Scott Joplin
Late Romantic · 1868–1917
Scott Joplin turned ragtime into composed, published art. Born in 1868 in northeast Texas, the son of a formerly enslaved father, he made his early living as a traveling pianist before settling in Sedalia, Missouri. Ragtime, the style he refined there, sets a steady march rhythm in the pianist's left hand against a bouncing, off-the-beat melody in the right.
His Maple Leaf Rag, published in 1899, sold in enormous numbers as sheet music, and a royalty deal of a penny per copy gave him something few Black composers of his era had: a steady income from his own work. He wanted more than hits, though. He moved to St. Louis and then New York and poured his ambitions into Treemonisha, an opera he could not get properly staged in his lifetime. He died in 1917; in 1976 the Pulitzer board honored him with a special posthumous citation.
Start with the Maple Leaf Rag, then The Entertainer, played at the easy walking tempo Joplin himself insisted on.
56 works in the catalog, across 3 genres. Log what you listen to with Opus, the classical music journal for iPhone.
Keyboard
- Magnetic Rag
- Maple Leaf Rag
- The Entertainer
- A Breeze from Alabama
- Antoinette
- Bethena
- Binks's Waltz
- Cleopha
- Combination March
- Country Club
- Easy Winners
- Elite Syncopations
- Eugenia
- Euphonic Sounds
- Felicity Rag
- Fig Leaf Rag
- Gladiolus Rag
- Harmony Club Waltz
- Heliotrope Bouquet
- Kismet Rag
- Leola
- Lily Queen
- March Majestic
- Nonpareil
- Original Rags
- Palm Leaf
- Paragon Rag
- Peacherine Rag
- Pine Apple Rag
- Pleasant Moments Ragtime Waltz
- Reflection Rag
- Rose Leaf Rag
- Scott Joplin’s New Rag
- Searchlight Rag
- Silver Swan Rag
- Solace: A Mexican Serenade
- Something Doing
- Stoptime Rag
- Sugar Cane
- Sunflower Slow Drag
- Swipesy Cake Walk
- The Augustan Club Waltzes
- The Cascades
- The Chrysanthemum, an Afro-American Intermezzo
- The Crush Collision March
- The Easy Winners
- The Favorite
- The Ragtime Dance
- The Rosebud March
- The Strenuous Life
- The Sycamore
- Wall Street Rag
- Weeping Willow
Stage
- Treemonisha Opera
Vocal
- The Maple Leaf Rag Song, song for voice and piano
- When Your Hair Is Like the Snow, song for voice and piano
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