Mozart! Jumps are just a technique that are incorporated in a LOT of music. Even in modern jazz!

Like I said, jumps do not mean that a piece is labeled "ragtime".

As a similar statement, jumps do not mean that a piece is labeled "stride". Similarly, ragtime doesn't mean to be labeled "stride".

Stride is a style too, just like ragtime. If you are confusing jumps in music with ragtime and stride, then you are obviously missing the point.

A left hand with stride like jumps is either called a "stride left hand" or "jumps", but never do we call a piece that has jumps in music a "stride" piece, unless its stylistically "stride" piano.

Therefore, what you hear in your Chopin Etude piece called a "stride" left hand or simply "jumps". But we do not call the piece a "stride" piece, because it is not stylistically "stride" piano. It should fall under the category romantic classical music.




More importantly, most people consider the Chopin etude a romantic classical etude. But you say that Chopin invented ragtime and point out the butterfly etude as an example of a "stride" left hand. The thing is, if you tend to say the Chopin invented ragtime, then your basically saying that the butterfly etude is a "ragtime" piece, although it is not and it is classified under the category of "romantic". Just want to point that out!

I really think that Scott Joplin was INFLUENCED by Chopin and other ragtime pianists, but I don't think Chopin nor Scott Joplin invented ragtime. Ragtime was influenced by the classical composers, but calling classical pieces with jumps "ragtime" is a misnomer.

And ragtime shouldn't be considered jazz or classical. It has its own genre. Besides, ragtime isn't that hard to play anyway.

I don't think either Chopin or Joplin invented ragtime, but as far as classical pieces that sound like ragtime go, you couldn't have picked a better example.

There are other things like this in history, where you look back and in retrospect you can see the beginnings of a new style or way of thinking before the 'major innovator' who is historically recognized. Before Einstein's major papers on relativity, the general ideas of this kind of solution to the paradoxes of light were 'floating around' in other thinkers. But Einstein made a crucial and big jump in crystallizing things so he (rightly) gets the main credit.

Yeah... its all about getting ideas from other musicians and incorporating those ideas into your own music.

As with anything, I personally always try to 'steal' ideas from others, and then either keep them the same or vary them. If someone tells a funny joke, than I'll 'steal' it and then later on in a different conversation with a different group of people, when an appropriate topic pops up, I'll then throw the same joke into the conversation I'm having.

hello again, thanks for answering:)
ofcourse i didn't mean that chopin actually invented the ragtime music, i was just trying to say that i heard echoes of ragtime in the butterfly etude. I myself play most of the etudes and i look at them as romnatic peices of music ofcourse, but i really found it striking in the resemblence between those..... i also find a lot of resemblance in chopin berceuse and debussy's arabesque no.1....
but i agree with the fact the the recognized people took what people before them made and they perfected it.

I agree with you about the Butterfly. So does my husband, former Air Force bugler, who knows almost nothing about Chopin but knows a rag when he hears one.

There's definitely a commonality between the two composers; more than one person's noticed the similarity of technique, or that if you do one, you can handle the other without massive shift in how you perceive your playing. I heard Chopin-like bits and bobs in "Bethena," one of Joplin's best pieces IMNSHO, even when I was a very little kid.

The third movement of Beethoven's Op 15 Piano Concerto has lots of things that seem like dances. There's even a tango.

There are lots of melodies (themes or whatever) in the classical literature that seem to adumbrate modern ideas.