By the early twentieth century Scott Joplin was nationally known and celebrated.for his ragtime compositions, especially his'"Maple Leaf Rag", (1899), but in the l910s he suffered a great disappointment". In 1903 He had written A Guest of Honor, a ragtime opera that was neither performed nor published. Undaunted, he began work in 1908. on another such composition, Treemonisha, a musical fable set in the post-Reconstruction South and stressing the importance of education for the advancement of African Americans. The.,three-act work (with twenty-seven musical numbers) became an obsession with Joplin, who published it at his own expense in 1911. Unable to find backing for a full production he staged one performance— without sets and with only his piano playing as accompaniment —in 1915 at the .Lincoln Theater, in Harlem. The audience found Treemonisha too folksy for their modern, urban taste, and Joplin died in...