Dear Forum,  In response to Tomi Hayashi's comments [021217 MMDigest]
that ragtime-like syncope is only heard in Gottschalk's Caribbean-based
music:

> It is clear to me (without experts to quote) that Gottschalk took
> what he heard and elaborated on it.  What he heard included "raggy"
> syncopations, but they seem to mostly appear in his Caribbean-flavored
> music.  "The Banjo" is the only piece I am familiar with that is _not_
> Spanish/Caribbean, and contains "ragged" time, and that only in the
> intro.  On the other hand, many of the Caribbean pieces contain a
> ragged rhythm that is clearly Caribbean.

I think most Gottschalk scholars point to a completely non-Caribbean
piece, "Pasquinade - Caprice" as Gottschalk's most prophetic piece
vis-a-vis ragtime.

In the liner notes to his outstandingingly-performed album, "American
Originals - The Piano Music of Louis Moreau Gottschalk" (Virdiana
Productions, 1997 - www.viridianaproductions.com), Frank French writes:

"Paquinade - Caprice" is a cross-cultural treatment of dance rhythms,
combining elements of a baroque gavotte, and a ragtime-era cakewalk,
making it antiquarian and prospective at the same time.  It can be
heard as a parody of European pomposity with its boastful introduction
to courtly step punctuated by a brash chord ending the first strain.
The succeeding syncopated strain enters with a humorous expression, and
this simple musical material is taken through ingenious transformations
and variation to the closing chord, an exclamation ending on the weak
beat."

However, Mr. Hayashi's point about the interplay between Joplin's music
and Caribbean / Latin influences is well-taken, as noted by a music
critic (William Glackin) who recently reviewed one of Frank French's
performances in San Francisco:

"Today, a native San Franciscan named Frank French, who has come
home to that city after years of pursuing an international career of
research and piano playing as one of Joplin's leading followers, is
demonstrating rag time's other connections, not as part of the ancestry
of jazz, but as a part of an international American music that includes
Latin America and the tango and also New Orleans and the virtuoso piano
music of its Louis Moreau Gottschalk, to say nothing of Cuba, where
French spent years in the mid-1990s writing and playing his own
compositions as well as those of others."

Best regards,

Tim Baxter
Atlanta, GA

P.S.  "Pasquiande", as well as other Gottschalk titles, are available on
piano roll from Meliora Music Rolls: http://members.aol.com/meliorarol