8/3/2023 0 Comments 1902 scott joplin piano ragHe may have resided with one of several black families named “Joplin” that lived in Sedalia. In the 1880s, the teenage Joplin lived for a while in Sedalia and attended Lincoln High School in the black neighborhood north of the railroad. Weiss’ influence may be the foundation of Joplin’s desire for recognition as a classical composer. Joplin ’s talent was noticed in Texarkana by a local German-born music teacher Julius Weiss who instructed him further by placing special emphasis on European art forms, including opera. In support of this story, we note its reflection in details of Treemonisha, an opera that Joplin published in 1911. The Joplins lived on both sides of the border.Īnecdotes relate that the young Scott Joplin gained access to a piano in a white-owned home where his mother worked, and taught himself the rudiments of music. They moved to the newly established town of Texarkana, which straddles the Texas-Arkansas border. When he was still a young child, Joplin’s family left the farm on which his father (formerly a slave) worked as a laborer. So then, when was he born? Available documents point to a birth between June 1867 and mid-January 1868. As he was already two at that time (and was twelve when the next Census was taken, in June 1880) indicates that the frequently-cited and celebrated birth date of Novemis incorrect. Census records locate him there in July 1870 as a two-year-old child. It seems he was born in Texas, probably in the northeast part of the state as U.S. We are not quite sure, for example, when or where he was born. Yet, for all his prominence and recognition, many of the facts regarding his life still elude us. There is no question as to Joplin’s greatness, his talent, his importance in the history of ragtime and American music overall. While Sedalia was Scott Joplin’s home for only a few years, it was a home with a special meaning for him. It is with good reason that Sedalia, Missouri has become central to the Joplin story and the site of the annual Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival.
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