Harmony Club Waltz

At a glance

• What it isa waltz for piano. A waltz is a dance that turns in three beats.
• Who and whenwritten by Scott Joplin and published in 1896, one of the early works he published under his own name.
• What to listen forthe 'oom-pah-pah' of three beats in the left hand, and the melodies that change above it.

Listen for

• The three-beat stepin a piano waltz the left hand usually strikes a low note on the first beat and lays light chords on the second and third. Follow that 'oom-pah-pah' step first.
• Melodies in a rowpiano waltzes of this period are usually built from several short melodies that follow one another and repeat. Listen for how the mood shifts when a new melody begins.
• A comparison with ragtime: ragtime lays right-hand syncopation over a two-beat step. Hear this piece next to one of Joplin's rags and the different steps of two dances, from the same hands, come through clearly.

When it was written

In late nineteenth-century America, more and more homes had a piano. With no radio, people bought sheet music of new pieces and played them at home. Waltzes and marches were popular kinds of music in that sheet-music market.

Joplin grew up in Texas and as a young man travelled through many towns playing piano. In the 1890s he settled in Sedalia, Missouri, and studied music further. This waltz appeared in 1896, three years before 1899, when his first published rag, Original Rags, and the Maple Leaf Rag came out.

Joplin kept writing waltzes even after ragtime made him famous; in 1905 he published a concert waltz called Bethena. He died in New York in 1917, and in the 1970s his music came to be widely loved again.