I'm not an expert nor a novice on musical composition. What facet of Joplin's piano works would be considered unclassical?
I find loads of similarities between Pine Apple Rag and some of Chopin's waltzes. Same goes for the Entertainer and Maple Leaf Rag.

According to Frederick Hodges, an excellent pianist, the difference is that Scott Joplin's rags are popular music in the respect that they were designed to sell sheet music to the public, whereas classical music was commissioned by a wealthy patron and publishing was an afterthought.

Here is his essay

http://www.frederickhodges.com/is%20ragtime%20classical%20music.html

I personally find the distinction to be one of semantics and since nobody will ever agree on this issue it's best to just forget about it and focus on the music.

Joplin strived for his music to be considered "classical" and as a result of his rejection, he fell into a depression that lasted until his death. Was that merely a matter of semantics?

Where are you getting that information, Wise Idiot? Reading about him on Wikipedia, I've learned that his wife died unexpectedly weeks after their marriage, he couldn't get his opera picked up, and when he debuted it at his own cost, it received unfavorable reviews. I'm no expert, but I would imagine those factors contributed to his depression far more than semantics.

And indeed, it is semantics. "Classical music" is a term we use to describe centuries of music from countless cultures and reigons. Clearly, to give them all the same title is inaccurate and an oversimplification. Regardless, I don't get offended when people refer to music written in the Ancient Times, Renaissance, Baroque, Romantic, and indeed still being written as "classical music." I could have been a real smart-aleck and answered your question with "because Scott Joplin did not compose between 1750-1825," but that's not really what you were getting at, and I knew that. I agree with Hrodulf that anyone who makes a big deal out of things like this is missing the point and getting bogged down in words and phrases and titles when we should be talking about music.

Because Scott Joplin's music is part of jazz which is usually kept separate from classical.

For what it's worth, my local classical radio station frequently play Joplin.

Scott Joplins music is insufficiently complex or layered to ever pass for anything more than childish jinglings attractive to a depressed audience.

To even suggest it could ever be considered classical in the true sense is sheer nonsense.

Ah, Mocheol weighs in again with his mild opinions and preemptive ridicule directed at anyone who might dare to disagree.

I would agree that rag is not as complex or layered as some of the better works of composers who wear the traditional 'classic' clothes. But if one bothers to unpack the better works in the ragtime literature you will find plenty of meat in there. Voicing is often quite complex, and that voicing must be understood inside a rhythmic structure that itself is often nuanced and full of subtlety. A Chopin Etude? No. Childish jinglings? Only to the stubbornly opinionated.

I guess that's the typical cliche that some people harbor who do not know Joplin and his music well.

In his ragtimes, Joplin married together a lot of different forms and melodies that he compressed into a very well-defined and new form. To me, the rags are somehow a compression of more than just one style of music. In this regard, they are very complex to me. There is a certain repeatability element in there that one cannot deny (and that is admittedly not so complex) but to call the works of a great composer like Joplin "childish jinglings" gives testimony to the author's lack of knowledge and not to Joplin's musical qualities.
I think in many ways Joplin deserves to be regarded as a "classical" composer in the loose definition of "classical" as having withstood the onslaught of time. I believe his pieces will survive and will be known for many generations to come.

How can you call Joplin a great composer?

The facts do not bear this out.

1] His music is not played as part of the classical worlds repertoire internationally
2] His music mainly advanced through the medium of indiscriminate mass media
3] His music does not have international popularity
4] His music does not have universal appeal.

Joplin is a minor composer on the worlds stage.His music reflected by and large
the great American Depression of the thirties and very little else. Understandably Joplin is popular with certain Americans but his world status is definitely not that of a "Great Composer".

Its simply an abuse of words to call him a Great Composer.

There are very few great composers and if the New World puts Joplin up as a candidate well we Europeans will just smile and try to hide our embarrassment

Oh dear. I thought the 'classical canon' of music was just like the 'classical canon' of English literature... an academic notion that some enjoy for argument's sake (which is fun in its own way).

Shakespeare was originally NOT in the literary canon because he was considered well, vulgar and perhaps even childish. He was certainly very popular in his day - much in the same way that say, Steven Spielberg is now. And maybe how Mozart was in his time and place.

So, given time, Joplin (and hey, maybe Spielberg!) will probably be included in the canon of classics in their respective art forms.

I am German and I love Joplin. I know many other Germans/Europeans who do, too. I've dedicated many hours of practice and played most of Joplin's pieces. Eeach and every time, they surprise me with their vitality and inventiveness.

The OPs question was why isnt Joplin considered classical.

Classical means

1] Universal appeal
2] Enduring popularity
3] Academic esteem

Joplins music simply does not qualify

I accept that Joplins music has its moments but they are soon forgotten as is the way with most popular music.

You cannot make a silk purse out of a sows ear.

That's a pretty neat trick, since he died in 1917. He must be a better composer than I thought.

"Classical" music is from a specific time period in history. Joplin music is from the 20th century, and is fun and challenging and I consider it part of any good repertoire a student should learn.

Thats fine for students aspiring to Ragtime piano who will perhaps find occasional work in some American bars.

However pupils aspiring to play piano on the worlds classical stage will not advance very far with Joplin as their major.

Whether or not Joplin was a Great Composer, this answer dispositively nails the question asked in the thread title.

Ragtime is one of the progenitors of jazz. That fact, plus Joplin's preeminent status among ragtime composers, eclipses the importance of any similarities to classical music.

Steven

I guess you'de have to have an agreed upon definition of Classical. Do you mean classical era - as in Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, etc. - or do you mean it to include music outside the classical era - Bach, schumann, Chopin, Mahler, Ravel, etc.

If you mean the latter, then there's lots of classical music written after the death of Scott Joplin.

I agree it's fun and challenging, and students can learn from playing it - especially left hand, and synchopated rhythmns. Outside of that it's relatively limited technically, IMO - i.e. there's a lot of technique you see in Chopin, Liszt, Ravel, Prokofiev, etc., that you don't see in Joplin.

I don't think he's a composer to necessarily scoff at.

I don't agree with your definition of classical (Wagner doesn't enjoy universal appeal, Spohr has not enjoyed enduring popularity, and Soler is not held in academic esteem.)

But even if I did agree with your definition, I think Joplin satisfies those categories every bit as well as Carl Maria von Weber, Gabriel Pierne, or Carl Friedrich Zelter, all of whom are very much considered classical composers.

You have not stated a single fact here, only your personal opinion.

1) No it isnt, because it is Jazz music, not Classical.

2) Just as any popular musician does today.

3) I have heard from people in countries from Europe, North and South America who love Joplins music.

4) Neither does classical music. You will find a lot of people that dislike classical music just as much as you dislike Joplin.
5) see 3

6) Joplin was the first composer to sell 1 million copies of sheet music for his Maple Leaf Rag.

7) His music is academically studied under any BA Jazz degree, and held in the highest regard by academics, everyone of my music lecturers loved Joplins music.

In fact, Joplins music is more universally appealing and popular than classical is - I dont recall seeing any classical music making it into Canadas list of '100 greatest ever songs', where the Maple Leaf Rag was listed as the only non vocal piece I remember seeing.

How can his music have anything to do with the great depression, when it was mostly composed between 1898 - 1917? As someone pointed out, he was dead over a decade before the great depression.

His music lost popularity as people began to favor Jazz over Ragtime, yet it was still a highly popular phenomenon at its time, much more so then any other composer before Joplin.

To call Joplin a great musician is an understatement, he was a Piano Genius.

I think that "classical" is more commonly used to depict a genre of music, rather than to qualify the value and appeal of musical content.
Now defining the classical genre does bear some discussion but the Irish gentleman's take is erroneous, not to say elitist, clearly.

You forgot playing at weddings, being a Piano Clown, and a Childrens Entertainer, or advancing further to a Jazz musician, maybe also a Jazz piano teacher? Also there is no reason why someone cant play all Jazz, classical, and popular styles.


I would also prefer to pay to see someone perform Joplin than Mozart.

Not sure how many "American bars" you've been in, but I've never heard Joplin on the jukebox.



Students can learn from playing Joplin, just as they can learn from playing Heller, Clementi, Kuhlau, etc.

Interesting some of the "serious" pianists who have recorded his music. But maybe they were just trying to make a buck or two.

WHAT AN AWESOME THREAD!!!

I'm reminded of AJB's old signature line (though I like his new one as well).

His old signature line had something about not arguing with ....

Oh well, go look it up.

Mocheol, that was a "classic" troll! Bravo!

Anyone know where I can buy a black and white mime outfit, mime like mask, rainbow toy hat with a spinning wheel thing, and some other funny clothes in the UK?

Ive already found cheap tophats and cowboy clothes at an online joke store.

Just wait untill I have finished learning all my shiznaz and become a proper Piano Clown!

But I need the clothes first. Oh, I forgot a clown wig and red nose - should I go for a Rainbow, or a Solid colour afro wig?

Ooooohhh!!! Shiny gold big daddy Pimp Hat, oh oh, and an old mans outfit with dull brown / gray clothes and those boring old people hats!

I'll buy one outfit at a time for each piece I complete for a video.

just thought I would toss in that my current teacher claims that Joplin's music IS classical and he's a jazz teacher. My previous teacher, who was a classical pianist also held Joplin's music in the repertoire. Just because it is so vastly different from what we consider "classical" it has much more in common with the classical repertoire than the jazz repertoire in terms of of performance practices and construction.

I've written over thirty rags and only a handful of them even rival Joplin's work. Even his little regarded works show a great sense of melodic invention and sheer musical intelligence and taste. Is he on the level of the greatest composers known to history, in terms of creative output? No. But he wasn't a hack either, and the proof of that is that we are talking about him and his music nearly a century after the fact. A hack couldn't have written "Scott Joplin's New Rag," "Euphonic Sounds," "Magnetic Rag," the Prelude to Act III from the opera Treemonisha, "Gladiolus Rag" or "Solace - A Mexican Serenade."

Remember, most of Joplin's late work was lost and we will never know the full extent of his creative output, which allegedly included a symphony and other lost works. The fact that we know him only through his short form piano works is just bad luck that the work was not preserved or curated.

Anyway, what I meant by semantics is that everyone has a pet definition of what is "classical," and what isn't, and it's pointless to debate a term that everyone uses in a different way.