- Jonny Broom's Ragbag (1995) Piano solo with offstage keyboard 14'
- Premiere—1995, by composer, Rochester, NY.
Program Notes
There is an account of a conversation from Johannes Brahms's last years in which the composer expressed an interest in American ragtime project. Ragtime was new then; Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag, was written in 1897, the year Brahms died, and published two years later. Ragtime was by no means respectable, but since Brahms spent his early years playing the piano in Hamburg's red-light district, and throughout his life produced works in more popular idioms, such as the Zigeunerlieder and the Hungarian Dances, the idea is not so far-fetched. Jonny Broom's Ragbag realizes Brahms's whim, though not, of course, as he would have composed it. His music is represented by several quotations from one of the last pieces and one phrase cribbed from the Requiem. The essence of ragtime—a syncopated part in one hand against a more regular rhythm in the other—is retained. I have replaced the multiplicity of eight-bar themes characteristic of the turn-of-the-century rag with more classic binary, ternary and rondo forms. There is also more development than Scott Joplin would have cared for, but then, this is a work of the imagination, not a historical study.
The quotations from Brahms' Intermezzo in B minor, Opus 118, No. 1 may be played on celesta, toy piano or MIDI keyboard, played by an additional player, or pre-recorded. In any case, the sound should be distant and distinct, a distilled memory which seems to prompt the performer's response.