Scott Joplin
CHOW, BENJAMIN F EXTRA CREDIT In the late 1890’s ; a craze for a new kind of
music called ragtime swept the country off it’s feet. Instant popularity of
ragtime increased before the turn of the century. By 1910, the “ragtime” mania
reached its peak in all elements of music: popular dance, theater, and movie
music. Scott Joplin was a young black man that mastered and polish this subtle
art. Born in Texarkana, Texas on November 29, 1868, Scott became facinated with
the piano at an early age and was mentored by a old german teacher that took him
in as a pupil. Scott’s style of piano playing stress his smooth singing tone and
subtle sense of rhythm. Scott has the tendency to turn melodic lines into
delicate and but simple notes.
Generally all of his pieces share the customary
ragtime layout and composition of a pair of contrasting lines, each repeated and
followed by the return to the first line, then a new section consisting of two
or three repeated lines emerge and is usually subdominant. In Scott’s piece the
“Magnetic Rag”. The reappearance of the orginal theme at the close of the piece,
shares a shocking likeness to Beethoven’s famous reoccuring “I am Death Theme”.
In the “Magnetic Rag”, the return of the opening theme at the end of the piece
creates a rondo-like structure with a scheme ABCDA, with the outer A section and
the central C section stands in tonal harmony. This can be compared to his other
famous pieces of work “Maple Leaf Rag” and “The Entertainer” which all exercise
the reappearing theme that shows a tendency to round out by always returning to
the home key. “Magnetic Rag” was the last piece that Scott completed. It was
subtitled : syncopation classiques because of his wonderful blend of syncopation
on every up-beat and mad-cow improvisations tailored to sound like European
dance music that influenced early ragtime.
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