Despite this, he recorded six piano rolls that year - Maple Leaf Rag (for Connorized and Uni-Record labels), Something Doing, Magnetic Rag, Ole Miss Rag, and Pleasant Moments (all for Connorized). He suffered later from dementia, paranoia, paralysis and other symptoms. Joplin wanted to experiment further with compositions like Treemonisha, but by 1916 he was suffering from the effects of terminal syphilis. The score to an earlier ragtime opera by Joplin, A Guest of Honor, is lost. It was performed only once during his lifetime, in 1915. Joplin continued to experiment with other musical forms as well after moving to New York City, Joplin attempted an ambitious ragtime opera, Treemonisha, which he produced himself at great personal expense. The first work copyrighted after Freddie's death, Bethena (1905), is a very sad, musically complex ragtime waltz.Īfter some months of faltering, Joplin continued writing and publishing, and in those days before recorded music was a best-selling composer based on sales of sheet music. Perhaps his dearest love, Freddie Alexander, died at age twenty just two months after they married, of complications resulting from a cold. Maple Leaf Rag boosted Joplin to the top of the list of ragtime performers and moved ragtime into prominence as a musical form. It has been estimated that Joplin made $360 per year on this piece in his lifetime. Joplin received a one-cent royalty for each copy and ten free copies for his own use. In 1899, Joplin sold his most famous piece, Maple Leaf Rag to John Stark & Son, a Sedalia, Missouri, music publisher. The other five were two songs (mentioned previously), two marches, and a waltz. Of the six, only Original Rags is a ragtime piece. In 1895, Joplin was in Syracuse, New York, selling two songs, Please Say You Will and A Picture of Her Face.īut despite all this travelling, his home base was in Sedalia, Missouri where he moved in 1894, working as a pianist in the Maple Leaf and Black 400 clubs, both social black clubs for respectable gentlemen.īy 1898 Joplin had sold six pieces for the piano, most very advanced tunes that were fine musically, but not anything special. What is known is that he was part of a minstel troupe in Texarkana around 1891. He may have joined or formed various quartets and other musical groups and travelled around the midwest to sing. He would later further his musical education by attending the George Smith College in Sedalia, studying composition.īy the late 1880s Joplin had left home to start a life of his own. This is something that would serve him well in later years, and fuel his ambition to create a 'classical' form of ragtime. Showing musical ability at an early age, the young Joplin received piano lessons for free from a German music teacher, who gave him a well-rounded knowledge of classical music form. ![]() By 1882 his mother had purchased a piano. ![]() While for many years his date of birth was thought to be November 24, 1868, new research by ragtime historian Ed Berlin has revealed that this is inaccurate.Īfter 1871 the Joplin family moved to Texarkana, Texas and Scott's mother cleaned homes so Scott could have a place to practice his music. It also brought the composer a steady income for life, though Joplin did not reach this level of success again and frequently had financial problems.Joplin was born near Linden, Texas to Florence Givins and Giles (sometimes listed as 'Jiles') Joplin. This piece had a profound influence on subsequent writers of ragtime. Joplin began publishing music in 1895, and publication of his Maple Leaf Rag in 1899 brought him fame. In Sedalia, he taught future ragtime composers Arthur Marshall, Scott Hayden and Brun Campbell. Joplin moved to Sedalia, Missouri, in 1894, and earned a living as a piano teacher, continuing to tour the South. He went to Chicago for the World's Fair of 1893, which played a major part in making ragtime a national craze by 1897. During the late 1880s he left his job as a laborer with the railroad, and travelled around the American South as an itinerant musician. Joplin grew up in Texarkana, where he formed a vocal quartet, and taught mandolin and guitar. ![]() Joplin was born into a musical family of laborers in Northeast Texas, and developed his musical knowledge with the help of local teachers, most notably Julius Weiss. One of his first pieces, the Maple Leaf Rag, became ragtime's first and most influential hit, and has been recognized as the archetypal rag. ![]() During his brief career, he wrote 44 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas. Joplin achieved fame for his ragtime compositions, and was later titled The King of Ragtime. Scott Joplin was an African-American composer and pianist. Composer, Music Teacher, Pianist, Musician
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