Description
Scott Joplin's best-known piece owes its worldwide popularity to the 1973 film The Sting. Published in 1902, it was long forgotten after his death. Called the King of Ragtime, Joplin lived on the sales of his sheet music while working to establish ragtime as an art music.
Ragtime works by having the left hand mark the beat regularly while the right places its notes off that beat, producing syncopation. In this C major rag four contrasting strains appear in sequence, laid out much as in a march. Some 2,600 notes fill about four minutes.
It is rated intermediate because the figures themselves are regular. The task is rhythmic: if the left hand wavers, the syncopation does not exist. Keep the left as exact as machinery and set the right hand's displacement on top of it. Joplin wrote repeatedly on his scores that ragtime should never be played fast — accuracy of rhythm, not speed, is what this music is made of.
Ragtime pieces centered on Scott Joplin's syncopated rhythms — a lively American genre that helped pave the way for jazz.
Browse all songs in Ragtime →Sheet Music
Sheet music provided by Mutopia Project
About the Composer
Scott Joplin (1868-1917)
Scott Joplin was an African American composer born in Texas, known as the "King of Ragtime." Blending syncopated, buoyant rhythms with sophisticated harmony, he brought the genre to national prominence with the enormous success of "Maple Leaf Rag." This site includes 18 of his works, such as "The Entertainer" and "Elite Syncopations."
View all works by Joplin →