another to produce a bewildering complexity of rhythm. There is abundance of syncopation and the most esoteric rhythmic intricacy in Igor Stravinsky's ballet, Le Sacre du Printemps (on certain pages of this ballet the time-signature changes with every bar), but ragtime is not the word to describe that vivid score, nor is it likely that any one can find much resemblance between Everybody's Doing It or Ragging the Scale and the jota or the prelude to Parsifal.
Regard, for example, the form of Waiting for the Robert E. Lee. A writer in the London Times calls attention to the fact that, although for convenience it is written out in a rhythm of 8, it is really a rhythm of 3, followed by a rhythm of 5, proceeding without warning, occasionally, into the normal rhythm of 8. It is impossible for many trained singers to read ragtime at all.[1] They can decipher the notes, but they do not understand the conventions observed by the composers in setting these notes on paper, conven-
- ↑ European orchestras find the same difficulty. It is seldom that any tune of this character is ever properly performed as regards rhythm and tone-colour by any band in London, Paris, or Berlin, unless that band be American. This is partly due to the fact, doubtless, that ragtime and jazz composers are seldom trained musicians, so that their ideas created at the piano are incorrectly transcribed by alien pens, but more, perhaps, to the fact that there are certain subtleties inherent in the authentic performance of this music which cannot be set down in any current form of notation.
