Paragon Rag

At a glance

• What it isa ragtime piece for solo piano, in G major.
• Who and whenwritten by Scott Joplin and published in 1909. It lasts about three minutes.
• What to listen forthe steady walk of the left hand, the right hand slipping off the beat, and the moments when a new section begins.

Listen for

• The left hand's walkin a classic rag the left hand usually alternates a low note and a chord, an oom-pah step in two. The right hand's play only works if this walk stays steady.
• Right-hand syncopationsyncopation means placing notes just off the spot where a strong beat would land. Listen for where the right hand drifts away from the left hand's beat and then locks back in.
• When the section changes: rags are usually built from several sections of similar length, joined together and repeated. When a new section comes in, notice how the height and brightness of the melody shift.

When it was written

Ragtime is piano music that grew up among African American musicians in the late nineteenth century. It laid syncopated rhythm over a march-like frame, sold widely as sheet music, and became a huge craze.

Joplin was born in Texas around 1868, travelled the Midwest as a pianist, and in the 1890s lived in Sedalia, Missouri. The Maple Leaf Rag of 1899 brought him fame, and in 1902 he published The Entertainer.

Around 1907 he moved to New York. In 1908 he brought out School of Ragtime, a set of practice exercises, in which he warned players never to play ragtime fast. Paragon Rag appeared the very next year.

Scott Joplin, the composer

By this time Joplin's ambitions reached beyond the rag. He wrote an opera, Treemonisha, and published the score at his own expense in 1911, but he never saw it properly staged in his lifetime. By the time he died in New York in 1917, popular taste was moving from ragtime toward jazz.

His music was loved widely again after it was used in the 1973 film The Sting, and in 1976 Joplin was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize.