Tune Add: Suffragette Waltz - something different

Subject: Tune Add: Suffragette Waltz - something different
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 25 Sep 15 - 11:21 AM

I was ambling through the Internet when I discovered that the Univ. of Missouri - Kansas City has a digitized (MIDI) collection of Kansas City music, including ragtime and other jolly stuff.

James C. Scott was a noted ragtime composer, and I found a waltz he wrote, called "The Suffragette Waltz." I like it; it's different. So I changed it from Eb to C to make it more accesssible for me and removed a repeat, because it was getting too long. It looks to me like you need at least 3 hands to play it, but I'll send the results to Joe for posting, so you can hear (and maybe play) something unusual.

I think it's still too long in the middle, but removing repeats across 5 lines of music takes such a long time.

The date of the piece is 1914.

---

Click to play (joeweb)

Subject: RE: Tune Add: Suffragette Waltz - something different
From: maeve
Date: 25 Sep 15 - 11:53 AM

Here are a couple of arrangements of the tune while we wait to hear leeneia's version:

James Scott's 'The Suffragette Waltz' on Acoustic Guitar -Rod B.

The Suffragette Waltz - Piano -RagtimeDorianHenry

Subject: RE: Tune Add: Suffragette Waltz - something different
From: Jack Campin
Date: 25 Sep 15 - 12:28 PM

Modern edited piano score here:

http://cantorion.org/music/4300/Suffragette-Waltz

Original (minus title page):

http://www.free-scores.com/download-sheet-music.php?pdf=17023

Surprising that the Lester Levy Collection doesn't have it.

I see (via a remarkable book by Danny O. Crew on suffragist sheet music, most of it readable via Google) that there was also a Real Bloomer Polka and Waltz. I am trying to imagine what fake bloomers might have been.

Subject: RE: Tune Add: Suffragette Waltz - something different
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Sep 15 - 07:00 PM

Leeneia's MIDI posted. See the link in her post. It's a really wonderful piece. Seems to me I've been familiar with this piece all my life. I wonder where I came across it. There's an interesting article about James Scott at Wikipedia. Funny that it doesn't mention "Suffragette Waltz."

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Tune Add: Suffragette Waltz - something different
From: Jack Campin
Date: 25 Sep 15 - 07:44 PM

Looking at it as a wind player - it's an utter bugger, with an enormous range and huge fast leaps. You could possibly do it on a flute if you were a lot better than I am.

Subject: RE: Tune Add: Suffragette Waltz - something different
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 26 Sep 15 - 08:51 AM

Unless you have a piano (which people do in this world), you'd need a group to play it. But it would be fun.

One of the things I did for myself was raise the notation (but not the sound) of the lowest line one octave and then add text at the beginning saying "down 8." Otherwise I couldn't begin to figure out what the notes were.

I have a friend who teaches piano, and one year she got a new student, a black girl who had been studying with an old man called Professor Someone. Unfortunately, the Professor had died.

He had taught her to double the bass note of an oompah an octave down, whether it appeared on the page or not. In the MIDI from the university, that doubled bass note by itself is the bottom line. It looks strange, but it's simple, really.

My friend wisely decided not to interfere with any of the Professor's traditions.