Peacherine Rag

At a glance

• What it isa ragtime piece for solo piano, in E-flat major.
• Who and whenwritten by Scott Joplin and published in 1901, two years after the Maple Leaf Rag made his name.
• What to listen forthe steady walk of the left hand, the right hand nudging just off the beat, and the moments when a new section begins.

Listen for

• The left hand's walkin a rag the left hand usually alternates a low note and a chord, stepping evenly in two with an oom-pah. It is a step inherited from the march. When that walk stays steady, the right hand's play can come alive.
• Right-hand syncopationsyncopation means sounding a note just ahead of where the strong beat should land, pulling the beat forward. Listen for the places where the right hand drifts away from the left hand's step and then locks back in.
• Where sections changeclassic rags are usually built from several sections that follow one another and repeat. When a new section comes in, listen for how the height or brightness of the melody shifts.

When it was written

Joplin was born around 1868 in Texas. His father had been enslaved and later worked on the railroad; his mother did domestic work. As a boy, Joplin is said to have taken piano lessons free of charge from a teacher named Julius Weiss, who also introduced him to European music such as opera.

As a young man he travelled the Midwest as a pianist, and in the 1890s he settled in Sedalia, Missouri, studying music at George R. Smith College. The Maple Leaf Rag, published in 1899, made his name, and around that time he moved to St. Louis to keep composing. Peacherine Rag appeared right then, in 1901, and The Entertainer followed the next year.

Around 1907 he moved to New York. In 1908 he published a ragtime exercise book, School of Ragtime, in which he urged players not to play ragtime fast. In New York he poured his energy into his opera Treemonisha, but never saw a proper staging of it in his lifetime. He died there in 1917, by which time popular taste had moved on to jazz. His rags became widely known again through the 1973 film The Sting, and in 1976 he was given a special Pulitzer Prize.