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. The Entertainer has been used in a number of different ways in the popular media – from TV adverts to films and skits, Scott Joplin’s famous rag is still very popular today.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. After a quick snapshot of all the melodies that have built up in The Entertainer, the rag ends delicately back in the home key. The melody bounces between octaves quickly, with the bassline keeping the tempo steady throughout. The bouncing bassline supports the sparkling melody which repeats nuggets of the tunes until it strings together the tune that we all know and love. The piece starts in C major, but does begin to move around, landing in F major in the central section, before finishing back in the home key at the end. After the unison opening from both hands, The Entertainer begins to unfold its joyous and memorable tune. Composed in 1902, this classic piano rag is subtitled as ‘A Ragtime Two-Step’, which reflects a popular dance of the time that the music would be played for. The Entertainer is one of Joplin’s most successful and popular rags that he ever wrote. A number of his piano rags and his opera Treemonisha have become some of the most recognisable music of the genre. It wasn’t until some groundbreaking recordings done in the 1970s that Joplin’s music found a new lease of life. Joplin’s music went out of fashion, with only a small number of ragtime aficionados keeping his music alive. After Joplin’s death in 1917, ragtime music came out of the ‘mainstream’ line and started to form into the likes of jazz, big band swing and the blues. Scott Joplin is remembered for being one of the most memorable ragtime composers of the turn-of-the-century during his lifetime (1868-1917).
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