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Viewed as the "King of Ragtime," Scott Joplin was the foremost composer of the genre in the early 20th century, known for works like "The Maple Leaf Rag" and "The Entertainer."
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Play NowScott Joplin. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 11:37, May 25, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/scott-joplin-9357953.
Scott Joplin. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/scott-joplin-9357953 [Accessed 25 May 2013].
"Scott Joplin." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 25 2013, 11:37 http://www.biography.com/people/scott-joplin-9357953.
"Scott Joplin," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/scott-joplin-9357953 [accessed May 25, 2013].
"Scott Joplin," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/scott-joplin-9357953 (accessed May 25, 2013).
Scott Joplin [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 25] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/scott-joplin-9357953.
Scott Joplin, http://www.biography.com/people/scott-joplin-9357953 (last visited May 25, 2013).
Scott Joplin. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/scott-joplin-9357953. Accessed May 25, 2013.
Joplin also aspired to produce long-form works. He published the ballet Rag Time Dance in 1902 and created his first opera, A Guest of Honor, for a Midwestern tour in 1903. The production was shut down due partially to the theft of box-office receipts, with Joplin ultimately dealing with great financial losses.
By 1907, Joplin had settled in New York to work on securing funding for another opera he had created, Treemonisha,
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a multi-genre theatrical project which told the story of a rural African-American community near Texarkana. A precursor to George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, Treemonisha was presented in 1915 as a scaled-down production with voice and piano, but would not receive a full-stage treatment for years to come.
Final Years and Legacy
Joplin continued to work on various musical forms and formed his own publishing company with his third wife, Lottie, in 1913. By 1916, he had started to succumb to the ravages of syphilis, which he was thought to have contracted years earlier, and was later hospitalized and institutionalized. Joplin died on April 1, 1917.
Ragtime would enjoy a resurgence during the 1940s, and then in the '70s became a hugely popular classical genre that also entered the U.S. consciousness via film—"The Entertainer" became the theme song for The Sting, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Joplin's Treemonisha was also fully staged in 1975 on Broadway. The following year, Joplin received a special posthumous Pulitzer Prize, honoring the man who shaped a genre that influenced decades of music.
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