

Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994. Dancing to a Black Man’s Tune: A Life of Scott Joplin. New York: Oak Publications, 1971.Ĭurtis, Susan. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.īlesh, Rudi, and Harriet Janis. King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era. “Julius Weiss: Scott Joplin’s First Piano Teacher.” College Music Symposium 19 (Fall 1979): 89–105.īerlin, Edward A.

Joplin is a central figure in Tyehimba Jess’s 2016 poetry collection, Olio, which received the Pulitzer Prize.Īlbrecht, Theodore. In 1976, he was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his contributions to American music.

Treemonisha was later performed at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC and at the Houston Grand Opera in Texas. Joplin’s fame returned in the 1970s when “The Entertainer” was used in the film The Sting. Michael’s Cemetery in Queen’s County, New York.
SCOTT JOPLIN RAGTIME FULL
But he died of tertiary syphilis two years later, on April 1, 1917, without having seen it produced with costumes and full orchestra. Joplin mounted an unstaged version of the opera in 1915 at the Harlem Lincoln Theater, accompanying singers at the piano. The opera is set in the Red River region near Rondo and tells the story of a plantation girl who fights conjurors and voodoo magic to lead her people to freedom through education. Stark continued to publish Joplin’s piano works in New York, but he declined to publish Joplin’s opera Treemonisha. By this time, he was known as the “King of Ragtime” because he had composed more than forty successful piano ragtime numbers and had published a sheet music booklet titled School of Ragtime. Finding solace in his work, Joplin went to New York City, where Stark had opened a new piano store and publishing company. He married his second wife, Freddie Alexander, in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on June 14, 1904, but she died of pneumonia ten weeks later. A tour of his opera The Guest of Honor (1903) disbanded because of a lack of interest. But his efforts resulted in little financial support from Ernst or from general audiences. Encouragement from this European-trained conductor inspired Joplin to compose an opera and ballet. Louis Choral Symphonic Society, took an interest in Joplin. During this time, Alfred Ernst, conductor of the St. Joplin married Belle Hayden in 1901, and the couple followed Stark to his new piano store in St. This single publication freed Joplin from performing in honky-tonk saloons and enabled him to teach and compose. Woolworth stores, the song sold more than a million copies.
SCOTT JOPLIN RAGTIME PLUS
In 1899, John Stark, an agent for the Mason and Hamlin piano company, contracted with Joplin to publish “Maple Leaf Rag” for fifty dollars, plus royalties. This skill enabled his music to reach a wider audience through publication.
SCOTT JOPLIN RAGTIME HOW TO
Smith College in Sedalia around 1896 to learn how to notate the complicated rhythms of piano ragtime. He took a music theory course at George R. His moniker, “The Entertainer,” printed on the club business card, also became the name of one of his famous works. Joplin arrived in Sedalia, Missouri, in 1894 and played in the Williams Brothers Maple Leaf Club his famous “Maple Leaf Rag” (1899) took on the name of that club. His rail travels took him as far as Syracuse, New York. In 1885, he joined the all-night ragtime piano competitions at Tom Turpin’s Silver Dollar Saloon in St. Joplin left Texarkana at seventeen and traveled to Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and various places in Arkansas. Johnson, and Julius Weiss, a German immigrant who taught him piano technique and exposed him to the European opera music that influenced his later compositions. His teachers included Mag Washington, John C. Joplin showed an early interest in the piano, and he practiced in the homes where his mother did domestic work. The family moved to Texarkana early in Joplin’s life so that his father could obtain work on the railroad. His father, Giles, was a former slave, and his mother, Florence, was a freed woman from Kentucky. Scott Joplin was born on Novemor 1868, near Marshall, Texas. He spent his formative years in Texarkana (Miller County), and his major opera, Treemonisha, is set in the plantation area of Rondo (Miller County) north of Texarkana.

Known as the “King of Ragtime,” Scott Joplin composed more than forty ragtime piano pieces, including “Maple Leaf Rag” (which sold more than a million copies) and “The Entertainer” (which was used in the 1973 film The Sting).
