WHAT IS RAGTIME?

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 36, 12 February 1914, Page 4

WHAT IS RAGTIME?

— . i Judge Backhouse- kept his audience I in perpetual laughter at the annual meeting of the Royal Philharmonic Society at Sydney last week, when he t described his efforts to solve the pro!)- i lent, “'What is ragtime f” He had i heard, he said, of the futurist musician who had had in his orchestra, two huzzors, a snorcr, and a squeaker. I The effect must have been very much • the same as that described by the Scotsman when he declared “We had 1 seven pipers all in one room; all oil them playing a different tune, and eh, [ men! it was heavenly!” So much for futurism, said his Honor. “Then we have the ragtime craze.” he went on>! ( amid renewed laughter. “MusleaL critics have told us it is syuuseopation.j I thought it must he so described, be-] cause it- produced some new form ofj, heart disease. 1 went to drove, and , looked up ‘syncopation,’ and felt as if, I had been reading one of the more, obscure poems of Browning. Some of my musical friends undertook to on-, lighten me, but, so far as 1 could see,! they knew very little more than I did! myself about it. The conclusion Ij have finally arrived at about ragtime j is that it may lie likened to the emo-j tious of the man who is riding a motorcycle when he feels the machine pulsating as it moves.”