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VOICE ONE:
Ragtime music is dance music. It combines a solid, often lively, beat with a looser, complex melody. Most experts agree that the traditional music and dance of American slaves played a big part in the development of ragtime.
Here is a perfect example. Scott Joplin and John Stark published “A Breeze From Alabama” in nineteen-oh-two. It is music for a dance called the two-step.
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VOICE TWO:
John Stark decided that Scott Joplin was going to become too popular to stay in the small town of Sedalia. He decided to move his music business to the big city of Saint Louis, Missouri. Joplin moved to Saint Louis with a woman named Belle Hayden. Later they were married. But Joplin was not as successful in love as he was in music. He and Belle separated in nineteen-oh-two.
Two years later Joplin married again. But his wife, Freddie Alexander, died just three months later. The Scott Joplin Organization in Sedalia, Missouri says Joplin wrote this rag, “The Chrysanthemum,” for his second wife.
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After his wife’s death, in nineteen-oh-five, Joplin wrote a concert waltz called “Bethena.” The piece has a sad sound to it, quite unlike Joplin’s earlier work. You might recognize it as the theme music for the Special English program Words and Their Stories.
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VOICE ONE:
Joplin lived in many places in the years that followed. He also worked on his opera, “Treemonisha.” He had hoped his longtime business partner John Stark would publish it, but he refused. Stark did not think a ragtime opera would sell.
After nineteen-oh-seven Joplin lived mostly in New York City. He and his new wife Lottie tried for many years to get “Treemonisha” produced. But its opening night did not come until more than fifty years after Joplin’s death.
By about nineteen fifteen, Scott Joplin began suffering badly from syphilis. The disease robbed him of his ability to play piano. It also destroyed his ability to write music. He died in New York City in nineteen-seventeen.
Scott Joplin left the world sixty musical works. These include many piano rags that are still played today.
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VOICE TWO:
This program was written and produced by Caty Weaver. I’m Barbara Klein.
VOICE ONE:
And I’m Steve Ember. Join us again next week for People in America in VOA Special English. We leave you now with one of Scott Joplin’s prettiest rags, “Heliotrope Bouquet.”
