Chapter 7 - 3

03 Music History

Scott Joplin Ragtime

Most people think first of jazz when asked to name a distinctly American form of music.

However, the first homegrown musical genre was actually ragtime.

Ragtime originated as a form of popular entertainment in African-American dance halls between 1900 and 1920.

It gained standing as a serious musical form only later in the century, with the revival of interest in composer Scott Joplin.

A piano player and the best known composer of ragtime, Joplin is now seen as the founder of “classical” ragtime.

It consists of a unique synthesis of African-American folk music and syncopation with 19th-century European classical music.

Joplin was born in Texas sometime in late 1867.

He received early training in classical music from a German piano teacher.

Joplin was also exposed to the marches and Waltzes, of popular band music of his time.

Before the age of twenty, he was earning a living as a piano player.

He traveled with bands around the Midwest and performed in black “gentlemen’s clubs” in his home base of Sedalia, Missouri.

The music played in these clubs in the latter half of the 19th-century was ragtime, an African-American modification of the march that was usually played on the piano.

Like other African-American musical styles, ragtime is defined by a certain type of syncopation.

Melodic accents fall between beats that make the beats more easily heard, encouraging people to dance.

Casual listeners recognize ragtime piano by the repeated pattern of left-hand bass notes and chords accompanying a syncopated melody played by the right hand.

Like many ragtime performers, Joplin composed original numbers and sold sheet music.

Yet he always sought to elevate his ragtime compositions to the status of classical music.

Despite the enormous popularity of his 1899 composition “Maple Leaf Flag,” which attracted a wide audience to ragtime and established it in the musical culture of the early 20th century, Joplin focused on more serious pieces.

such as an opera called Treemonisha.

Joplin’s sheet music publisher, John Stark, claimed that the composer had “lifted ragtime from its low estate and lined it up with Beethoven and Bach”.

This praise was not echoed, though, until long after Joplin’s death.

Ragtime waned in popularity with the emergence of jazz and the onset of World War I.

Joplin’s death in 1917 at the age of fifty was little noticed.

Two decades later, jazz bands began reviving some ragtime tunes in the 1940s.

There was a nostalgic craze in the 1950s starting with publication of the book They All Played Ragtime: The True Story of an American Music.

New rags were composed in the manner of light-hearted novelties.

A more significant revival, which placed Scott Joplin finally in the ranks of major American composers, began in the 19703.

Classical pianist Joshua Rifkin released a recording of Joplin rags in 1971 that became nominated for a Grammy award, and the public was finally reintroduced to Joplin in the context he had desired not as a nostalgic stereotype, but as a serious composer who had stood the test of time.

Widespread interest came with the 1974 movie The Sting, which featured adaptations of Joplin’s rags by popular composer Marvin Hamlisch.

The film’s theme song, “The Entertainer,” reached number three on the Billboard 100 list of popular hits.

Joplin’s triumph came many years after his death, with the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for his special contribution to American music.

In 1983, the US Postal Service issued a stamp of Scott Joplin in its Black Heritage series.

Today, some music historians consider classical ragtime a form of classical music, since it was based more on written sheet music than recordings or performances, but it is more likely the leap in quality taken by Scott Joplin that realized the potential of ragtime as a creative form.

Joplin used African-American folk rags as raw material to break new musical ground.

He carefully put together compositions known for their interesting themes, subtle relationships, and rich harmonies.

As a synthesis of multiple musical genres, ragtime paved the way for an explosive era in American musical innovation.

It continued with jazz and rock ‘n’ roll, earning performers an international following that continues to this day.