Prosperity Rag

At a glance

• What it isa ragtime piece for solo piano.
• Who, whenpublished in 1916 by James Scott, a Missouri musician.
• What to listen forthe right hand riding the off-beats above an evenly walking left hand, and the places where one melody gives way to the next.

Listen for

• A conversation between two hands: the left hand alternates low notes and chords to keep the beat, while the right hand plays across it. Follow the feeling of the two hands taking different paths and then meeting again.
• A right hand that roams widely: Scott's rags are often described as sending the right hand widely between high and low registers. Follow with your ears how far up and down the right hand travels.
• Repeats and new melodies: a classic rag usually repeats each melody once before moving on to a new one. Listen for how the feeling differs between the first hearing and the repeat.

When it was written

By the mid-1910s ragtime sheet music was no longer as popular as it had been. In the following year, 1917, the first jazz record appeared, and in that same year Scott Joplin died in New York. The center of dance and popular music gradually shifted to jazz.

Scott moved to Kansas City, where he taught piano and played in theaters to accompany silent films. When sound came to film in the late 1920s, jobs for theater musicians shrank sharply. Scott died in Kansas City in 1938. His rags were played anew later, when ragtime found a fresh audience, and today he is counted, with Joplin and Joseph Lamb, among the three composers who represent classic ragtime.