Fig Leaf Rag

At a glance

• What it isa ragtime piece for piano. The 'fig leaf' of the title is the leaf of the fig tree.
• Who, whenpublished by Scott Joplin in 1908.
• What to listen forsyncopation that sounds clearly at a calm speed, and the even step of the left hand.

Listen for

• An unhurried beatthe left hand alternates a low note and a chord to keep the beat. Because the step is not fast, each beat sounds clearly.
• The grain of syncopation: listen for the mismatch that appears when the right hand touches between the beats. The slower it is played, the plainer that mismatch becomes.
• Where sections changea classic rag usually presents several sections of around sixteen bars, one after another, with repeats. Listen to how the expression of the piece changes when a new melody begins.

When it was written

In 1908 Joplin published a short book of exercises called School of Ragtime. It showed through exercises how to play ragtime properly, and in it he wrote that it is never right to play ragtime fast. By then he was living in New York.

Joplin was born in Texas and travelled from town to town playing piano. He made his name with Maple Leaf Rag in 1899, and afterwards published several rags named after plants, such as Gladiolus Rag (1907) and this one.

Ragtime arose among African American musicians in the late nineteenth century and spread across America as sheet music. Joplin hoped ragtime would be treated as serious music. He died in New York in 1917, and in 1976, long after his death, he received a special Pulitzer Prize.