Scott Joplin and Ragtime

I want to start a series about composers, and of course it would seem natural to start with the three B's of classical music (Bach, Beethoven and Brahms), but since February is Black History month, I decided to begin with my favorite ragtime composer, Scott Joplin.

Joplin was born in 1868 in Texarcana, Texas. His mother was free from birth but his father was an ex-slave. Both parents and his siblings were musical, and it wasn't long before Scott showed an interest in the guitar and the bugle. When he was seven, he saw a piano at a neighbor's house and immediately started to experiment with it. Soon his father decided to scrape up money to buy him a second-hand piano of his own.

As he began to improve with his improvising, word spread through the white community at how well he played for his age, and a German music teacher took him under his wing, giving him free lessons. Scott's father encouraged him to learn a trade so he could support himself in adult life, but Scott did not want to give up music and this caused friction. Scott left home when he was 14 years old.

The only place he could find work as a musician was in the red-light districts, where American honky-tonk music was forming. He traveled from town to town for small wages and tips with a band of musicians, both black and white. By mixing with musicians who played all types of music, ranging from popular and folk to light classical, he found inspiration for the style he loved best. Black and white musicians were merging their forms of music into a totally new style. Ragtime was a combination of wonderful melodies with exciting rhythms of the Black-American culture. And Scott became a master at writing it. His most famous piece, "The Maple Leaf Rag," named after the Maple Leaf Club where he worked at the time, was published in 1899. It was an instant success, and so he continued touring billed as "King of Ragtime Composers." All together he composed forty-four original pieces including rags, marches, waltzes, and a tango. He also collaborated with other composers on new pieces and multiple arrangements and wrote an exercise book for ragtime. Joplin continued to have success until 1915 when the popularity of Ragtime started to decline, causing him to become depressed. He died in a mental institution in 1917.