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Scott Joplin

 
Music Encyclopedia: Scott Joplin
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(b nr Marshall, tx or Shreveport, la , 24 Nov 1868; d New York, 1 April 1917). American composer and pianist. Known in the late 19th century as the ‘King of Ragtime’, Joplin became famous after the publication in 1899 of his Maple Leaf Rag. He published many rags (some collaborative), 1900-06, including The Entertainer (1902), and later produced more extended compositions, The Ragtime Dance (1902) and the operas A Guest of Honor (1903) and Treemonisha (1911). The latter was not successfully performed in Joplin's lifetime, but was revived in 1972 (Joplin was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1976).


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Biography: Scott Joplin
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While Scott Joplin (1868-1917) is most noted for developing ragtime music, he also wrote music for ballet and opera.

As Johann Strauss is to the waltz and John Philip Sousa is to the march, so is Scott Joplin to ragtime: its guru, chief champion, the figure most closely associated with its composition. It was Joplin's short, hard-driving melodies - and the syncopated backbone he furnished them - that helped define the musical parameters of ragtime, a style that gave voice to the African American experience during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. According to David W. Eagle in the liner notes to Scott Joplin: Greatest Hits, "Ragtime, a type of written piano music, … was actually a hybrid of European and African musical traditions" consisting of "folk melodies (usually of black origin) and commercial music from minstrel shows … overlaid on West African cross-rhythms."

Sadly, for all his accomplishments in putting a new musical form on the map, Joplin spent his final years madly obsessed with a fruitless crusade to enter, if not conquer, another arena: opera, the staid, classical venue accepted by a white community that had for so long ridiculed ragtime as cheap, vulgar, and facile black music.

Many of the details of Joplin's life, like much of his music, have been lost to history. He was born November 24, 1868, in Texarkana, a small city straddling the border of Texas and Arkansas. Joplin's father, Giles, was a railroad laborer who was born into slavery and obtained his freedom five years before his son's birth. Florence Givens Joplin was a freeborn black woman who worked as a laundress and cared for her children. Like many in the black community, the Joplins saw in music a rewarding tool of expression, and the talented family was sought out to perform at weddings, funerals, and parties.

Scott, whose first foray into the world of scales and half notes came on the guitar, discovered a richer lyrical agent in his neighbor's piano. At first, Giles Joplin was concerned that music would sidetrack his son from a solid, wage-earning trade, but he soon saw the clear inventive genius in Scott, who, by the time he was 11, was playing and improvising with unbelievable smoothness. A local German musician, similarly entranced with Scott Joplin's gift, gave the boy free lessons, teaching him the works of European composers, as well as the nuts and bolts of musical theory and harmony.

Articulated Black Experience

In a move not uncommon for young blacks at the time, Joplin left home in his early teens, working as an itinerant pianist at honky-tonks and salons of the Midwest, South, and Southwest. Although some revisionist historians have placed the birth of ragtime at the feet of white composers, such as Irving Berlin, who published "Alexander's Ragtime Band" in 1911, the true origin of the music was to be found in these low rent musical halls. In explaining the black roots of the musical form, Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis wrote in They All Played Ragtime, "Piano ragtime was developed by the Negro from folk melodies and from the syncopations of the plantation banjos. As it grew, it carried its basic principle of displaced accents played against a regular meter to a very high degree of elaboration." The signature fast and frenetic pace of ragtime reflected the jubilant side of the black experience - compared with the melancholy-heavy blues - and the music became, according to Blesh and Janis, America's "most original artistic creation."

In 1893 Joplin played cornet with a band at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where musicians from throughout the country displayed for one another the regional variations of ragtime and where Joplin was encouraged by pianist Otis Saunders to write down his original compositions. Joplin left Chicago leading a male vocal octet, the repertoire of which included plantation medleys, popular songs of the day, and his own compositions. Ironically, Joplin questioned the staying power of ragtime, and his first two published pieces, "A Picture of Her Face" and "Please Say You Will," were conventional, sentimental, waltz songs.

After touring, Joplin settled in Sedalia, Missouri, which would later become known as the "Cradle of Classic Ragtime." Joplin attended music classes at the George R. Smith College for Negroes, played with local bands, and taught piano and composition to other ragtime composers, most notably Arthur Marshall and Scott Hayden. This nurturing side would forever buoy Joplin's reputation within the musical community. In several cases, to help the careers of his lesser known contemporaries, Joplin lent his big-money name to their compositions.

In 1899 Joplin issued his first piano rags, "Original Rags" and "Maple Leaf Rag," the latter named for a social club where he often played. A white music publisher, John Stark, had heard Joplin playing the "Maple Leaf" and, though he was concerned that its technical difficulty exceeded even the grasp of its composer, he gave Joplin a $50 advance and a royalty contract that would bring Joplin one cent per copy sold. Such an arrangement was a wild departure from the norm, which netted composers no royalties and advances rarely surpassing $25. According to Peter Gammond in his book Scott Joplin and the Ragtime Era, Joplin said after he had finished this tune, "One day the 'Maple Leaf' will make me King of Ragtime Composers." Although only about 400 copies were sold in the first year, it had sold nearly half a million copies by the end of 1909.

Made Ragtime Premier Musical Trend

With this financial cushion, Joplin was able to stop playing at the clubs and devote all his time to composition and teaching. Joplin's prolific output, including "Peacherine Rag," "A Breeze from Alabama," "Elite Syncopations," and "The Entertainer," made ragtime the premier musical trend of the time, with Joplin the ingenious trendsetter. His compositions - glossed over by some shallow-minded white critics as the so-called "music of brothels" - showcased his keen understanding of inner voices, chromatic harmonies, and the rich interrelationships of melody and rhythm. William J. Schafer and Johannes Riedel wrote in The Art of Ragtime: Form and Meaning of an Original Black American Art: "The secret of Joplin's ragtime is the subtle balance of polarities, continuity, and repetition of melody and rhythm, much the same combination of energy and lyricism as in the marches of his contemporary, John Philip Sousa."

Despite his material successes and the regal status bestowed on him by ragtime composers and aficionados, Joplin could not easily brush off the disparaging accent the white world gave the term "rag" such condescension, according to Joplin, was a transparent means of discrediting the black music as an artless form of folk entertainment. He gave his compositions elegant names, such as "The Chrysanthemum" and "Heliotrope Bouquet," capturing the lyrical mood and seriousness of classical music. To educate the advanced music student about the intricacies of ragtime, Joplin wrote a series of études, The School of Ragtime: Six Exercises for Piano, published in 1908, when schools promising the quick learning of the music were popping up across the country. John Rublowsky, writing in Black Music in America, quoted Joplin's preface to the series: "Syncopations are no indication of light or trashy music, and to shy bricks at 'hateful ragtime' no longer passes for musical culture. To assist the amateur players in giving the 'Joplin Rags' that weird and intoxicating effect intended by the composer is the object of this work."

But Joplin was not satisfied with the composition of unconnected, short pieces, and his wish to explore the cultural context and functions of ragtime - in short, to explain the deeper meaning of ragtime to the white world - led to his Rag Time Dance. Published in 1902, it was conceived as a sort of ragtime ballet, combining folk dances of the period choreographed by Joplin, and a narrative written by him. Unable to find financial backers, Joplin put up his own money for an ensemble production of the piece. Although The Rag Time Dance proved Joplin's ability to write in extended, musical themes, it did not have the unifying and didactic effects for which he had hoped.

Undeterred and still courting the kind of exposure he believed his music needed, Joplin penned the first ragtime opera, A Guest of Honor. Unfortunately, the opera, which was performed once in a test rehearsal to gauge public sentiment, was never published and was lost. It was apparently Joplin's most inventive musical exercise, but, like The Rag Time Dance, its reception was a major disappointment to him. Blesh and Janis wrote, "The fate of A Guest of Honor is the story of what might have been, for the time was right for syncopated opera. It was certainly time for the romantic-costume idea of light opera as epitomized by the sentimentalities of Victor Herbert to be superseded by something more American, and there is no doubt that America itself was ready for it and that Joplin was the man equipped to write it."

Penned Opera, Suffered Disappointment

But this would be not be the last, nor the most consuming of Joplin's failures. Ever driven to push his own musical limits and to break the shackles in which he believed the white world had bound him, Joplin spent the final years of his life composing and maneuvering to produce a full-fledged opera. Treemonisha is a fable, a folk story about an orphaned girl (the title character), who, by virtue of having an education, is chosen to raise her people above ignorance, superstition, and conjuration to enlightenment. In Treemonisha, Joplin found a forum for the exploration of history and politics, a piece that would never allow the seriousness of his music and of his intellect to be questioned.

With words, choreography, and music by Joplin, Treemonisha was not a ragtime opera, but instead a complex work borrowing the phraseology and themes of some of the popular music of the day: Gilbert and Sullivan's sentimental show music, spirituals, plantation songs, brass band marches, and barber shop harmonies. Schafer and Riedel wrote that Treemonisha was Joplin's "greatest accomplishment as a composer," and that it, having been composed two decades before George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, served as "the first demonstrably great American opera, for it speaks a genuine American musical idiom within the conventional forms of Western opera."

The world at that time, however, was not ready for Joplin's operatic alchemy, in some respects because Joplin's name, so closely associated with ragtime, had begun to fade from the popular mind as ragtime became absorbed by the derivative white tunes of Tin Pan Alley. There was a threadbare performance of Treemonisha in 1915, but without scenery, orchestra, costumes, or lighting, the piece that had been at the center of his musical and intellectual life for more than five years came across as thin and unconvincing. Some writers have suggested that when Joplin died in 1917, he did so brokenhearted, shattered that his entry into the most socially redeeming class of music - opera - had been a bust. "The death certificate said that he had died of 'dementia paralytica-cerebral' which had partly been brought on by syphilis," Gammond wrote, "but it didn't add that it had been hastened by a violent addiction to Treemonisha."

Though Joplin died well after he had reached the heights of his popularity, his contributions to music, particularly in the popularization of an originally black musical form, have never been in question. The mesmerizing interplay of rhythm and melody influenced European composers Claude Debussy and Antonín Dvorák, and ragtime enjoyed a brief revival in the 1970s, when the film The Sting, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford and featuring Joplin's song "The Entertainer," reintroduced music lovers to Joplin's playful brilliance.

"The genius of Joplin was twofold," attested Blesh and Janis, "the tyrannical creative urge and the vision. With the first alone, even had he been, perhaps, the greatest of all the ragtime players, his most perfectly constructed pieces, unscored, would today be one with all the others, lost with a lost time. But his vision was the sculptor's, molding transitory vision into stone's indestructibility. He was at once the one who makes and the one who saves. Through the labor of this one 'homeless itinerant' the vast outcry of a whole dark generation can go on sounding as long as any music will sound."

Further Reading

Blesh, Rudi, and Harriet Janis, They All Played Ragtime, Oak Publications, 1971.

Gammond, Peter, Scott Joplin and the Ragtime Era, St. Martin's, 1975.

Rublowsky, John, Black Music in America, Basic Books, 1971.

Schafer, William J., and Johannes Riedel, The Art of Ragtime: Form and Meaning of an Original Black American Art, Louisiana State University Press, 1973.

New York Times, December 1, 1991.

Additional information for this profile was taken from liner notes by David W. Eagle to Scott Joplin: Greatest Hits, RCA Victor, 1991.

Black Biography: Scott Joplin
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composer; pianist

Personal Information

Born November 24, 1868, in Texarkana, AR; died April 1, 1917, in New York City; son of Giles (a railroad laborer) and Florence (a laundress; maiden name, Givens) Joplin; married twice, to Belle Hayden and Lottie Stokes.
Education: Attended George R. Smith College for Negroes, Sedalia, MO.

Career

Itinerant pianist, touring throughout United States; settled in Sedalia, MO, where he helped pioneer ragtime movement; played cornet at World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893; toured with male vocal octet, c. mid-1890s; published "Maple Leaf Rag," 1899; became full-time composer and music teacher; later composed longer pieces, including the 1911 opera Treemonisha.

Life's Work

As Johann Strauss is to the waltz and John Philip Sousa is to the march, so is Scott Joplin to ragtime: its guru, chief champion, the figure most closely associated with its composition. It was Joplin's short, hard-driving melodies--and the syncopated backbone he furnished them--that helped define the musical parameters of ragtime, a style that gave voice to the African American experience during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. According to David W. Eagle in the liner notes to Scott Joplin: Greatest Hits, "Ragtime, a type of written piano music, ... was actually a hybrid of European and African musical traditions" consisting of "folk melodies (usually of black origin) and commercial music from minstrel shows ... overlaid on West African cross-rhythms."

Sadly, for all his accomplishments in putting a new musical form on the map, Joplin spent his final years madly obsessed with a fruitless crusade to enter, if not conquer, another arena: opera, the staid, classical venue accepted by a white community that had for so long ridiculed ragtime as cheap, vulgar, and facile black music.

Many of the details of Joplin's life, like much of his music, have been lost to history. He was born November 24, 1868, in Texarkana, a small city straddling the border of Texas and Arkansas. Joplin's father, Giles, was a railroad laborer who was born into slavery and obtained his freedom five years before his son's birth. Florence Givens Joplin was a freeborn black woman who worked as a laundress and cared for her children. Like many in the black community, the Joplins saw in music a rewarding tool of expression, and the talented family was sought out to perform at weddings, funerals, and parties.

Scott, whose first foray into the world of scales and half notes came on the guitar, discovered a richer lyrical agent in his neighbor's piano. At first, Giles Joplin was concerned that music would sidetrack his son from a solid, wage-earning trade, but he soon saw the clear inventive genius in Scott, who, by the time he was 11, was playing and improvising with unbelievable smoothness. A local German musician, similarly entranced with Scott Joplin's gift, gave the boy free lessons, teaching him the works of European composers, as well as the nuts and bolts of musical theory and harmony.

In a move not uncommon for young blacks at the time, Joplin left home in his early teens, working as an itinerant pianist at honky-tonks and salons of the Midwest, South, and Southwest. Although some revisionist historians have placed the birth of ragtime at the feet of white composers, such as Irving Berlin, who published "Alexander's Ragtime Band" in 1911, the true origin of the music was to be found in these low rent musical halls. In explaining the black roots of the musical form, Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis wrote in They All Played Ragtime, "Piano ragtime was developed by the Negro from folk melodies and from the syncopations of the plantation banjos. As it grew, it carried its basic principle of displaced accents played against a regular meter to a very high degree of elaboration." The signature fast and frenetic pace of ragtime reflected the jubilant side of the black experience--compared with the melancholy-heavy blues--and the music became, according to Blesh and Janis, America's "most original artistic creation."

In 1893 Joplin played cornet with a band at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where musicians from throughout the country displayed for one another the regional variations of ragtime and where Joplin was encouraged by pianist Otis Saunders to write down his original compositions. Joplin left Chicago leading a male vocal octet, the repertoire of which included plantation medleys, popular songs of the day, and his own compositions. Ironically, Joplin questioned the staying power of ragtime, and his first two published pieces, "A Picture of Her Face" and "Please Say You Will," were conventional, sentimental, waltz songs.

After touring, Joplin settled in Sedalia, Missouri, which would later become known as the "Cradle of Classic Ragtime." Joplin attended music classes at the George R. Smith College for Negroes, played with local bands, and taught piano and composition to other ragtime composers, most notably Arthur Marshall and Scott Hayden. This nurturing side would forever buoy Joplin's reputation within the musical community. In several cases, to help the careers of his lesser known contemporaries, Joplin lent his big-money name to their compositions.

In 1899 Joplin issued his first piano rags, "Original Rags" and "Maple Leaf Rag," the latter named for a social club where he often played. A white music publisher, John Stark, had heard Joplin playing the "Maple Leaf" and, though he was concerned that its technical difficulty exceeded even the grasp of its composer, he gave Joplin a $50 advance and a royalty contract that would bring Joplin one cent per copy sold. Such an arrangement was a wild departure from the norm, which netted composers no royalties and advances rarely surpassing $25. According to Peter Gammond in his book Scott Joplin and the Ragtime Era, Joplin said after he had finished this tune, "One day the 'Maple Leaf' will make me King of Ragtime Composers." Although only about 400 copies were sold in the first year, it had sold nearly half a million copies by the end of 1909.

With this financial cushion, Joplin was able to stop playing at the clubs and devote all his time to composition and teaching. Joplin's prolific output, including "Peacherine Rag," "A Breeze from Alabama," "Elite Syncopations," and "The Entertainer," made ragtime the premier musical trend of the time, with Joplin the ingenious trendsetter. His compositions--glossed over by some white critics as the so-called "music of brothels"--showcased his keen understanding of inner voices, chromatic harmonies, and the rich interrelationships of melody and rhythm. William J. Schafer and Johannes Riedel wrote in The Art of Ragtime: Form and Meaning of an Original Black American Art: "The secret of Joplin's ragtime is the subtle balance of polarities, continuity, and repetition of melody and rhythm, much the same combination of energy and lyricism as in the marches of his contemporary, John Philip Sousa."

Despite his material successes and the regal status bestowed on him by ragtime composers and aficionados, Joplin could not easily brush off the disparaging accent the white world gave the term "rag"; such condescension, according to Joplin, was a transparent means of discrediting the black music as an artless form of folk entertainment. He gave his compositions elegant names, such as "The Chrysanthemum" and "Heliotrope Bouquet," capturing the lyrical mood and seriousness of classical music. To educate the advanced music student about the intricacies of ragtime, Joplin wrote a series of etudes, The School of Ragtime: Six Exercises for Piano, published in 1908, when schools promising the quick learning of the music were popping up across the country. John Rublowsky, writing in Black Music in America, quoted Joplin's preface to the series: "Syncopations are no indication of light or trashy music, and to shy bricks at 'hateful ragtime' no longer passes for musical culture. To assist the amateur players in giving the 'Joplin Rags' that weird and intoxicating effect intended by the composer is the object of this work."

But Joplin was not satisfied with the composition of unconnected, short pieces, and his wish to explore the cultural context and functions of ragtime--in short, to explain the deeper meaning of ragtime to the white world--led to his Rag Time Dance. Published in 1902, it was conceived as a sort of ragtime ballet, combining folk dances of the period choreographed by Joplin, and a narrative written by him. Unable to find financial backers, Joplin put up his own money for an ensemble production of the piece. Although The Rag Time Dance proved Joplin's ability to write in extended, musical themes, it did not have the unifying and didactic effects for which he had hoped.

Undeterred and still courting the kind of exposure he believed his music needed, Joplin penned the first ragtime opera, A Guest of Honor. Unfortunately, the opera, which was performed once in a test rehearsal to gauge public sentiment, was never published and was lost. It was apparently Joplin's most inventive musical exercise, but, like The Rag Time Dance, its reception was a major disappointment to him. Blesh and Janis wrote, "The fate of A Guest of Honor is the story of what might have been, for the time was right for syncopated opera. It was certainly time for the romantic-costume idea of light opera as epitomized by the sentimentalities of Victor Herbert to be superseded by something more American, and there is no doubt that America itself was ready for it and that Joplin was the man equipped to write it."

But this would not be the last, nor the most consuming of Joplin's failures. Ever driven to push his own musical limits and to break the shackles in which he believed the white world had bound him, Joplin spent the final years of his life composing and maneuvering to produce a full-fledged opera. Treemonisha is a fable, a folk story about an orphaned girl (the title character), who, by virtue of having an education, is chosen to raise her people above ignorance, superstition, and conjuration to enlightenment. In Treemonisha, Joplin found a forum for the exploration of history and politics, a piece that would never allow the seriousness of his music and of his intellect to be questioned.

With words, choreography, and music by Joplin, Treemonisha was not a ragtime opera, but instead a complex work borrowing the phraseology and themes of some of the popular music of the day: Gilbert and Sullivan's sentimental show music, spirituals, plantation songs, brass band marches, and barber shop harmonies. Schafer and Riedel wrote that Treemonisha was Joplin's "greatest accomplishment as a composer," and that it, having been composed two decades before George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, served as "the first demonstrably great American opera, for it speaks a genuine American musical idiom within the conventional forms of Western opera."

The world at that time, however, was not ready for Joplin's operatic alchemy, in some respects because Joplin's name, so closely associated with ragtime, had begun to fade from the popular mind as ragtime became absorbed by the derivative white tunes of Tin Pan Alley. There was a performance of Treemonisha in 1915, but without scenery, orchestra, costumes, or lighting, the piece that had been at the center of his musical and intellectual life for more than five years came across as thin and unconvincing. Some writers have suggested that when Joplin died in 1917, he did so brokenhearted, shattered that his entry into the most socially redeeming class of music--opera--had been a bust. "The death certificate said that he had died of 'dementia paralytica-cerebral' which had partly been brought on by syphilis," Gammond wrote, "but it didn't add that it had been hastened by a violent addiction to Treemonisha. "

Though Joplin died well after he had reached the heights of his popularity, his contributions to music, particularly in the popularization of an originally black musical form, have never been in question. The mesmerizing interplay of rhythm and melody influenced European composers Claude Debussy and Antonin Dvorak, and ragtime enjoyed a brief revival in the 1970s, when the film The Sting, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford and featuring Joplin's song "The Entertainer," reintroduced music lovers to Joplin's playful brilliance.

"The genius of Joplin was twofold," attested Blesh and Janis, "the tyrannical creative urge and the vision. With the first alone, even had he been, perhaps, the greatest of all the ragtime players, his most perfectly constructed pieces, unscored, would today be one with all the others, lost with a lost time. But his vision was the sculptor's, molding transitory vision into stone's indestructibility. He was at once the one who makes and the one who saves. Through the labor of this one 'homeless itinerant' the vast outcry of a whole dark generation can go on sounding as long as any music will sound."

Awards

Posthumous Pulitzer Prize, 1976; commemorative postage stamp, 1983.

Works

Selective Discography

  • King of Ragtime Writers (From Classic Piano Rolls), Biograph, 1989.
  • Scott Joplin: Greatest Hits, RCA Victor, 1991.
  • Elite Syncopators: Classic Ragtime From Rare Piano Rolls, Biograph.
  • The Entertainer: Classic Ragtime From Rare Piano Rolls, Biograph.
  • Joplin: The Original Rags, 1896-1904, Zeta.
  • Scott Joplin, Biograph.
  • Ragtime, Volume 3: Early 1900s, Biograph.
  • Ragtime, Volume 4: The Entertainer, Biograph.
Compositions
  • Stage The Rag Time Dance, 1902.
  • Treemonisha (opera), 1911.
  • A Guest of Honor (opera).
  • Piano Rags "Original Rags," 1899.
  • "Maple Leaf Rag," 1899.
  • "Peacherine Rag," 1901.
  • "A Breeze from Alabama," 1902.
  • "Elite Syncopations," 1902.
  • "The Entertainer, 1902.
  • "Palm Leaf," 1903.
  • "Weeping Willow," 1903.
  • "The Chrysanthemum," 1904.
  • "Eugenia," 1905.
  • "Heliotrope Bouquet," 1907.
  • "Nonpareil," 1907.
  • "Fig Leaf Rag," 1908.
  • "Country Club," 1909.
  • "Stoptime Rag," 1910.
  • "Felicity Rag," 1911.
  • "Scott Joplin's New Rag," 1912.
  • "Kismet," 1913.
  • "Magnetic Rag," 1914.
  • "Reflection Rag," 1917.
  • Additional works for piano "Combination March," 1896.
  • "Great Collision March," 1896.
  • "Harmony Club Waltz," 1896.
  • "Augustan Club Waltz," 1901.
  • "Cleopha," 1902.
  • "Bink's Waltz," 1905.
  • "Antoinette," 1906.
  • "Solace," 1909.
  • Other (including waltzes) "A Picture of Her Face," 1895.
  • "Please Say You Will," 1895.
  • "I Am Thinking of My Pickaninny Days," 1901.
  • "Little Black Baby," 1903.
  • "Sarah Dear," 1905.
  • "When Your Hair Is Like the Snow," 1907.
  • Also composer of The School of Ragtime: Six Exercises for Piano, 1908.

Further Reading

Books

  • Blesh, Rudi, and Harriet Janis, They All Played Ragtime, Oak Publications, 1971.
  • Gammond, Peter, Scott Joplin and the Ragtime Era, St. Martin's, 1975.
  • Rublowsky, John, Black Music in America, Basic Books, 1971.
  • Schafer, William J., and Johannes Riedel, The Art of Ragtime: Form and Meaning of an Original Black American Art, Louisiana State University Press, 1973.
Periodicals
  • New York Times, December 1, 1991.
  • Additional information for this profile was taken from liner notes by David W. Eagle from Scott Joplin: Greatest Hits, RCA Victor, 1991.

— Isaac Rosen

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Scott Joplin
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(born Nov. 24, 1868, Bowie county, Texas, U.S. — died April 1, 1917, New York, N.Y.) U.S. pianist and composer, the outstanding exponent of ragtime music. Joplin was a classically trained pianist and composer. His compositions, including "Maple Leaf Rag" (1899), ragtime's first hit, and "The Entertainer" (1902), show an acute logic that transcends the sometimes mechanical dimension of the genre. He also wrote a ballet and two operas, including Treemonisha (1911), as well as several didactic works. He suffered a nervous collapse in 1911 and was institutionalized in 1916.

For more information on Scott Joplin, visit Britannica.com.

Dictionary of Dance: Scott Joplin
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Joplin, Scott (b Texarkana, Tex., 24 Nov. 1868, d New York, 1 Apr. 1917). US ragtime pianist and composer. The resurgence of interest in ragtime music in the 1970s resulted in a number of ballets set to Joplin's music, the best known of which is MacMillan's Elite Syncopations (Royal Ballet, 1974). Other Joplin ballets include J. Waring's Eternity Bounce (1973), A. Cata's Ragtime (1973), G. Veredon's The Ragtime Dance Company (1974), and B. Moreland's Prodigal Son in Ragtime (London Festival Ballet, 1974).

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Scott Joplin
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Joplin, Scott (jŏp'lĭn), 1868-1917, American ragtime pianist and composer, b. Texarkana, Tex. Self-taught, Joplin left home in his early teens to seek his fortune in music. He lived in St. Louis (1885-93), playing in saloons and bordellos. In 1894 he moved to Sedalia, Mo., and played second cornet in a local band. For the next two years Joplin toured with a vocal ensemble he had formed and made his first efforts at composing ragtime. When the group disbanded (1896), he returned to Sedalia, where he stayed about four years. During this time he studied music at George Smith College, an educational institution for blacks sponsored by the Methodist Church.

In 1899, Joplin published the "Maple Leaf Rag," and its success was instantaneous. However, his next two major efforts, a folk ballet titled Rag Time Dance (1902) and a ragtime opera called A Guest of Honor (never published) were failures. Joplin continued to write ragtime music and moved (1909) to New York City, where he had considerable success until 1915, when at his own expense he produced a concert version of a second ragtime opera, Treemonisha (1911), a racial and spiritual parable that failed to gain recognition. This failure and the declining interest in ragtime are thought to have affected his personality, which became moody and temperamental. In 1916 he was confined to the Manhattan State Hospital, where he died the following year.

Joplin's rags were highly innovative, characterized by a lyricism and suppleness that elevated ragtime from honky-tonk piano music to a serious art form. Some of his compositions are "The Entertainer" (1902), "Rose Leaf Rag" (1907), "Gladiolus Rag" (1907), "Fig Leaf Rag" (1908), and "Magnetic Rag" (1914). A revival of interest in ragtime occurred in the 1970s. Several of Joplin's rags were used as background music for the Hollywood film The Sting (1973), and a Joplin Festival was held at Sedalia in 1974.

Bibliography

See R. Blesh and H. Janis, They All Played Ragtime (rev. ed. 1966); P. Gammond, Scott Joplin and the Ragtime Era (1975); J. Haskins and K. Benson, Scott Joplin (1978); E. A. Berlin, King of Ragtime (1994).

Fine Arts Dictionary: Joplin, Scott
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An African-American ragtime pianist and composer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “Maple Leaf Rag” and “The Entertainer” are two of his best-known works.

Artist: Scott Joplin
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Scott Joplin

Similar Artists:

Max Morath, Dick Wellstood, Dick Hyman, Eubie Blake, James Scott, Arthur Marshall, Charles Thompson, Tom Turpin

Followers:

James Scott, Joshua Rifkin, Billy Mayerl, J. Russel Robinson, Arthur Pryor, May Aufderheide, Julverne, Bennie Moten, Steve Hancoff, Andy Fielding, Gus Haenschen, Zez Confrey

Performed Songs By:

Joseph Lamb

Worked With:

Richard Zimmerman

Formal Connection With:

Scott Hayden, J. Russel Robinson, Wilbur Sweatman
  • Born: November 24, 1868, Marshall, TX
  • Died: April 01, 1917, New York, NY
  • Active: 1800s, 1900s, '10s
  • Genres: Jazz
  • Instrument: Piano, Composer
  • Representative Albums: "Ragtime, Vol. 2 (1900-1910)," "The Entertainer, Vol. 4," "King of the Ragtime Writers"
  • Representative Songs: "Maple Leaf Rag," "The Entertainer," "Elite Syncopations"

Biography

Scott Joplin was "the King of Ragtime Writers," a composer who elevated "banjo piano playing," a lowly entertainment associated with saloons and brothels, into an American art form loved by millions. Born in Texas in either 1867 or 1868, Joplin was raised in Texarkana, the son of a laborer and former slave. As a child, Joplin taught himself piano on an instrument belonging to a white family that granted him access to it, and ultimately studied with a local, German-born teacher who introduced Joplin to classical music. Joplin attended high school in Sedalia, MO, a town that would serve as Joplin's home base during his most prosperous years, and where a museum now bears his name.

In 1891, the first traceable evidence of Joplin's music career is found, placing him in a minstrel troupe in Texarkana. In 1893, he played in Chicago during the Columbian Exposition was held, reportedly leading a band with a cornet. Afterward, Joplin settled in Sedalia, worked with other brass bands and founding a vocal group called the Texas Medley Quartette. During an 1895 appearance in Syracuse, NY, the quality of Joplin's original songs for the Texas Medley Quartette so impressed a group of local businessmen that they arranged for Joplin's first publications. Around 1896, Joplin enrolled in Sedalia's George R. Smith College for Negroes to study formally, publishing a few more pieces in the years to follow.

In 1899, publisher John Stark of Sedalia issued Joplin's second ragtime composition, "Maple Leaf Rag." It didn't catch on like wildfire immediately, but within a few years the popularity of "Maple Leaf Rag" was so enormous that it made Joplin's name; and Joplin earned a small percentage of income from it for the rest of his days, helping to stabilize him in his last years. By the end of 1899, Joplin presented his first ambitious work, the ballet The Ragtime Dance, at the Wood Opera House in Sedalia. It didn't appear in print until 1902, and then only in a truncated form. Joplin moved to St. Louis in 1901, as did Stark, who set his new publishing venture up as "The House of Classic Rags." Joplin wrote many of the other rags he is known for during this time, including "The Entertainer," "The Easy Winners," and "Elite Syncopations."

In 1903, Joplin organized a touring company to perform his first opera, A Guest of Honor, which foundered after a couple of months, leaving Joplin destitute. He had recovered well enough to appear at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair to present his rag "The Cascades," which proved his second great success. Joplin also married for a second time to a woman who died only a few weeks into their marriage after a bout with pneumonia, plunging Joplin into another bout of despair. During a visit to Chicago in 1907 he renewed an acquaintance with the St. Louis pianist Louis Chauvin, who did not long outlast the visit. Joplin utilized a strain drawn from Chauvin's playing into the finest of his "collaborative" rags, "Heliotrope Bouquet." This was published after Joplin moved to New York in 1907. Stark had also resettled there, and they resumed their partnership to some degree, but Joplin also published through Seminary Music, likewise home to aspiring songwriter Irving Berlin. Through Seminary many of the best of his late works appeared, such as "Pine Apple Rag," the transparently beautiful "Mexican serenade" "Solace," and the harmonically adventurous "Euphonic Sounds."

From 1911 until his death in 1917 most of Joplin's efforts went into his second opera, Treemonishia, which he heard in concert but never managed to stage during his own lifetime. With his third wife, Lotte Joplin, Joplin formed his own music company and published his final piano rag, "Magnetic Rag" (1914), one of his best. By this time, debilitating, long-term effects of syphilis were beginning to break down Joplin's health, although he did manage to make seven hand-played piano rolls in 1916 and 1917; though heavily edited, these rolls are as close as one is likely to get to hearing Joplin's own playing. One of them is W.C. Handy's "Ole Miss Rag," which suggests that Joplin might have had a hand in its composition or arrangement. Joplin was tireless and selfless in his advocacy of his fellow ragtime composers, collaborating with James Scott, Arthur Marshall, Louis Chauvin, and Scott Hayden and helping to arrange others by Artie Matthews and the white New Jersey composer Joseph Lamb, whose work Joplin pitched to Stark.

"Maple Leaf Rag" remained a constant in popular music throughout the Jazz Age, but the better part of Joplin's work remained unknown until the "ragtime revival" of the early '70s, during which "Scott Joplin" became a household name and Treemonishia was finally staged by the Houston Grand Opera. Although primary sources on Joplin's music were still extant as late as the late '40s, today not a single manuscript page in Joplin's hand still exists and only three photographs of him have survived, along with precious few first-hand quotations. Joplin died in a mental facility convinced that he had failed in his mission to achieve success as an African-American composer of serious music. Were he alive today, Joplin would be astounded to learn that, a century after his work was first printed, he is the most successful African-American composer of serious music that ever lived -- by far. Some of his works have been recorded hundreds of times and arranged for practically every conceivable instrumental combination, played by everything from symphony orchestras to ice cream trucks. For a couple of generations of Americans who have even never heard of Stephen Foster, the music of Scott Joplin represents the old, traditional order of all things American. ~ Uncle Dave Lewis, All Music Guide
Discography: Scott Joplin
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Gold Collection

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Scott Joplin: Greatest Hits

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Best of Scott Joplin: King of Ragtime "The Entertainer"

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Original Piano Rolls 1899-1916

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Complete Works of Scott Joplin, Vol. 4

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Complete Works of Scott Joplin, Vol. 5

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Complete Works of Scott Joplin, Vol. 1-5

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Ragtimes by the King of Ragtime Writers

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Entertainer [Blu Mountain]

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Gold Collection [Retro]

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Actor: Scott Joplin
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  • Born: Nov 24, 1868 in Texarcana, Texas
  • Died: Apr 01, 1917 in New York City, New York
  • Active: '70s-'80s, 2000s
  • Major Genres: Crime, Drama
  • Career Highlights: The Sting, Scott Joplin, The Blue Tooth Virgin
  • First Major Screen Credit: The Sting (1973)

Biography

This American composer of splendidly lyrical, rhythmic, and melodious ragtime pieces, marches, waltzes, and stage works has finally gained recognition since the early '70s for his unique synthesis of popular and classical concert musics.

Not much is known of Joplin's early musical influences other than the musical abilities of his father and mother, and that he received some training from local piano teachers. In the early 1880s, young Joplin organized a vocal group that toured the Western and Midwestern states. At the age of 16 or 17, he went to St. Louis and played wherever he could, including cathouses and bars. He organized a band for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and met Otis Saunders there who urged him to notate his pieces. Joplin left for Sedalia, MO, where he enrolled at the George R. Smith College for Negroes to study formal aspects of music. Joplin's fame was made with the publication of the Maple Leaf Rag in 1899. Joplin became pianist and director for the opera company run by publisher John Stark in St. Louis. Around 1907, Joplin moved to New York City and set up his own publishing company.

Joplin authored 38 rags several of which he orchestrated, six highly rhythmic marches, five waltzes, ten songs, a dance with choreography entitled The Ragtime Dance (1906), the musical comedy If, and two operas both containing ragtime and African-American folk music styles: A Guest of Honor (1903) written in St. Louis, possibly presented by Stark's opera company (and, tragically, lost while on its way to the copyright office), and the brilliant Treemonisha (1911) which was re-orchestrated by Gunther Schuller and finally premiered in 1972.

The struggles, joys, and loves in Joplin's life are movingly depicted in Jeremy Paul Kagan's Scott Joplin (1977) starring Billy Dee Williams in the title role. The soundtrack contains quotes from many of Joplin's works used to underscore a wide range of emotions. There is also an original song by Harold Johnson entitled Hangover Blues.

The Joplin revival was considerably aided by the popularity of George Roy Hill's The Sting (1973) set in 1930s Chicago and employing five of Joplin's rags orchestrated and arranged ("adapted") by Marvin Hamlisch: The Entertainer (1902) used as the theme song, The Easy Winners (1901), Gladiolus Rag (1907), Pine Apple Rag (1908), The Ragtime Dance, and Solace (1909). The ragtime music is employed for its energetic qualities but mostly to supply a humorous aspect to the action. Jeremy Paul Kagan's The Sting 2 (1983) employs the same strategy as it mixes Joplin's music with an original score by Lalo Schifrin.

Joplin pieces are also used to create "old timey" atmospheres in the 1912 segment of Hood Ornament (1979) which uses Scott Joplin's New Rag (1912), which was a popular hit at the time, and in the documentary Oz: The American Fairyland (1997), the story of writer and filmmaker L. Frank Baum who created the Oz series of books and early cinema versions of the Oz stories, which uses The Entertainer. ~ "Blue" Gene Tyranny, All Movie Guide
Wikipedia: Scott Joplin
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Scott Joplin

Background information
Birth name Scott Joplin
Born c. 1867
Origin Texarkana, Texas, U.S.
Died April 1, 1917
Genres Ragtime, March, Waltz, and Song
Occupations Composer
musician, and pianist
Instruments Piano
Years active 1895-1917

Scott Joplin (between July 1867 and January 1868 – April 1, 1917) was an African-American composer and pianist, born near Texarkana, Texas, into the first post-slavery generation. He achieved fame for his unique ragtime compositions, and was dubbed the "King of Ragtime." During his brief career, he wrote forty-four original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas. One of his first pieces, the "Maple Leaf Rag", became ragtime's first and most influential hit, and remained so for a century.

He was "blessed with an amazing ability to improvise at the piano," writes opera historian Elise Kirk, and was able to enlarge his talents "with the music he heard around him," which was rich with the sounds of gospel hymns and spirituals, dance music, plantation songs, syncopated rhythms, blues, and choruses.[1]:190 After he studied music with several local teachers, his talent was noticed by a German immigrant music teacher, Julius Weiss, who chose to give the 11-year-old boy lessons free of charge. He was taught music theory, keyboard technique, and an appreciation of various European music styles, such as folk and opera. As an adult, Joplin also studied at an all-black college in Sedalia, Missouri.

"He composed music unlike any ever before written," according to Joplin biographer Edward Berlin.[2] Eventually, "the piano-playing public clamored for his music; newspapers and magazines proclaimed his genius; musicians examined his scores with open admiration."[3]:3 Ragtime historian Susan Curtis noted that "when Joplin syncopated his way into the hearts of millions of Americans at the turn of the century, he helped revolutionize American music and culture."[4]

Joplin's music returned to popularity in the early 1970s with the release of a million-selling album of Joplin's rags recorded by Joshua Rifkin followed by the Academy award-winning movie The Sting which featured several of his compositions, such as "The Entertainer". In 1976 Joplin was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize.[5]

Contents

Early years

Family life

Scott Joplin, the second of six children, was born in eastern Texas, outside of Texarkana,[6] to Giles Joplin and Florence Givins. Although for many years his birth date was accepted as November 24, 1868, modern research by ragtime historian Edward A. Berlin has revealed that this is almost certainly inaccurate - the most likely approximate date being the second half of 1867.[7] In addition to Scott, other children of Jiles and Florence were Monroe, Robert, Rose, William, and Johnny.[8] His father was an ex-slave from North Carolina and his mother was a freeborn woman from Kentucky.[9] After moving to Texarkana a few years after Scott was born, Giles began working as a common laborer for the railroad. Florence did laundry and cleaning for additional income. Joplin was given a rudimentary musical education by his musical family; at the age of seven Scott was allowed to play piano in both a neighbor's house and at the home of an attorney while his mother worked.[3]:6

Early Influences

At some point in the early 1880s, Giles Joplin left the family for another woman, leaving Florence to provide her children through domestic work. Biographer Susan Curtis speculated that his mother's support of Joplin's musical education was an important causal factor in this separation, his father considering that it diverted the boy away from practical employment which would have supplemented the family income.[10]:38 While she worked, Scott would often use her employer's piano when there was one in the house. According to a family friend, "the young Scott was serious, ambitious, and spoke of his intention to make something of himself." Joplin went to school and studied music under several local teachers, including a German immigrant called Julius Weiss who had a significant influence.[3]:7

Impressed by Joplin's talent, Weiss taught him for free, tutoring him in various forms of Classical music as well as folk and opera. In addition, he encouraged the young composer's aspirations and ambitions,[3]:7-8 even helping Joplin's mother acquire their first used piano from one of his clients who had bought a new one.[11] Weiss had studied music at a university in Germany and was listed in the town's records as "Professor of music." Joplin never forgot him, and years later after he became successful, sent him gifts of money from time to time, when Weiss was old and ill.[11]

Joplin played music at church gatherings and for non-religious entertainments such as African-American dances. Although it is likely he played well-known "waltzes, polkas, and schottisches", eye-witnesses recalled him playing his own compositions; "He did not have to play anybody else's music. He made up his own, and it was beautiful; he just got his music out of the air."[10]:38

The combination of classical music, the musical atmosphere present around Texakana (including work songs, gospel hymns, spirituals and dance music) and Joplin's "natural ability" has been cited as contributing significantly to the invention of a new style which blended "African-American and European forms and melodies" and first became celebrated in the 1890s; ragtime.[10]:38

Music career

Early career

In the late 1880s, having performed at various local events as a teenager, he chose to give up his only steady employment as a laborer with the railroad and left Texarkana to "support himself as an itinerant musician,"[12] He was soon to discover that there were few opportunities for black pianists, however; besides the church, brothels were one of the few options for obtaining steady work. Joplin played pre-ragtime 'jig-piano' in various red-light districts throughout the mid-South.[1] He also managed to fit in classes in composition and counterpoint at one of the nation's first all-black academic institutions, the George R. Smith College for Negroes in Sedalia, Missouri.[citation needed]

In 1893 he made his way to Chicago to perform for the visitors to the World's Fair, although not as an official performer. Instead, like other black entertainers, he found work in the cafés that lined the fair and the city's seedy and corrupt [13] "Tenderloin" district. While in Chicago he formed his first band and began arranging music for the group to perform. Although the World's Fair was "not congenial to African Americans," he still found that his music, as well as that of other black performers, was popular with visitors.[12]:443 By 1897 ragtime had become a national craze in American cities, and was described by the Dispatch News as "a veritable call of the wild, which mightily stirred the pulses of city bred people."[14]:36

Ragtime composer and pianist

Further information: List of compositions by Scott Joplin

Composition style

When Joplin was learning the piano, serious musical circles condemned ragtime because of its association with the vulgar and inane songs "cranked out by the tune-smiths of Tin Pan Alley."[10]:37 As a composer Joplin refined ragtime, elevating it above the low and unrefined form played by the "wandering honky tonk pianists... playing mere dance music" of popular imagination.[15] This new art form, descibed by writer David A Jasen as the Classic rag, combined Afro-American folk music's sycopation and nineteenth-century European romanticism, with its harmonic schemes and its march-like tempos.[16][17] In the words of one critic,"Ragtime was basically... an Afro-American version of the polka, or its analog, the Sousa-style march."[18] With this as a foundation, Joplin intended his compositions to be played exactly as he wrote them - without improvisation.[14]

It has been speculated that Joplin's achievements were influenced by his classically trained German music teacher Julius Weiss, who may have brought a Polka rhythmic sensibility from the old country to the 11-year old.[19] As Curtis put it "The educated German could open up the door to a world of learning and music of which young Joplin was largely unaware."[10]:37

Third edition cover of "Maple Leaf Rag", Joplin's breakthrough hit

First hit: "Maple Leaf Rag"

He moved to Sedalia, Missouri in 1894, and began working as a pianist in the Maple Leaf Club and the Black 400, social clubs for "respectable [black] gentlemen". According to Scott, he had established himself "as Sedalia's best piano player," although a number of his friends said that he played slowly, but exceedingly well. "He also began composing songs and taught music."[14] See also "Great Crush Collision March" (composed in 1895).

In 1899, Joplin sold what would soon become one of his most famous pieces, "Maple Leaf Rag", to John Stark & Son, a Sedalia music publisher. It was an immediate success and was ragtime's first hit, remaining so for a century. It also served as a model for the hundreds of rags to come from future composers. Jazz historian Bill Kirchner notes that "Joplin influenced his peers, not only in the form of the rag but in techniques of composition, especially in subtle uses of syncopation." He adds however, that although other composers had studied and learned from "Maple Leaf," and acknowledged its lead, except for Joseph Lamb, they "failed to enlarge upon it." [9] Nonetheless, with the "ebullient, ever-popular" "Maple Leaf Rag", Joplin soon became known as King of Ragtime, according to opera historian Elise Kirk, and Tennison calling him the Father of Ragtime.[19]

As the first instrumental to sell over one million copies of sheet music, "Maple Leaf Rag" put Joplin on the top of the list of ragtime performers and moved ragtime into a popular musical form. He lived in St. Louis from 1900 to 1903, where he then produced some of his best-known works, such as "The Entertainer," "Elite Syncopations," "March Majestic," and "The Ragtime Dance." Throughout his life he composed at least forty rags, what Kirk describes as "creative miniatures," that he considered "classical" music. She adds, "And he succeeded. Joplin's piano rags are more tuneful, contrapuntal, infectious, and harmonically colorful than any others of his era."[1]

But Kirchner finds it "fatefully odd that Joplin's work, the guiding influence in ragtime's earliest days, did not enjoy continuing exposure." Even after the success of "Maple Leaf," he composed a body of rags, that Kirchner writes are "of increasing lyrical beauty and delicate syncopation." [9] But except for "Maple Leaf" and a couple of others, these rags "remained unheralded and obscure" during his lifetime. Joplin apparently realized that his music was ahead of its time: As music historian Ian Whitcomb mentions, Joplin "opined that 'Maple Leaf Rag' would make him 'King of Ragtime Composers' but he also knew that he would not be a pop hero in his own lifetime. 'When I'm dead twenty-five years, people are going to recognize me,' he told a friend." Just over thirty years later he was recognized, and later historian Rudi Blesh would write a large book about ragtime, which he dedicated to the memory of Scott Joplin.[15]

Opera composer: "Treemonisha"

Treemonisha (1911)

Origins

In 1907, Joplin moved to New York believing that it was the best possible place to find a producer for his new opera. He had already written two previous theatrical works, the six-minute Ragtime Dance (1899) and the opera A Guest of Honor (1903), the score of which is lost. But in his "quest for artistic merit," notes opera historian Elise Kirk, he gave his opera Treemonisha "a life of its own" which became his "obsession," a composition which he "seemed to cherish beyond all his other works."[1]:189 Kirk describes the qualities of the opera:

"It was dignified, and beautiful; it embodied a classical elegance, myth, message, and buoyancy; and it both reflected and reinforced his inner life and spirit. He could identify with its characters. To him, they were real, and his music richly promulgated that reality."[1]

Story and coincidences

According to music historian Richard Crawford, who studied the opera's libretto, the story is set near Texarkana, where Joplin grew up. "The story seems laced with elements of autobiography," Crawford observes. It centers on Treemonisha, "a girl of eighteen who hopes to lead her community out of ignorance, superstition, and misery by teaching them the value of education."[20] And historian Willam Scott describes it as "a mythical story of black emergence into the modern world. . . a story about his own people that drew on African American music and dance." [14]

But Berlin speculates on additional meanings and notes that "by setting the opera near his childhood home of Texarkana, Joplin alerts us to watch for autobiograhical references." He writes:

"... the story is an allegory with wider ramifications. The subject is really the African American community which, as seen by Joplin fewer than fifty years after emancipation, was still living in ignorance, superstition, and misery. The way out of this condition, he tells his intended audience, is with the education that can be provided by white society. . . .
"Education is central to the story, as it was to Joplin's life. 'Ignorance is criminal,' he tells his audience. Education was widely regarded as the means by which black Americans would earn the respect and acceptance of the rest of American society. . . Treemonisha was educated by a white woman, just as Joplin received his education from a white music teacher. . . "

Berlin also notes that in the opera's preface, Joplin states that Treemonisha began her education "at the age of seven," which is the same age that Joplin started his. And Berlin adds that the timeline of the opera is "particularly perplexing:" The opera begins in 1884, as an eighteen-year old Treemonisha "starts upon her career as a teacher and a leader." This was also the year that Joplin's music teacher, Julius Weiss, moved from Texarkana. Berlin speculates on the coincidence and questions whether Treemonisha represents Joplin:

"With his teacher no longer available to him, the 16-year-old Scott saw no reason to remain in town. In 1884, he then set off upon his career as a musician, perhaps with hopes of eventually becoming a teacher and leader of his people, the course he ascribes to his heroine Treemonisha."[3]:208

Writing the score

"Wall Street Rag" published 1909

Nonetheless, Kirk writes that soon "reality became bitter for Joplin." She feels that the public was not yet ready for "crude" black musical forms, which were so different from the style of European grand opera of that time, regardless of its "excellent craftsmanship." As a result, he was unable to find a publisher for the opera. "It was the rejection after rejection that came to erode the very foundations of his existence. He gave up his public playing, dismissed or lost his students, and eventually even sacrificed his composing to his monomania," adds Kirk.[1]

Biographer Vera Brodsky Lawrence speculates that Joplin was aware of his advancing deterioration due to syphilis and was "consciously racing against time," noting that he "plunged feverishly into the task of orchestrating his opera, day and night, with his friend Sam Patterson standing by to copy out the parts, page by page, as each page of the full score was completed.[21] Despite the hardships, Kirk feels that the story itself is "timeless," with a familiar message, making it "one of America's earliest family operas, . . . and an excellent vehicle for introducing children to both opera and their national heritage."[1]

Performance and reception

In 1911, unable to find a publisher, he undertook the financial burden of publishing "Treemonisha" himself in piano-vocal format and as a last resort to see it staged invited a small audience to hear it at a rehearsal hall in Harlem, in 1915. Poorly staged and with only himself on piano accompaniment, it was "a miserable failure," notes Kirk. The audience, including potential backers, was indifferent and walked out.[22] Scott writes that "after a disastrous single performance . . . Joplin suffered a breakdown. He was bankrupt, discouraged, and worn out." He concludes that few American artists of his generation faced such obstacles: "Treemonisha went unnoticed and unreviewed, largely because Joplin had abandoned commercial music in favor of art music, a field closed to African Americans."[14]:37 In fact, it was not until the 1970s that the opera received a full theatrical staging.

Ragtime historian Terry Waldo notes that the opera was ahead of its time: "like ragtime music itself, "Treemonisha" was an entirely new art form that was probably only approached in style in the 1920s..." He notes that the opera is a combination of folk music in the framework of a European opera, but is also Joplin's re-creation of his own experiences as an African American man using an opera as a means of expression. But Waldo adds, "such an undertaking was doomed to failure - but failure on such a grand scale that it cannot be dismissed lightly. It is a magnificent attempt, and parts of it approach greatness."[23]

Social significance
"Pleasant Moments - Ragtime Waltz" - played by Scott Joplin (April 1916)
An April 1916 Piano Roll recording of Scott Joplin. Thought lost until discovered by a collector in New Zealand in 2006.[24]
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Kirk concludes that if "Treemonisha" was not sophisticated enough for Harlem in 1915, "it has felicitously found a place in ... American operas." She notes that it occupies a special place in American history as well. "The opera's young heroine is a startlingly early voice for modern civil rights causes, notably the importance of education and knowledge to African American advancement."[1] Christensen's conclusion is similar: "In the end, "Treemonisha" offered a celebration of literacy, learning, hard work, and community solidarity as the best formula for advancing the race."[12]:444

Because of the opera's early failure after years of obsessive labor, a year later, in 1916, his wife Lottie had to have him committed to the Manhattan State Hospital, where he died a year later of dementia,[14] and what Kirk speculates was "a state of mental deterioration from conditions related to syphilis."[1]:191

Performance skills
"Maple Leaf Rag" - played by Scott Joplin (June 1916)
A June 1916 Piano Roll recording of Scott Joplin for The Aeolian Company.
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Joplin's skills as a pianist were described in glowing terms by a Sedalia newspaper in 1898, and fellow ragtime composers Arthur Marshall and Joe Jordan both said that he played the instrument well.[25] However, the son of publisher John Stark stated that Joplin was a rather mediocre pianist and that he composed on paper, rather than at the piano. Artie Matthews recalled the "delight" the Saint Louis players took in outplaying Joplin.[26]

While Joplin never made an audio recording, he did use the early piano roll for use on mechanical player pianos, for which he made seven rolls in 1916. Berlin theorizes that by the time Joplin reached Saint Louis he may have been manifesting symptoms of syphilis, such as discoordination of his fingers.[3]:104 The disease took his life in 1917. The second piano-roll recording of "Maple Leaf Rag" from June 1916 was described as "... shocking... disorganized and completely distressing to hear." [27] However, there is disagreement among piano-roll experts about the accuracy of the reproduction of a player's performance.[28][29][30][31]

Personal life and marriages

Scott Joplin House in St Louis, Missouri

Joplin moved to St. Louis in early 1900 with his new wife, Belle. Belle was a sister-in-law of Scott Hayden, who collaborated with Joplin in the composition of four rags.[16]:88 They had a baby daughter who died only a few months after birth, and his relationship with his wife was difficult as she had no interest in music.[22] They eventually separated and then divorced.

In June 1904, Joplin married Freddie Alexander of Little Rock, Arkansas, the young woman to whom he had dedicated "The Chrysanthemum" (1904). She died on September 10, 1904 of complications resulting from a cold, ten weeks after their wedding.[32] Joplin's first work copyrighted after Freddie's death, "Bethena" (1905), was described by one biographer as "an enchantingly beautiful piece that is among the greatest of Ragtime Waltzes".[3]:149

In 1907 Scott Joplin moved to New York City, where he met Lottie Stokes, whom he married in 1909.[16]:88 In 1913, they formed the Scott Joplin Music Company, and together published his "Magnetic Rag."

Final years and early death

Joplin was hopeful that his final opera, "Treemonisha," which filled 230 pages of sheet music and took years of single-minded devotion to finish, would be successful. In the end, however, he could not get producers to finance the huge project. Then, in 1915, at his own expense, he gave a single performance which received only unfavorable reviews. He closed the show after that initial performance, and never recovered from that great disappointment.[1]:191

By 1916, Joplin was well into what ragtime scholar Edward A. Berlin described as a "descent into madness" brought on by tertiary syphilis.[33][34]. In January 1917, he was admitted to Manhattan State Hospital, a mental institution.[35] He died there on April 1, 1917, at the age of forty-eight.[1]:191

Legacy

According to music historians William Scott and Peter Rutkoff, Joplin and his fellow ragtime composers rejuvenated American popular music. Ragtime fostered an appreciation for African American music among European Americans by creating exhilarating and liberating dance tunes, changing American musical taste. "Its syncopation and rhythmic drive gave it a vitality and freshness attractive to young urban audiences indifferent to Victorian proprieties. . . Joplin's ragtime expressed the intensity and energy of a modern urban America."[14]

Joshua Rifkin, a leading Joplin recording artist, wrote that "a pervasive sense of lyricism infuses his work, and even at his most high-spirited, he cannot repress a hint of melancholy or adversity. . . He had little in common with the fast and flashy school of ragtime that grew up after him."[36] Joplin historian Bill Ryerson adds that "In the hands of authentic practitioners like Joplin, Ragtime was a disciplined form capable of astonishing variety and subtlety. . . . Joplin did for the rag what Chopin did for the mazurka. His style ranged from tones of torment to stunning serenades that incorporated the bolero and the tango."[22]

Joplin biographer Susan Curtis expands on those observations:

"When Scott Joplin syncopated his way into the hearts of millions of Americans at the turn of the century, he helped revolutionize American music and culture. His ragged rhythms and lilting melodies made people want to tap their feet, slap their thighs, or dance with happy abandon. As Americans embraced his music, they participated in a dramatic transformation of American popular culture -- their Victorian restraint gave way to modern exuberance. And whether in the elegant parlors of comfortable, respectable American homes or in the honky tonks and cafes of America's sporting districts, ragtime music accompanied a reorientation of cultural values in America in the twentieth century. The excellence and appeal of his compositions earned for Joplin the generally accepted title King of Ragtime."[10]

Although he was penniless and disappointed at the end of his life, Joplin set the standard for ragtime compositions and played a key role in the development of ragtime music. And as a pioneer composer and performer, he helped pave the way for young black artists to reach American audiences of both races. And when he died, notes jazz historian Floyd Levin, "those few who realized his greatness bowed their heads in sorrow. This was the passing of the king of all ragtime writers, the man who gave America a genuine native music."[37]:197

Revival

After his death in 1917, Joplin's music and ragtime in general waned in popularity as new forms of musical styles, such as jazz and novelty piano, emerged. Even so, Jazz bands and recording artists such as Tommy Dorsey in 1936, Jelly Roll Morton in 1939 and J. Russell Robinson in 1947 released recordings of Joplin compositions ragtime on 78 RPM records. Between 1902 and 1961 more recordings of the Maple Leaf Rag were released by more artists than for any other Joplin rag.[38]

Performances and recordings

1960s

In the 1960s, a small-scale reawakening of interest in classic ragtime was underway among some American music scholars. In 1961, composer and performer Trebor Tichenor began publishing The Ragtime Review and hosting ragtime performances aboard a St. Louis riverboat named Goldenrod. In New York City, William "Bill" Bolcom learned of the existence of the opera Treemonisha in 1966 and began to search for it, finding that Rudi Blesh had published it a few years prior. Bolcom arranged with Thomas J. "T.J." Anderson for a full orchestration of the work and, in the meantime, began playing and composing rags, sending sheet music back and forth with his friends William "Bill" Albright and Peter Winkler, a mathematician and fan of ragtime. Blesh's friend Max Morath introduced them to the breadth of Joplin's rags. In 1968, Bolcom and Albright interested Joshua Rifkin, a young musicologist, in the body of Joplin's work. Together, they hosted an occasional ragtime-and-early-jazz evening on WBAI radio.[23]:179-182

Joshua Rifkin recordings

In November 1970, Rifkin released a recording called Scott Joplin Piano Rags[39] on the classical label Nonesuch. It sold 100,000 copies in its first year and eventually became Nonesuch's first million-selling record.[40] Record stores found themselves for the first time putting ragtime in the classical music section. The album was nominated in 1971 for two Grammy Award categories: Best Album Notes and Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without orchestra). Rifkin was also under consideration for a third Grammy for a recording not related to Joplin, but at the ceremony on March 14, 1972, Rifkin did not win in any category.[41]

Rifkin was affected by the revival: In 1974 he said, "I did a tour this fall and various other concerts since then, including two in London - there's a craze in England as well - and made something like ten appearances on BBC television this spring ... This past May I gave a concert in London's Royal Festival Hall, which seats about 3,200 people, and it was sold out within four days..."[42]

Gunther Schuller recordings

Gunther Schuller, a french horn player and music professor, formed the New England Ragtime Ensemble in 1972 from students at the New England Conservatory. He had received mimeographed copies of individual instrumental parts of the Red Back Book from Vera Lawrence, and was introducing Joplin tunes into the middle of otherwise 'classical' concerts of American turn-of-the-century music. Angel Records approached him with a record deal and, in 1973, produced a recording called Joplin: The Red Back Book.

Publications

In January 1971, Harold C. Schonberg, music critic at the New York Times, having just heard the Rifkin album, wrote a featured Sunday edition article entitled "Scholars, Get Busy on Scott Joplin!"[43] Schonberg's call to action has been described as the catalyst for classical music scholars, the sort of people Joplin had battled all his life, to conclude that Joplin was a genius.[23]:184 Vera Brodsky Lawrence of the New York Public Library published a two-volume set of Joplin works in June 1971, entitled The Collected Works of Scott Joplin, stimulating a wider interest in the performance of Joplin's music.

Film
The Sting

Marvin Hamlisch produced the soundtrack for The Sting in 1973 and won an Academy Award for his adaptation of Joplin's music.[44] His adaptation of The Entertainer reached #3 on the American Top 40 music chart on 18 May 1974[45], prompting the New York Times to write, "the whole nation has begun to take notice...".[42]

Edward Berlin tends to agree that the movie was an important factor in the revival: "Led by The Entertainer, one of the most popular pieces of the mid-1970s, a revival of his music resulted in events unprecedented in American musical history." He further added, "never before had any composer's music been so acclaimed by both the popular and classical music worlds." [3] The New York Times described some of the revival's effects on the public:

Opera

Treemonisha

On October 22, 1971 excerpts from Treemonisha were presented in concert form at Lincoln Center with musical performances by Bolcom, Rifkin and Mary Lou Williams supporting a group of singers.[46] Finally, on January 28, 1972, T.J. Anderson's orchestration of Treemonisha was staged for two consecutive nights, sponsored by the Afro-American Music Workshop of Morehouse College in Atlanta, with singers accompanied by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra[47] under the direction of Robert Shaw, and choreography by Katherine Dunham. Schonberg remarked in February 1972 that the "Scott Joplin Renaissance" was in full swing and still growing.[48]

In May 1975, Treemonisha was staged in a full opera production by the Houston Grand Opera. The company toured briefly, then settled into an eight-week run in New York on Broadway at the Palace Theater in October and November. This appearance was directed by Gunther Schuller, and soprano Carmen Balthrop alternated with Kathleen Battle as the title character.[47] An "original Broadway cast" recording was produced. Because of the lack of national exposure given to the brief Morehouse College staging of the opera in 1972, many Joplin scholars wrote that the Houston Grand Opera's 1975 show was the first full production.[46]

Ballets

"Elite Syncopations"

1974 saw the Royal Ballet, under director Kenneth MacMillan, create Elite Syncopations a ballet based on tunes by Joplin and other composers of the era[49]. That year also brought the premiere by the Los Angeles Ballet of Red Back Book, choreographed by John Clifford to Joplin rags from the collection of the same name, including both solo piano performances and arrangements for full orchestra.

Other awards and recognition

1970: Joplin was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame by the National Academy of Popular Music.[50]

1976: Joplin was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for his special contribution to American music.[5]

1977: Motown Productions produced a Scott Joplin biographical film starring Billy Dee Williams as Joplin, released by Universal Pictures.

1983: the United States Postal Service issued a stamp of the composer as part of its Black Heritage commemorative series.

1989: Joplin received a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

2002: a collection of Scott Joplin's own performances recorded on piano rolls in the 1900s was included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress National Recording Registry.[51] The board annually selects songs that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

References

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Kirk (2001)
  2. ^ Jefferson, Margo. The New York Times, July 20, 1994. "Books of the Times; Setting the Rhythm for a New Era." Retrieved on November 8, 2009.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Berlin (1996)
  4. ^ "Opera America". http://web.archive.org/web/20050218222938/http://www.operaam.org/encore/tree.htm. Retrieved 2009-03-14. 
  5. ^ a b "The Pulitzer Prize - Special Awards and Citations". http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Special+Awards+and+Citations. Retrieved 2009-03-14. 
  6. ^ "Texas Music History Online - Scott Joplin". http://ctmh.its.txstate.edu/artist.php?cmd=detail&aid=29. Retrieved 2006-11-22. 
  7. ^ Berlin, Edward A.. "Scott Joplin: Brief Biographical Sketch". http://www.edwardaberlin.com/scott_joplin__brief_biographical_sketch_33423.htm. Retrieved 2009-05-03. 
  8. ^ 1880 United States Federal Census, as quoted in Berlin (1996), p6
  9. ^ a b c Kirchner (2005)
  10. ^ a b c d e f Curtis (2004)
  11. ^ a b Albrecht (1979)
  12. ^ a b c Christensen (1999)
  13. ^ "Definition from Dictionary.com". Ask.com. 2009. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tenderloin. Retrieved 2009-10-28. 
  14. ^ a b c d e f g Scott & Rutkoff (2001)
  15. ^ a b Whitcomb (1986) p24
  16. ^ a b c Jasen & Tichenor (1978)
  17. ^ Davis (1995)
  18. ^ Williams (1987)
  19. ^ a b Tennison, John. "History of Boogie Woogie". Chapter 15. http://boogiewoogie.com/index.php/history/15_contrasts_between_boogie_woogie_and_ragtime. Retrieved 2009-10-04. 
  20. ^ Crawford (2001)
  21. ^ Lawrence (1971)
  22. ^ a b c Ryerson (1973)
  23. ^ a b c Waldo (1976)
  24. ^ "Pianola.co.nz". http://www.pianola.co.nz/pleasant_moments.htm. Retrieved 2009-04-20. 
  25. ^ Jasen & Tichenor (1978) p88
  26. ^ Jasen & Tichenor (1978) p86
  27. ^ Blesh (1981) p.xxxix
  28. ^ Siepmann (1998) p36
  29. ^ Philip (1998) pp77-78
  30. ^ Howat (1986) p160
  31. ^ McElhone (2004) p26
  32. ^ "A Biography of Scott Joplin". http://www.scottjoplin.org/biography.htm. Retrieved 2008-10-03. 
  33. ^ Berlin, Edward A; King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era; Oxford, 1994.
  34. ^ http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,981443,00.html>
  35. ^ http://www.scottjoplin.org/biography.htm
  36. ^ Rifkin, Joshua. Scott Joplin Piano Rags, Nonesuch Records (1970) album cover
  37. ^ Levin (2002)
  38. ^ Jasen (1981) pp.319-320
  39. ^ "Nonesuch Records". http://nonesuch.com/albums/piano-rags. Retrieved 2009-03-19. 
  40. ^ "Nonesuch Records". http://nonesuch.com/about. Retrieved 2009-03-19. 
  41. ^ "Entertainment Awards Database - LA Times". http://theenvelope.latimes.com/factsheets/awardsdb/env-awards-db-search,0,7169155.htmlstory?target=article&searchtype=all&Query=. Retrieved 2009-03-17. 
  42. ^ a b Kronenberger, John (1974-08-11). "New York Times". The Ragtime Revival-A Belated Ode to Composer Scott Joplin. http://select.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F20A17F63A5C1A7A93C3A81783D85F408785F9. 
  43. ^ Schonberg, Harold C. (24 January 1971). "Scholars, Get Busy on Scott Joplin!". New York Times. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40D1FFD3B5F127A93C6AB178AD85F458785F9. Retrieved 2009-03-20. 
  44. ^ "Entertainment Awards Database - LA Times". http://theenvelope.latimes.com/factsheets/awardsdb/env-awards-db-search,0,7169155.htmlstory?target=article&searchtype=all&Query=. Retrieved 2009-03-14. 
  45. ^ "Charis Music Group, compilation of cue sheets from the American Top 40 radio Show". http://www.charismusicgroup.com/Cue%20Sheets/05-18-74.pdf. Retrieved 2009-09-05. 
  46. ^ a b Ping-Robbins, Nancy R. (1998). Scott Joplin: a guide to research. p. 289. ISBN 0-8240-8399-7. http://books.google.com/books?id=0FeXfmHEXfIC&pg=PA289&lpg=PA289. Retrieved 2009-03-20. 
  47. ^ a b Peterson, Bernard L. (1993). A century of musicals in black and white. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. p. 357. ISBN 0-313-26657-3. http://books.google.com/books?id=VQggZdq1hawC&pg=PA357&lpg=PA357. Retrieved 2009-03-20. 
  48. ^ Schonberg, Harold C. (13 February 1972). "The Scott Joplin Renaissance Grows". New York Times. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50F11F73C591A7493C1A81789D85F468785F9. Retrieved 20 March 2009. 
  49. ^ "Birmingham Royal Ballet". http://www.brb.org.uk/4237.html. Retrieved 2009-09-06. 
  50. ^ "Songwriters Hall of Fame". http://songwritershalloffame.org/exhibits/C297. Retrieved 2009-03-17. 
  51. ^ "2002 National Recording Registry from the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress". Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/rr/record/nrpb/nrpb-2002reg.html. Retrieved 2009-09-06. 

Bibliography

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