Scott Joplin

Scott Joplin (c. 1867/68 or November 24, 1868 – April 1, 1917) is an American composer and pianist.

Joplin achieves fame for his ragtime compositions and was dubbed the King of Ragtime.

During his brief career, he writes forty-four original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas

One of his first and most popular pieces, the "Maple Leaf Rag", becomes ragtime's first and most influential hit, and will be recognized as the archetypal rag.

Joplin grew up in a musical family of railway laborers in Texarkana, Arkansas, and developed his own musical knowledge with the help of local teachers. While in Texarkana, Texas, he forms a vocal quartet and taught mandolin and guitar.

During the late 1880s he leaves his job as a railroad laborer and travelsthe American South as an itinerant musician.

He goes to Chicago for the World's Fair of 1893, which playsa major part in making ragtime a national craze by 1897.

Joplin moves to Sedalia, Missouri, in 1894 and earns a living as a piano teacher.

There he teachest future ragtime composers Arthur Marshall, Scott Hayden and Brun Campbell.

He begins publishing music in 1895, and publication of his "Maple Leaf Rag" in 1899 brings him fame.

This piece has a profound influence on writers of ragtime.

It also brings Joplin a steady income for life, though he does not reach this level of success again and frequently has financial problems.

In 1901 Joplin moves to St. Louis, where he continues to compose and publish, and regularly performs in the community.

The score to his first opera A Guest of Honor is confiscated in 1903 with his belongings for non-payment of bills, and is now considered lost.

In 1907, Joplin moves to New York City to find a producer for a new opera.

He attempts to go beyond the limitations of the musical form that has made him famous, but without much monetary success.

His second opera, Treemonisha, is never fully staged during his lifetime.

In 1916, Joplin descenda into dementia as a result of syphilis.

He is admitted to a mental institution in January 1917, and dies there three months later at the age of forty-eight.

Joplin's death is widely considered to mark the end of ragtime as a mainstream music format; over the next several years, it will evolve with other styles into stride, jazz, and eventually big band swing.

Joplin's music will be rediscovered and returned to popularity in the early 1970s with the release of a million-selling album recorded by Joshua Rifkin.

This will be followed by the Academy Award-winning 1973 film The Sting that features several of Joplin's compositions, most notably "The Entertainer", whose performance by pianist Marvin Hamlisch will receive wide airplay.

Treemonisha will finally bw produced in full, to wide acclaim, in 1972.

In 1976, Joplin will be posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

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