Pleasant Moments

At a glance

• What it isa ragtime waltz for solo piano, written in G major.
• Who and whenwritten by Scott Joplin and published in 1909, during his years in New York.
• What to listen forthe left hand turning in threes, and the right hand slipping just off those beats.

Listen for

• The left hand in threea waltz accompaniment usually sounds a low note on the first beat and a chord on the second and third. Oom-pah-pah. That step is the floor the whole piece stands on.
• The right hand's off-beats: ragtime's flavour comes from syncopation, a rhythm that pushes a strong accent slightly early or holds it back. Listen to how those off-beats feel over three beats, and compare them with a rag that walks in two.
• When the sections change: Joplin's pieces are usually built from several sections in turn. Notice how the height of the melody and the mood shift when a new tune begins.

When it was written

Ragtime is piano music that grew up among African American musicians in the late nineteenth century. Laying syncopated rhythm over the frame of the march, it sold widely as sheet music and became a great craze. Joplin made his name in 1899 with the Maple Leaf Rag, and in 1902 he published The Entertainer.

Around 1907 Joplin moved to New York. In 1908 he brought out a short instruction book, School of Ragtime, in which he warned players not to play ragtime fast. Pleasant Moments appeared the following year, so it is worth hearing at an unhurried pace.

At this time Joplin was pouring himself into his opera Treemonisha. In 1911 he published the score at his own expense, but he never saw a proper staging of it in his lifetime. He died in New York in 1917, and his music found a wide audience again in the 1970s, helped by the film The Sting.