In the late 1890’s ; a craze for a new kind of music called ragtime swept the
country off it’s feet. Instant popularity of ragtime increased before the turn
of the century. By 1910, the “ragtime” mania reached its peak in all
elements of music: popular dance, theater, and movie music. Scott Joplin was a
young black man that mastered and polish this subtle art. Born in Texarkana,
Texas on November 29, 1868, Scott became facinated with the piano at an early
age and was mentored by a old german teacher that took him in as a pupil.
Scott’s style of piano playing stress his smooth singing tone and subtle sense
of rhythm. Scott has the tendency to turn melodic lines into delicate and but
simple notes. Generally all of his pieces share the customary ragtime layout and
composition of a pair of contrasting lines, each repeated and followed by the
return to the first line, then a new section consisting of two or three repeated
lines emerge and is usually subdominant. In Scott’s piece the “Magnetic
Rag”. The reappearance of the orginal theme at the close of the piece, shares
a shocking likeness to Beethoven’s famous reoccuring “I am Death Theme”.
In the “Magnetic Rag”, the return of the opening theme at the end of the
piece creates a rondo-like structure with a scheme ABCDA, with the outer A
section and the central C section stands in tonal harmony. This can be compared
to his other famous pieces of work “Maple Leaf Rag” and “The
Entertainer” which all exercise the reappearing theme that shows a tendency to
round out by always returning to the home key. “Magnetic Rag” was the last
piece that Scott completed. It was subtitled : syncopation classiques because of
his wonderful blend of syncopation on every up-beat and mad-cow improvisations
tailored to sound like European dance music that influenced early ragtime.