Ragtime

Hello Mark,

Sorry not to have had a cerebral agenda to discuss when I started this. That "after several days with a composition that was...experimental" referred to the whole-tone piece.

Interestingly, this piece game me an occasion to listen to all of Joplin. I opened the midi file of each rag in Composer, split the hands, and watched as I listened. (I was listening because, after a year since I sketched it out, "Reveries" seemed AWFULLY familiar--as if I had heard it, the whole piece, before and had maybe let my sub-conscious employ Mozart's gift as a curse and I re-wrote a Joplin piece). But ragtime harmony seems pretty much I, IV, V, with frequent excursions into the diminished sound, though I can't pretend to have analyzed it, even in one piece. I was just after the kind of sound that I imagined. Maybe the fact that I just wanted to get the idea in mind down, and I worried about nothing else, was why it was so much fun to do????

all best,
mgj