Ragtime musical relevance today1/14/2024 Within weeks of the Maple Leaf’s publication, Joplin completed The Ragtime Dance, a stage work for dancers and singing narrator. Sales in the first year were slight, only about 400, but by 1909, approximately a half-million copies had been sold, and that rate was to continue for the next two decades. The contract specified that Joplin would receive a one-cent royalty on each sale, a condition that rendered Joplin a small but steady income for the rest of his life. In August 1899 they contracted with Sedalia music store owner and publisher John Stark to publish the Maple Leaf Rag, which was to become the greatest and most famous of piano rags. Daniels’ name was added as “arranger,“ and was cited as composer on the copyright and in some newspaper advertisements.īefore Joplin published his next rag, he obtained the assistance and guidance of a young Sedalia lawyer, Robert Higdon. This publication experience was not satisfactory as he was forced to share credit with a staff arranger. Late in 1898 he tried to publish his first two piano rags, but succeeded in selling only Original Rags. In 1896 he published two marches and a fine waltz. This technical deficit did not prevent him from developing as a composer. Since the college and its records were destroyed in a fire in 1925, we have no evidence of the extent of Joplin’s studies, but anecdotes suggest that until the end of the 1890s he still lacked complete mastery of music notation. In 1896, it appears that he attended music classes at George R. He also taught several of the local young musicians in town, most notably Scott Hayden and Arthur Marshall, with whom he later wrote collaborative rags. When not traveling, Joplin worked in Sedalia as a pianist, playing at various events and sites, including the town’s two social clubs for black men, the Maple Leaf and Black 400 clubs (both founded in 1898). In 1895 he traveled as far East as Syracuse, NY with his Texas Medley Quartette, a vocal group. While retaining Sedalia as his home base, Joplin continued the life of an itinerant musician. His membership in the band was for about a year, and on leaving he formed his own band, working at dances and other events. After the fair, he returned to Sedalia, established it as his home, and played first cornet in the Queen City Cornet Band a local ensemble of black musicians. In 1893, he was in Chicago at the time of the World’s Fair, leading a band and playing cornet. The first documented sign of Joplin’s musical career is in the summer of 1891 when, as reported in newspapers, he was back in Texarkana working with a minstrel troupe. Louis, which was to become a major center of ragtime. Unconfirmed anecdotes tell also of his starting a musical career in the 1880s and traveling to St. He may have resided with one of several black families named “Joplin” that lived in Sedalia. In the 1880s, the teenage Joplin lived for a while in Sedalia and attended Lincoln High School in the black neighborhood north of the railroad. Weiss’ influence may be the foundation of Joplin’s desire for recognition as a classical composer. Joplin ’s talent was noticed in Texarkana by a local German-born music teacher Julius Weiss who instructed him further by placing special emphasis on European art forms, including opera. In support of this story, we note its reflection in details of Treemonisha, an opera that Joplin published in 1911. The Joplins lived on both sides of the border.Īnecdotes relate that the young Scott Joplin gained access to a piano in a white-owned home where his mother worked, and taught himself the rudiments of music. They moved to the newly established town of Texarkana, which straddles the Texas-Arkansas border. When he was still a young child, Joplin’s family left the farm on which his father (formerly a slave) worked as a laborer. So then, when was he born? Available documents point to a birth between June 1867 and mid-January 1868. As he was already two at that time (and was twelve when the next Census was taken, in June 1880) indicates that the frequently-cited and celebrated birth date of Novemis incorrect. Census records locate him there in July 1870 as a two-year-old child. It seems he was born in Texas, probably in the northeast part of the state as U.S. We are not quite sure, for example, when or where he was born. Yet, for all his prominence and recognition, many of the facts regarding his life still elude us. There is no question as to Joplin’s greatness, his talent, his importance in the history of ragtime and American music overall. While Sedalia was Scott Joplin’s home for only a few years, it was a home with a special meaning for him. It is with good reason that Sedalia, Missouri has become central to the Joplin story and the site of the annual Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival.
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