Background

Magnetic Rag was written by Joplin at the end of his career, when interest in ragtime was waning. He was suffering from the later stages of syphilis, the disease from which he died only three years later. Possibly as a result of Joplin's mood at this time, the piece expresses a melancholy almost entirely unheard in his earlier works.

Form

While many of Joplin's piano rags fit the classic rag scheme, Magnetic Rag is unique in its form of AABBCCDDAA. Due to its novelty at the time, the form has been described as "progressive". It has been suggested that Joplin was trying to merge ragtime elements with the classical sonata form. Thus, the form is cyclic: the opening melody is revisited at the end of the piece, a practice used by Joplin in only three other rags: Kismet (1913), Scott Joplin's New Rag (1912), and Euphonic Sounds (1909).

Joplin published Magnetic Rag during what several musicologists consider to be his experimental period. During this period, Joplin attempted to write rags which were not confined to the standard "oom-pah" left-hand beat, and which incorporated several other novelties.

Intro and "A" strain

Like the classic rag, Magnetic Rag begins with a four-bar introduction. Since it is featured at both the beginning and end of the piece, the melody of the A strain is possibly the most recognizable melody in the piece. Much of this melody is in the mode of B-flat major, the main key of the entire piece; however, during bars 11 and 12, the mode shifts to G minor. This shift demonstrates one of Joplin's later techniques, which was to establish a foreign key within the framework of a strain.

"B" strain

The B strain is written entirely in the G minor scale. The sinister tone generated by the minor scale stands out among Joplin's rags, and is revisited in the D strain.

"C" strain

In contrast to the minor themes in the B strain, the third section is highly upbeat, returning once again to the scale of B-flat major. Here, for the first time, the piece departs from the standard left-hand pattern that characterizes most ragtime. This section of the piece has been compared to the style of twelve bar blues. The C strain also represents the only known time when Joplin departs from the standard sixteen-bar form, being instead 24 bars in length.

"D" strain

The second, third, and fourth strains are what make Magnetic Rag to be quite unique among Joplin's rags. Of them, the D strain is perhaps the most interesting. It is written in B-flat minor. When Joplin uses minor keys in the previous sections, he uses the relative key of G minor (i.e., relative to the main key of B-flat major). However, in this fourth section, he instead uses the parallel key. This strain also features sections where the right hand and left hand play notes in unison, and in which the standard 2/4 time left-hand beat is noticeably absent.

Conclusion and coda

Most of Joplin's rags end with the last strain, but Magnetic Rag, Euphonic Sounds and Scott Joplin's New Rag all end with a coda. In the case of Magnetic Rag, the coda expresses some of the tonalities and rhythms heard throughout the piece.

Analysis

Magnetic Rag is widely understood to present a one-of-a-kind combination of moods, especially for ragtime, and has been described as a melancholic and "haunting" rag.

With the Brahmsian darkness of . . . "Magnetic Rag," the last piece he completed, Joplin had pushed the music far beyond the boisterous beerhall ambience that characterized, for many listeners and players, the rag idiom. This was music on a large scale that was now being squeezed into the narrow confines of rag form—so much so, that the music often burst at the seams.

Some music historians evaluate Magnetic Rag, as well as other works from Joplin's late period, as being indicative of his unstable mental condition, which resulted from the effects of syphilis. One of these is Martin Williams:

Joplin's "last period" is a strange collection of contradictions. Some of his rags reach more toward concert music than did any Jazz up to Lennie Tristano's, while others seem to revert to his 1900 style. Profoundly ambitious passages lie side by side with meaningless, mechanical ditties. It is not hard to find in these compositions a reflection of approaching derangement—he lost his mind in 1916.

In This Is Ragtime, Terry Waldo criticizes this view:

To see Joplin's late rags as a "strange collection of contradictions" . . . misses the point. . . . "Magnetic Rag" does indeed include parts reminiscent of Joplin's 1900 style, but they serve to set up the "profound" parts. Here is a terrifying mixture of the familiar and the agonizing unknown. It is in fact more profound for being able to bring these opposites into focus. The music is heavy with the weight of Joplin's approaching schizoid nightmare—but that is not a weakness.

In his biography of Scott Joplin, James Haskins writes:

Early in 1914 he completed what many consider his finest rag, "Magnetic Rag," which he published himself that same year. It has about it a gentle quality like "The Entertainer," and its distinctive form and range of moods suggest to some musicologists a breakthrough to a Chopinesque form of ragtime, albeit a breakthrough that came too late.

Near the end of his life, Scott Joplin was taking ragtime in a new direction by adding emphasis on form and tonality, and attempting to combine the characteristics of classical Western music and traditional ragtime. This is an entirely different direction than the one that jazz would take.

Jazz, seeking one theme as a center for improvisation, tended to weaken the sense of form that it inherited from ragtime. . . . Joplin's efforts obviously strengthen this sense of form. One has only to hear the blazing return of the first theme of Magnetic Rag—the restoration of major tonality, the momentum of the renewed beat—to recognize the power of recapitulation in ragtime.

See also

• Scott Joplin
• Maple Leaf Rag
• The Entertainer

External links

• "Magnetic Rag" - from the Mutopia Project (musical score transcription and MIDI file)
• Copy of original edition score

Notes