Scott Joplin

The man who gave ragtime a classical form, and one of America's first professional popular composers

Related

ModernSyncopationPiano

Who he was

Scott Joplin (1868–1917) was born in northeast Texas, the son of a former slave and a domestic worker. He learned piano as a boy and later played in clubs and saloons around Sedalia and St Louis, Missouri, while writing and publishing his own rags. Maple Leaf Rag (1899) made his name; over the next decade he produced dozens of rags, a ballet and two operas, including Treemonisha, which was never fully staged in his lifetime. He spent his working life travelling through a segregated America, and in his last years his health and his publishing chances failed together.

His place

Ragtime was an American piano music of the 1890s: the left hand keeps a march-like beat while the right shifts accents onto weak beats. Most rags were disposable entertainment, but Joplin insisted on fixed sectional forms and asked performers not to rush his tempos. He belongs to the first generation of Americans who made a living by composing, and among the first to demand that this music be treated as art.

What to hear

Hear first the division of the hands. In Maple Leaf Rag the left hand barely changes while the right keeps arriving early or late; syncopation lives in that gap. Then hear how sections are built. The Entertainer runs AABBACCDD, each strain with its own motive, held together by repetition and key change; note how the brief modulation in the C strain lifts the piece. Finally hear tempo and touch. Solace is a slow drag with a Cuban habanera bass and ornamentation that must stay unhurried. Joplin's scores ask for restraint; play him fast and his measured melancholy turns into slapstick. Notice too that the left hand gives only two bass notes per bar, not a continuous run of octaves.

Key works

• Piano rags: Maple Leaf Rag, The Entertainer, Solace, Elite Syncopations
• Opera: Treemonisha (1911)
• Other: the Bethena waltz, the Ragtime Dance ballet

Influence

For decades after publication his rags were treated as cheap dance music. The Entertainer returned through a film score in the 1970s, and Treemonisha was finally staged complete. He turned an entertainment form into structured, repeatable concert music, and jazz piano, theatre organ and film scoring have all kept working on his syncopated vocabulary.

Sources

• 乔普林生平、出版与作品，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Joplin, Scott"；本文为原创表述
• 经典拉格泰姆的段落结构与左手伴奏型，参通行拉格泰姆研究；实例说明为本站听辨提示

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.