Basic Facts
Born: c. 1867, Texas
Died: April 1, 1917, New York City
Type of Performer: Composer, pianist
Genre: Rags
About Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin was born in the late 1860s somewhere along the Texas/Arkansas state border. The exact details are not known, but we do know that he grew up in Texarkana. His mother played banjo and sang and his father played violin. Joplin took up piano as a child and later became a traveling musician. He cut his teeth in bars and dance halls (including the Maple Leaf), where the musical style that would become ragtime was developing. His first published pieces were the waltzes "Please Say You Will" and "A Picture of Her Face." He eventually became known as the "King of Ragtime" and composed famous and enduring pieces such as "The Maple Leaf Rag" and "The Entertainer."
Joplin studied music at Sedalia, Mississippi's George R. Smith College for Negros during the 1890s. He also taught and mentored to other ragtime musicians. In order to promote the genre and push back against some of the criticism coming from white people regarding the music's African American origins, in 1908 he published a manual that broke down the style for students. The book was called The School of Ragtime: Six Exercises for Piano. He also dabbled in other genres of music, including classical and opera. His ballet Ragtime Dance was published in 1902 and he wrote his first opera, A Guest of Honor, in 1903.
By 1907, Joplin had settled in New York and was working on his opera Treemonisha. This opera was a precursor to Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, but was not fully staged until much later. He continued to write music and opened his own publishing company with his wife, Lottie, in 1913. He died in New York in 1917. His music picked back up in the 1940s during the so-called "ragtime revolution," and he was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1976.
Listen
"The Entertainer," Scott Joplin
"Maple Leaf Rag," performed by Armenta Adams, 1989
Comments
Post a Comment