![]() ![]() And he spent years trying to get a publisher, trying to find backing, unsuccessfully. UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Salut your partner to the drag.ĭOWNES: In 1907, he came to New York with the purpose of getting this opera produced and performed. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TREEMONISHA - A REAL SLOW DRAG") Can you talk about why it wasn't staged while he was alive to present it to the world?ĭOWNES: And this was really the great disappointment and the great tragedy of his life, because he tried really hard. It's a waltz called "Bethena," which he wrote in her memory to mourn her.įADEL: One of his operas, "Treemonisha," didn't receive its premiere until more than 50 years after Joplin had died. After she died, he wrote one of his loveliest, most lyrical pieces of music. ![]() She caught a cold, turned into pneumonia - no modern medicine. ![]() But she died just two months after the wedding. And then a few years later, he fell in love with this young woman named Freddie Alexander. Joplin's personal life was pretty sad in general.ĭOWNES: His first marriage broke up after the death of his infant daughter. It's a heartbreaking story, right?ĭOWNES: Yeah. And he ended up writing a ballet and two operas, as well as all of these rags.įADEL: And I think a lot of people don't know that about him.ĭOWNES: We haven't known very much about him.ĭOWNES: That's really my impetus with this project.įADEL: Now, you've got pieces on this album that Scott Joplin wrote for his wife. And that was really at the core of his music making and his ambitions throughout his life. And little Scott Joplin, who'd been learning how to play the piano on the pianos in houses that his mother was cleaning, encounters this piano teacher and was trained in classical music. And one of those journeys brought a piano teacher, a German Jewish immigrant named Julius Weiss, to Texarkana, which was a lumber town. And it's also an America where all of these different stories and journeys are coming together. He's one of the first Black Americans to grow up in this kind of new version of America. And he was born just a few years after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. This is, to me, such a turn-of-the-century story. But he did have this whole other side to his writing, right? And that doesn't really get that much coverage.ĭOWNES: Right. And when ragtime went mainstream - and I guess what I mean by that is, when it was discovered by white America - it took over as this kind of national craze.įADEL: Now, Joplin wrote a lot of ragtime pieces. You know, it's kind of 19th century parlor music. At the time, mainstream music was very polite. (SOUNDBITE OF SCOTT JOPLIN'S "MAPLE LEAF RAG")ĭOWNES: That piece of music got so popular that it's said that they sold over a million copies of the sheet music in his lifetime.įADEL: And ragtime at that time was considered really cutting-edge music, right?ĭOWNES: Right. It kind of started in 1899, when he sold a tune called "Maple Leaf Rag." And he was largely responsible for inventing and developing it. Ragtime was the American music of his day. And that was one of my assigned pieces.įADEL: So let's talk about just how popular Scott Joplin was in his lifetime.ĭOWNES: Yeah. I mean, even I - I don't play piano, but I did for a year. My mom took us to see "The Sting." And, you know, like every other kid in America who was taking piano lessons, I wanted to learn to play "The Entertainer."įADEL: Yeah. So was that piece, "The Entertainer," how you first discovered Scott Joplin?ĭOWNES: It was. It's so good to be here.įADEL: Good morning. Pianist Lara Downes is revisiting Joplin's music in a new album.įADEL: Lara Downes has spent the last few years showcasing the work of overlooked and underappreciated Black composers. The first was in 1902, when Scott Joplin's name was synonymous with the style known as ragtime. And when this version appeared in the film "The Sting," it became a nationwide sensation for the second time. (SOUNDBITE OF SCOTT JOPLIN'S "THE ENTERTAINER")įADEL: That's "The Entertainer," written by Scott Joplin. A 70-year-old piano piece made its way to the Top 10 on the pop charts. ![]()
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