{"id":8050,"date":"2011-03-16T09:00:52","date_gmt":"2011-03-16T13:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=8050"},"modified":"2011-03-14T13:33:26","modified_gmt":"2011-03-14T17:33:26","slug":"midweek-music-break-scott-joplins-solace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/midweek-music-break-scott-joplins-solace\/","title":{"rendered":"Midweek Music Break: Scott Joplin’s “Solace”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I caught 1973’s The Sting<\/em> on TV recently. By now, I’ve seen it often enough that the kick of the plot has pretty much evaporated, leaving behind the not inconsiderable on-screen pleasures of watching the cast at work. (Robert Shaw as Doyle Lonnegan, I just learned from Wikipedia<\/a>, did not have to fake his limp: “Shaw had slipped on a wet handball court at the Beverly Hills Hotel just a week before filming began and had split all the ligaments in his knee.”)<\/p>\n

To which I’d have to add, always, the textural pleasures provided by the soundtrack.<\/p>\n

It’s hard not to like Scott Joplin’s ragtime music, which — though already out-of-date in the real-world 1930s — somehow “sounds” right to our ears for that period. It’s so… so… so bubbly<\/em>, y’know?<\/p>\n

But one song always stood out in my mind as the best of the lot — and although Joplin wrote it, it didn’t even sound like ragtime, to my uneducated ears: “Solace.”<\/p>\n

[Below, click Play button to begin <\/em>Solace. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:34 long.]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

[audio:solace_joplin.mp3|titles=’Solace’|artists=by Scott Joplin-Marvin Hamlisch on piano]<\/div>\n

The complete title of the song is “Solace: A Mexican Serenade”; published in 1909, it was, says at least one source<\/a>, “the only work by Joplin to employ a tango rhythm.” Which caught me completely by surprise — not that my ears are any smarter about tango than about ragtime. But when I heard “Solace,” I just couldn’t picture a couple of sleek and smoldering Spanish dancers clinched together, eyes locked, as they swirled about on a dance floor.<\/p>\n

According to the All Music Guide to Classical Music<\/em><\/a>, however, the “Solace”-as-tango story isn’t quite that straightforward:<\/p>\n

[Solace<\/em>] is a four-minute gem of a habanera, which, as one might divine from the word, has roots in Havana. There is also in Solace<\/em> something of the tango form, which, though distantly related to an African folk dance tradition, is more recently of the same Latin extraction as the habanera. Solace<\/em> is, then, a true musical mish-mash…<\/p>\n

Fans of George Bizet’s Carmen<\/em> are invited to sit back, listen to Solace<\/em>, and enjoy the same gently rocking habanera rhythm as is heard throughout the Frenchman’s famous Habanera<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, since you, too, may wonder about that comparison… here’s Bizet’s “Habanera”:<\/p>\n

[Below, click Play button to begin <\/em>Habanera (from ‘Carmen’). While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:11 long.]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

[audio:habanera_bizetcarmen.mp3|titles=’Habanera (from Carmen)’|artists=Bizet-London Festival Orchestra]<\/div>\n

How about that?<\/p>\n

[At the time this posts on Wednesday morning, I’ll be in mid-air, <\/em>en route to a four-day reunion with my sisters and brother. If all goes as planned between now and then, though, another of these magically pre-created missives will appear on Friday. I will be checking in online “for real” from time to time, too, both here and via email.]<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I caught 1973’s The Sting on TV recently. By now, I’ve seen it often enough that the kick of the plot has pretty much evaporated, leaving behind the not inconsiderable on-screen pleasures of watching the cast at work. (Robert Shaw as Doyle Lonnegan, I just learned from Wikipedia, did not have to fake his limp: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2252,53,74,37,324],"tags":[2261,2262,2263,2264,2265,2266],"class_list":{"0":"post-8050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-midweek-music-break","7":"category-movies-media","8":"category-music","9":"category-onlineworld","10":"category-researchresources","11":"tag-scott-joplin","12":"tag-solace","13":"tag-tango","14":"tag-habanera","15":"tag-georges-bizet","16":"tag-carmen","17":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-25Q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8050"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8052,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8050\/revisions\/8052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}