He didn’t always stay in Sedalia, however, since his life was basically the peripatetic life of an itinerant musician Joplin worked in a minstrel troupe, played cornet in a band, and went to Illinois around the time of the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. In the 1880s a teenaged Joplin moved to Sedalia, which would be his home base for much of his career. Weiss taught the youngster an appreciation of the European music tradition, particularly opera. His was a raw, undeveloped talent, and luckily a German-born local music teacher by the name of Julius Weiss was prescient enough to recognize it. Supposedly he taught himself the rudiments of the keyboard and how to play. When Scott was still very young the family moved to Texarkana, which straddles the Texas-Arkansas border.Īccording to tradition, young Scott first had access to a piano in the house where his mother worked. His father, a former slave, was a laborer. The “official” date of Novemis now known to be false. Scott Joplin was born in Texas, probably in 1867, though no one knows for sure. But his work revived in the 1970s, and continues to be poplar today. The opera was a failure, and Joplin died not long after. At his peak around 1900 Joplin helped create and popularize a form of music called “Ragtime.” Finally the young composer conceived the idea of a grand folk opera he eventually called Treemonisha. In a very real sense Scott Joplin’s career is a triumph of genius and perseverance over adversity. He nevertheless wrote some of the most memorable music of his era. Scott Joplin was born poor and black, two major hurdles at a time when racial prejudice widespread.
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