![]() There was a considerable market in the pre-gramophone era for undemanding and catchy music for solo piano, and Stark continued to mine the lucrative business of sheet-music sales, which had expanded significantly in the late 19th century when the convenience of mail order for domestic customers was first exploited. ![]() Among Joplin’s best-known tunes were The Easy Winners (1901), Elite Syncopations (1902), the ragtime waltz Bethena (1905), and Pineapple Rag (1908), which in its second half shows that its composer was fully aware of the expressive power of the ‘blue’ notes which would soon come to dominate jazz. Maple Leaf Rag was published in 1899, and in the decade after his unexpected hit with Maple Leaf Rag, Joplin composed and published around 40 piano rags and became the most widely celebrated and highest earning of Stark’s house composers. Joplin subsequently enjoyed a fruitful partnership with the St Louis publisher John Stark as the lynchpin of the ‘Missouri school’ of classic ragtime which Stark strenuously promoted for the following two decades, also signing to his publishing house the lesser-known talents James Scott (1885-1938) and Joseph Lamb (1877-1960), both fine ragtime composers whose work still awaits wider recognition. When did Joplin join 'Missouri school’ of classic ragtime? Maple Leaf Rag quickly became celebrated as the prototypical piano rag, its distinctive style a modern enlivenment of the popular marches of the late 19th century, replete with infectiously memorable melody and abundant syncopation – the latter, ragtime’s most notable innovation, sounding considerably more original and daring around 1900 than it does to today’s jaded ears. Scott Joplin made his name with the legendary Maple Leaf Rag (1899), which he penned while working as a pianist at the Maple Leaf Club in Sedalia, Missouri: the sheet music sold more than half a million copies over the following ten years. Where did Scott Joplin go to college?Īfter travelling through a number of US states, he arrives in the town of Sedalia, Missouri, where he enrols at the George R Smith College in 1899 and joined the Queen City Cornet Band. He performs on the piano in town halls and gives guitar and mandolin lessons. In 1883 he formed a vocal quartet with three other boys, and performed in Texarkana and nearby towns. ![]() ![]() His father teaches him the violin and later he has lessons from Julius Weiss, an emigrant music professor. Joplin was born in Texas, and moves to Texarkana at an early age. In his heyday at the turn of the 20th century, Joplin could claim for himself a reputation as one of the best-selling composers of his time, and before the sudden demise of ragtime (which roughly coincided with his death in 1917, the year in which the first novelty jazz recordings were cut) his music had accomplished the singular feat of appealing equally successfully to popular, middlebrow and highbrow consumers. ![]()
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