The Favorite

At a glance

• What it isa ragtime piece for solo piano, lasting about three minutes.
• Who and whenwritten by Scott Joplin and published in 1904, in the key of B-flat major.
• What to listen forthe steady walk of the left hand, the right hand slipping just off the beat above it, 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 bass note and a chord, stepping evenly in two with an oom-pah. It is a step inherited from the march, and that even floor is what lets the right hand's play stand out.
• Right-hand syncopationsyncopation means putting the stress where the strong beat isn't, so the rhythm seems to slip off the beat and tug forward. Listen for where the right hand drifts away from the left and then lands together with it again.
• When sections changerags are usually built from several sections of similar length that follow one another and repeat. Notice how the height of the tune or the mood shifts as a new section comes in.

When it was written

Ragtime is music that grew up among African American musicians in the late nineteenth century. It laid syncopation over the frame of the march and sold widely as piano sheet music. Recordings were not yet common, so people bought the music and tried out new rags at the piano at home.

Joplin was born in Texas around 1868. His father, who had been enslaved, worked on the railroad, and his mother did domestic work. As a young man Joplin travelled the Midwest playing piano, and in the 1890s he settled in Sedalia, Missouri. The Maple Leaf Rag made his name in 1899, and The Entertainer followed in 1902. By 1904, when this piece came out, he was publishing rags steadily.

Joplin also cared about how ragtime should be played. In 1908 he published School of Ragtime, a set of exercises for players, and in 1911 he published his opera Treemonisha at his own expense. He never saw it properly staged in his lifetime. By the time he died in New York in 1917, public taste was already moving toward jazz.