Scott Joplin Music

At the end of the XIX, while Vienna danced Strauss Waltzes, a mature Sibelius extracted the musical vein of his beloved Finland, Bartok searched untiringly the seminal roots of his loved Hungary, Bruckner paved the way with his cosmic sounds and the Frenchmen delighted the Belle Époque, a new kind of music called ragtime swept over America. The imminent arrival of the New Century seemed to bring within new airs and renovated inspiration all over the world.

Ragtime grew up in cafes, saloons and sporting houses. It was music for entertainment and solace evasion. What I mostly love in this genre is its radiant optimism, surprising melodic twists and a sort of naïve taste that constituted the perfect link for the Charleston ten years after its domain began to decline.

Don't think it over. If you love this music, you will delight this record for a long, long time as I did when I acquired it.

Don't miss it.

I recently performed in the play "Intimate Apparel" by Lynn Nottage. The time period reflected ragtime music. Amazon had exactly the music I needed to enhance my role for that time period. I was very pleased with the speedy delivery of the music. The quality of sound was quite satisfactory.

When Scott Joplin died in 1917 of advanced syphillis, he was penniless, frustrated artistically, and had seen the last days of the ragtime craze pass by. Who would have imagined that today, nearly 90 years after his death, his music would be taken much more seriously than it was in his own time, and would continue to delight and astonish performers and audiences around the world? This is Joplin's legacy, and it exceeds that of hundreds of other composers whose music has come and gone in the years since his death.

Not bad for a man who aspired to critical respectability above popular adulation, and who wrote three operas (including "Treemonisha") in the hope of attaining respect among "serious" musicians. Joplin's unbelievably resourceful melodic gift, his innovative rhythmic instinct, his utterly original harmonic palette, and his superb talents as an arranger have made his music immortal, and even such a renowned musician as Theodore Leschetizky (who trained more great pianists than any other teacher of his time) played and admired his music. Maybe he was more respectable than he knew.

Roy Eaton's renditions of fifteen of Joplin's most famous rags are wonderfully vibrant and insightful. This is a first-rate recording at an unbeatable price. Need I say more?

"Scott Joplin. His Greatest Hits" (1996) CD includes 16 finest rag times written by the "King of the Ragtime Composers" and performed by Richard Zimmerman, a Los Angeles musician, a key figure in the ragtime revival, a founder of worldwide The Maple Leaf Club who recorded all Joplin's works. Joplin (1868-1917) himself predicted that it would take twenty five years after his death to recognize his music. It took much longer more than that but after the enormous success of the multi-time Oscar winning (including best score) stylish crime comedy "The Sting" (1973), his music that had been successfully used in the film in the Marvin Hamlisch's adaptation began its triumphant revival and became deservingly famous and popular around the world. Six refine, appealing, multi-themed, haunting, magnificent, syncopated rags from the movie are included in "His Greatest Hits": Easy Winners, Gladiolus Rag, Pine Apple Rag, Rag Time Dance", and two of my favorites, "Solace" - experimental, slow, meditating piece that contains Habanera rhythms and melodic, sophisticated, triumphant, elegant masterpiece, "The Entertainer". I think Joplin would've been surprised to find out that sixty years after his death, thousands miles from Sedalia, Missouri where he studied music theory and composition or from NYC where he spent his last years, in Moscow, Russia, one girl would listen to LP given her by a friend and would fell in love with the incredibly beautiful and timeless rag times from the very first sound of piano. For many years, my favorite was "The Entertainer" but since couple of days ago, it is "Map Leaf Rag" which is so perfect that I don't think Joplin himself ever wrote anything better and his every piece is fantastic. There is something so special about "Map Leaf Rag" - it is like thousands tiny silver hammers joyfully jump against the polished shining surface or like myriads of summer raindrops when the sun shines through the clouds and huge bridge of rainbow invites you to step on it and to lose yourself to this cascading syncopated feast of sounds.