Christensen’s Ragtime Review. Vol. 1, Nos. 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9 (January–September 1915)

Chicago, Illinois: Axel Christensen School of Popular Music, 1915. Six issues from the inaugural volume of Christensen’s ragtime periodical. Original wrappers; expected wear from use; overall very good.. A rare group of early issues from Christensen’s Ragtime Review, a short-lived publication emerging from the Chicago-based pedagogical enterprise of Danish-American pianist and educator Axel Christensen (1883–1976). Founded in late 1914 at the height of ragtime’s popular ascendancy, the magazine functioned simultaneously as promotional organ, instructional forum, and cultural manifesto for Christensen’s method of popular piano playing, which emphasized chord-based accompaniment, improvisation, and practical musicianship over traditional conservatory training.

Issues typically include instructional essays, commentary on performers and repertoire, advertisements for correspondence courses, and reflections on the evolving aesthetics of popular piano performance. Christensen’s rhetoric positioned him prominently within the ragtime movement—styled in promotional literature as the “Czar of Ragtime”—while acknowledging figures such as Scott Joplin as foundational to the genre’s development.[1] Produced during the period when ragtime intersected with emerging jazz practices, the Review offers insight to the genre in a transitional phase. Some of the specific articles include a course in vaudeville and picture piano playing, several compositions and articles on left hand technique. Early loose issues are seldom encountered outside institutional bound runs; we find none in commerce or auction records.

[1] Edward A. Berlin, Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History (University of California Press, 1980).