The first thing you notice about this one is its unusual triangular shape:
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While I defer entirely to your assessment of pencil history, your music history is a little bit off. Krell was definitely not the originator of ragtime. Scott Joplin's earliest published rags (which, to be fair, were called marches until Maple Leaf in 1899) date from the mid-1890s, and there were other works of that nature published around then as well. The music itself dates back earlier, to live performances in the less reputable hospitality institutions of New Orleans and St. Louis.
ReplyDeleteHi Vance and thanks for the comment,
ReplyDeleteFrom what I understand, Krell's Mississippi Rag was published in 1897, a couple years before Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag was published in 1899.
Like you mentioned, ragtime grew out of the march format. While I've seen some references to Joplin publishing music earlier than 1897, I didn't find anything that was called a "rag."
There's probably no bright line that would establish the date that the ragtime form was "born." However, from my limited research, it looks like the wild popularity of Krell's Mississippi Rag was the first time a rag had gone the equivalent of Victorian-viral.