An Introduction to America’s Music

240 PART 2 | FROM THE CIVIL WAR THROUGH WORLD WAR I

CD 2.2 Listening Guide 10.1 Maple Leaf Rag^ SCOTT JOPLIN

Listen & Refl ect

1. Like Sousa’s marches, Joplin’s rags were published in arrangements for a variety of
   instrumental combinations. Yet Joplin was a pianist and conceived his music for the
   piano. Dozens of performances of Maple Leaf Rag can be easily found on YouTube and
   elsewhere online, played by various wind and string instruments, as solos and in groups.
   Sample some of these, then consider what features of Maple Leaf Rag, if any, strike you
   as particularly idiomatic to the piano. Does the music seem better suited to some instru-
   ments or instrumental combinations than to others?

date: 1899

performer: Scott Joplin

genre: piano rag

meter: duple

form: AABBACCDD, 16-bar sections

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR

• syncopated rhythms over steady bass
  accompaniment


• multi-strain form similar to a march


• key change at trio, as in a march

timing section comments

0:00 A Steady two-note-per-beat rhythm in bass; faster, irregular, syncopated

rhythms in treble. Just before the midpoint (0:08), a rising fi gure climbs from

bass to treble. The second half consists of a 4-bar phrase played in the upper

register, then repeated an octave lower, in the mid-register.

0:22 A Repeat.

0:44 B Falling melody in treble, standard “oom-pah” accompaniment in bass

(alternating low octaves on the beats with midrange chords between the

beats).

1:06 B Repeat.

1:28 A The A strain returns before the trio.

1:49 trio

C

In the subdominant key. Treble alternates 2 bars of thick chords with 2 bars

of a single-note melody, suggesting the kind of dynamic contrasts heard in a

Sousa march.

2:11 C Repeat.

2:34 D Return to the tonic key, with more lyrical melody.

2:56 D Repeat.

note Piano roll by Scott Joplin, 1916.

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