Tag Archives: piano sonata

The Cakewalk: A Predeccesor

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William A. Pratt’s Following Up The Band: An African Sonata for Piano, published in 1900, presents an example of how African American influences were making their way into notated music 1.

Following Up The Band: Cake Walk Characteristic Two Step March

 

 

The piece, written as a piano sonata, mimics the sound of a marching band parading through the streets, taking on the style of a characteristic two-step march. The cover of the score, showing men in tailcoats and a woman in Victorian dress, shows imagery associated with the cakewalk, a dance that played a role in shaping early American music. This imagery, along with the music itself, suggests a blend of the social and cultural practices of the time.

 

 

The cakewalk, a dance that was originally created to mock the European minuet, was adopted by Minstrel shows in the late 19th century. As John Jeremiah Sullivan points out, it began as a satire but was adopted by white performers as part of a caricature in their shows, creating a layered and looped irony: African Americans making fun of the minuet, and white people, in turn, making fun of the cakewalk2.

This irony, noted by writers like Amiri Baraka, reflects the complex relationship between African American culture and how mainstream society consumed it, particularly within minstrelsy3. Pratt’s African Sonata for Piano can be seen as part of this broader context. It combines the structure of a European sonata with a two-step rhythm that characterizes marching band music. I can not point to much syncopation or polyrhythms that would have been characteristic of a cakewalk, in the score, which makes me wonder about the performance practice for a sonata with the subtitle An African Sonata for Piano. 

Following up the band : an African sonata for piano

As we learn about the evolution of jazz, ragtime, and blues, the connection of the cakewalk becomes more apparent. Its influence on later musical forms is evident in works like Pratt’s, which, though written for piano, paints a picture of a marching band and the energy of a parade. The imagery on the score’s cover reinforces the connection to the cakewalk, reflecting the cultural dynamics of the time, both celebratory and ironic. This sonata serves as an example of how African American culture, despite being appropriated and caricatured in many contexts, was central to shaping later forms of American music as we know it.

 

1 William A. Pratt, Following up the band : cake walk characteristic two step march (New York, NY: K. Dehnhoff, 1900), accessed October 22 2024, https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/sheetmusic/id/35013/rec/1

2 Sullivan, John Jeremiah. “‘Shuffle Along’ and the Lost History of Black Performance in America” New York Times. March 24, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/magazine/shuffle-along-and-the-painful-history-of-black-performance-in-america.html

3 Baraka, Amiri. Blues People: The Negro Experience in White America and the Music that Developed from it. New York, NY: William Morrow and Company. https://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibliographic_entity|bibliographic_details|452295.

Charles E. Ives: Memos

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When I was searching for Charles Ives correspondence in our music library, I came across a book called Charles E. Ives: Memos.  It is a collection, constructed by John Kirkpatrick from Yale University, of previously unpublished loose leaf writings of Charles Ives.  Some were initially handwritten by Ives himself, while others were written in shorthand by his secretary, Miss Florence Martin, and edited by him later.  After his death in 1954, these loose leafs were collated and organized by when they were written, and ultimately published in this book.  As with any correspondence collection, it does not include every single “memo” Ives ever wrote; it is believed this collection includes approximately three-fifths of his loose leaf writing.

The book is in three main parts: “Pretext,” “Scrapbook,” and “Memories.”  While it looks as if each section is written in prose, that may not necessarily be the case.  Kirkpatrick took the time to mark each piece, sometimes a paragraph or a few sentences, with identifying information revealing where those words came from.  “Pretext” focuses on Ives’ aims, his views on music, critics, and criticism.  “Scrapbook” reveals the composer’s notes on his own music.  “Memories” provides the reader with biographical and autobiographical information.

Below, I have included the pages from “Scrapbook” of Ives’ Second Piano Sonata, since we are studying this piece in class (number 30).  Ives provides insight as to how each of the four movements came to fruition.  He reveals that he never really came up with an ending for the first movement, “Emerson,” or developed one way to play it.  For the second movement, “Hawthorne,” Ives describes the cluster chords on page 25 of the score, how to play them and what effect they are supposed to have on the listener.  In his words about the third, “The Alcotts,” and fourth movements, “Thoreau,” Ives reveals that he had intentions of expanding his orchestration to include organ, strings, woodwinds, etc.  Some of the material from the fourth movement came directly out of a string quartet Ives had been working on but never finished.

Ives - Memos pgs 78-79

Kirkpatrick, J., ed. Charles E. Ives: Memos. New York: W. W. Norton &, 1972. 78-79.

Ives - Memos pgs 80-81

Kirkpatrick, J., ed. Charles E. Ives: Memos. New York: W. W. Norton &, 1972. 80-81.

Ives - Memos pgs 82-83

Kirkpatrick, J., ed. Charles E. Ives: Memos. New York: W. W. Norton &, 1972. 82-83.

 

These notes by the composer about his or her own pieces are eye opening, especially to the performer.  They are very insightful and allow the performer to get into the mindset of the composer, and learn more about exactly what the composer meant when he or she wrote the piece.

 

Kirkpatrick, J., ed. Charles E. Ives: Memos. New York: W. W. Norton &, 1972.