The ’70s were the tail end of the time when pop music was often couched in melody and harmony elaborate enough that, for example, one could render it on a piano (Chicago Earth, Wind & Fire Billy Joel). Ragtime’s descendant, jazz, differs from it partly in having exactly that “jamming” essence and thus reaches the modern ear more easily ragtime sounds like juice and cookies in contrast. Moreover, Joplin’s rags are gorgeous but not “hot,” and the rock sensibility dominant since the 1970s makes it hard for most to connect with music that has so little “swagger” as some might put it these days. For the amateur instrumentalist, the 20 th century became the age of the guitar, and in a music history class of 23 I recently taught, not a single one of the students had ever played the piano. This had kept them a minority taste among pianists even in their prime, and today they are even less accessible given that ever fewer people play the piano. The elegant ragtime pieces Joplin wrote better than anyone else are as difficult to play as they are lovely to hear. Before long, ragtime had gone back to what it had been since the 1940s and what it remains today: a hobby lovingly cultivated by a small, expert fan base. Gone are the days when LPs of ragtime in endless permutations were legion in record stores, when the music pattern on the wrapping paper of a gift I was given was not Mozart or Beethoven but, in fact, staves from one of Joplin’s lesser-known rags, when anyone who went near a piano would at least attempt the first page of “The Entertainer.” Classical pianist Joshua Rifkin’s recordings in the early ’70s of Joplin’s rags, played accurately and majestically in a concert hall, helped establish Joplin as a composer to take seriously-but only one of those LPs was even transferred to CD.Įven by the early ’80s when I discovered ragtime through the abovementioned kinds of experiences, those LPs in the record bins were dusty and priced low. ![]() Three years later, in 1976, Joplin’s opera Treemonisha won the coveted Pulitzer Prize.King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era (2 nd edition) Then, in 1973, his music was featured in the motion picture, The Sting, which won an Academy Award for its film score. At the time, however, this resulted unsuccessfully.Īfter suffering deteriorating health due to syphilis that he contracted some years earlier, Joplin died on Apin Manhattan State Hospital.Īlthough Joplin’s music was popular and he received modest royalties during his lifetime, he did not receive recognition as a serious composer for more than fifty years after his death. In 1911, Joplin moved to New York City, where he devoted his energies to the production of his operatic work, Treemonisha, the first grand opera composed by an African American. Over the next fifteen years, Joplin added to his already impressive repertoire, which eventually totaled some sixty compositions. This was followed a few years later by The Entertainer, another well-known Joplin composition. In the late 1890s, Joplin worked at the Maple Leaf Club in Sedalia, which provided the title for his best-known composition, the Maple Leaf Rag, published in 1899. One of his first compositions, The Great Crush Collision, was inspired by a spectacular railroad locomotive crash staged near Waco, Texas in September of 1896 known as The Crash at Crush. ![]() From there, he toured with his eight-member Texas Medley Quartette as far east as Syracuse, New York. ![]() In 1893, Joplin played in sporting areas adjacent to the Colombian Exposition in Chicago, and the following year moved to Sedalia, Missouri. There he studied and led in the development of a music genre now known as ragtime–a unique blend of European classical styles combined with African American harmony and rhythm. As a teenager, he worked as a dance musician.Īfter several years as an itinerant pianist playing in saloons and brothels throughout the Midwest, he settled in St. By age eleven and under the tutelage of Julius Weiss, he was learning the finer points of harmony and style. ![]() Encouraged by his parents, he was already proficient on the banjo and was beginning to play the piano. He moved with his family to Texarkana at the age of about seven.Įven at this early age, Joplin demonstrated his extraordinary talent for music. Scott Joplin, the “King of Ragtime” music, was born near Linden, Texas on November 24, 1868.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |