The Nonpareil

At a glance

• What it isa ragtime piece for piano in B-flat major.
• Who and whenwritten by Scott Joplin and published in 1907.
• What to listen forthe steady walk of the left hand, the right hand slipping off the beat above it, and the moment a new section begins.

Listen for

• The left-hand walkin a rag the left hand usually alternates a low bass note with a chord, moving forward in an even oom-pah. It is the floor the whole piece stands on, so try following just this walk first.
• Right-hand syncopationsyncopation means nudging a note ahead of, or just off, the place where the strong beat would fall, which gives the rhythm its spring. The left hand goes straight while the right keeps leaning sideways, and that tug is the flavour of ragtime.
• Where sections changeclassic rags are usually built from several sections that follow one another. Listen for the moment a new section begins and the melody climbs higher or the mood shifts.

When it was written

Ragtime is piano music that grew up among African American musicians in the late nineteenth century. Joplin was raised in Texas by a father who had been enslaved and worked on the railroad, and a mother who did domestic work. As a young man he travelled the Midwest as a pianist, and in the 1890s he settled in Sedalia, Missouri.

The Maple Leaf Rag, published in 1899, made his name, and in 1902 he published The Entertainer. Around 1907, the year The Nonpareil came out, Joplin moved to New York. The following year, 1908, he published School of Ragtime, a set of exercises on how to play the style. He urged players not to play ragtime fast.

Scott Joplin

Joplin's ambitions went beyond short piano pieces. He wrote an opera, Treemonisha, and paid to publish the score himself 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 already turning towards jazz.

His music was heard widely again in the 1970s. His rags were used in the 1973 film The Sting, and Treemonisha finally reached the stage. In 1976 he was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize.