Music: Scott Joplin: From Rags to Opera

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Schuller in his book Early Jazz, the first volume of his The History of Jazz, makes a convincing case for the European march as a source of the rag. A typical Joplin rag has a disciplined arrangement of repeats and returns not unlike that of the march, and a similar duple tune signature. Jazz probably got its start, Schuller believes, when saloon pianists who could not read music began improvising rags they had heard.

By the 1920s ragtime was forgotten. So was the softspoken, thoughtful Joplin, a friendly man who had always been willing to listen to other musicians. He was apparently something of a wandering lover, as the dedications of The Sycamore to Minnie L. Montgomery and Leola to Miss Minnie Wade suggest. But he craved the comfort and security of marriage. His first failed: the former Belle Hayden had no interest in his music, and their baby daughter died in infancy. His second marriage, to Lottie Stokes, seemed perfect, and Lottie stood by him as he exhausted himself and his money trying to get Treemonisha produced. The only way he could get it published was to do it himself. Burned out at 48, Joplin died in 1917 in an asylum from complications of syphilis.

Clear Chords. The current Joplin vogue is now five years old. it began when a record company, Nonesuch, began issuing Joplin albums played by such "straight" pianists as Joshua Rifkin and William Bolcom. It gained distinction in 1972 when Vera Brodsky Lawrence, an ex-concert pianist, brought out a two-volume edition of Joplin's printed music. The film The Sting made Joplin's The Entertainer a national hit. This year came the bestselling novel Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow (TIME, July 14); a central figure is the black ragtime pianist Coalhouse Walker Jr. As Walker sits down to play Joplin's Wall Street Rag, Doctorow writes: "Small clear chords hung in the air like flowers. The melodies were like bouquets. There seemed to be no other possibilities for life than those delineated by the music." Scott Joplin would have liked that.