syncopated styles like the cakewalk (predecessor) banjo playing (playing the piano like you would play the banjo) Precursors of ragtime musicīut since music is an ever-evolving beast, with one genre leading into the next, what forms inspired the creation of Ragtime? You wouldn’t be rolling in the dough, perhaps, but you’d make enough to get by. Louis was a popular center for ragtime – since it’s located in central USA, it was a hub for travelers of all kinds, and as a piano player you could make a living there. If you haven’t heard of Scott Joplin yet, we’ll be talking about him soon, since he’s the most famous name of ragtime. There’s an annual Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Sedalia, Missouri, because Joplin lived and taught there for a while (in addition to living in St. Though ragtime music spread across America, its central hub was Missouri. The idea was to play with machine-like precision. Ragtime is also very technically demanding to play – if you’ve attempted to play Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag, you will understand. It has that in common with Classical and Romantic music. Unlike some jazz, the way ragtime music was written on the page was exactly how it should be played – without embellishment or modification. For example, if you were in the key of C, you would be playing mainly C and G chords. Ragtime harmonic patterns are fairly simple, doing a lot of tonic-dominant movement. In ragtime, the left hand usually plays a bass note on beat 1 and 3, with a chord on beat 2 and 4. They music is fast and syncopated (“ragged”), with the right hand doing all the crazy rhythms and the left hand played steadily. Three years later, in 1976, Joplin’s opera Treemonisha won the coveted Pulitzer Prize.Content provided by What is Ragtime music? 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.
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