It is a little-known fact that certain Bach scholars play classic ragtime; some even compose it.
Below are links to sound files and scores of Three Rags, the first of which I composed during the late 1970s, when one particular Bach scholar became famous for his ground-breaking recordings of piano rags by Scott Joplin.* I have also included a rag by my brother Ted Schulenberg, who became interested in piano ragtime at the same time I did. Please note: the audio files are midi output from Finale scores, so they sound like mechanical piano rolls.
All contents of these pages are (c) copyright 2005 by David Schulenberg (all rights reserved) and may not be further distributed, altered, published, or performed without the express written permission of the author (email me at dschulen@wagner.edu).
Three Rags
I. Augmentation Rag (so called because it contains lots of augmented-sixth chords of various types)
II. Currier Rag (composed while I was staying for the summer in Harvard's Currier House)
III. Music-of-the-Future Rag (a Gesamtkunstwerk that includes a version of Tannhäuser's Venusberg aria as Rossini might have written it and, in the course of tracing Western music history of the past hundred fifty years, demonstrates that the so-called Tristan chord is an inversion of the pc-set that comprises the dominant-seven chord)
Ted Schulenberg: Squirrel Race Rag
*Joshua Rifkin's Scott Joplin: Piano Rags (vol. 1), originally issued as a Nonesuch LP, is now available on CD (Warner B000005IYF).