Gladiolus Rag

At a glance

• What it isa ragtime piece for piano.
• Who, whenpublished by Scott Joplin in 1907.
• What to listen forthe syncopation of the right hand playing across the beat within an unhurried step.

Listen for

• An even stepthe left hand alternates a low note and a chord to keep the beat. This piece is closer to a calm walk than a headlong rush.
• Syncopationlisten for the small sway that appears when the right hand touches between the beats instead of on them. That is where ragtime's lilt comes from.
• Sections in turna classic rag usually presents several sections of around sixteen bars, one after another, with repeats. Listen to how the colour of the piece changes when a new melody arrives.

When it was written

Among Joplin's rags are several named after flowers and plants. There is his breakthrough Maple Leaf Rag, there is Gladiolus Rag, and there is Fig Leaf Rag, which came out the following year.

Around 1907 Joplin moved to New York. Born in Texas, he had come by way of Sedalia and St. Louis in Missouri. New York was the centre of music publishing, and there he published piano pieces while also struggling to get his opera Treemonisha onto the stage. In 1911 he published the opera's score at his own expense, but in his lifetime he never saw it properly performed.

Ragtime is music that arose among African American musicians in the late nineteenth century. Joplin died in New York in 1917, and his music became widely known again in the 1970s.