Scott Joplin
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.