Nobody's Business
Axel W. Christensen
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The Cauldron Rag
Axel W. Christensen
The Ragtime King
Axel W. Christensen
Ragtime Rings The Bell
Axel W. Christensen
Song library
Browse piano sheets by Axel W. Christensen on Zen Virtual Piano. In 1902 Axel Christensen made his first publication, a ragtime arrangement of Felix Mendelssohn’s Wedding March. A ragtime arrangement of a wedding march shows the form being applied to music from another tradition. The following year he opened the Christensen School of Popular Music, one of the earliest and foremost academies of its kind, advertising “Ragtime Taught in Ten Lessons.” In 1949 he described the genesis of the company: it seemed to him that the time was ripe for a method which would overcome the difficulties encountered in individual improvisation, a system which would standardize the fundamentals of syncopation for the piano and enable all pianists, amateur or professional, to grasp the idea quickly, easily and inexpensively. A teaching method framed around speed and low cost reads as a promise as much as a lesson plan. His first instruction book, Christensen’s Ragtime Instruction Book Number 1, was published in 1906, and the first branch of his company outside Chicago opened in San Francisco in 1909. He became one of the first pianists to record hand-played piano rolls for QRS Music Technologies in 1912. Hand-played rolls in 1912 put a teacher of the keyboard on record as a performer as well as an instructor. In the 1920s he shifted the focus of his instructional material to the now-popular jazz and novelty styles, and he also recorded for the labels Okeh and Paramount; the decade saw him touring across the country to play in vaudeville theaters. Shifting his teaching materials to jazz and novelty styles in the 1920s shows a teacher following the popular taste that his school had been built on. The outbreak of the Great Depression caused him to downscale his business, closing many of the branches of his school. He married Reine Annette Swanson in 1903, a marriage that lasted until his death, and they had one child, Carle Christensen, in 1909.
Browse piano sheets by Axel W. Christensen on Zen Virtual Piano.
In 1902 Axel Christensen made his first publication, a ragtime arrangement of Felix Mendelssohn’s Wedding March. A ragtime arrangement of a wedding march shows the form being applied to music from another tradition. The following year he opened the Christensen School of Popular Music, one of the earliest and foremost academies of its kind, advertising “Ragtime Taught in Ten Lessons.” In 1949 he described the genesis of the company: it seemed to him that the time was ripe for a method which would overcome the difficulties encountered in individual improvisation, a system which would standardize the fundamentals of syncopation for the piano and enable all pianists, amateur or professional, to grasp the idea quickly, easily and inexpensively. A teaching method framed around speed and low cost reads as a promise as much as a lesson plan.
His first instruction book, Christensen’s Ragtime Instruction Book Number 1, was published in 1906, and the first branch of his company outside Chicago opened in San Francisco in 1909. He became one of the first pianists to record hand-played piano rolls for QRS Music Technologies in 1912. Hand-played rolls in 1912 put a teacher of the keyboard on record as a performer as well as an instructor. In the 1920s he shifted the focus of his instructional material to the now-popular jazz and novelty styles, and he also recorded for the labels Okeh and Paramount; the decade saw him touring across the country to play in vaudeville theaters. Shifting his teaching materials to jazz and novelty styles in the 1920s shows a teacher following the popular taste that his school had been built on. The outbreak of the Great Depression caused him to downscale his business, closing many of the branches of his school.
He married Reine Annette Swanson in 1903, a marriage that lasted until his death, and they had one child, Carle Christensen, in 1909.
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Axel W. Christensen
Axel W. Christensen
Axel W. Christensen
Axel W. Christensen
Common questions
A school Axel Christensen opened in 1903, one of the earliest and foremost academies of its kind, advertising “Ragtime Taught in Ten Lessons.”
In 1949 he said he wanted a system that would standardize the fundamentals of syncopation for the piano so that all pianists, amateur or professional, could grasp the idea quickly, easily and inexpensively.