As a pioneering African American composer of ragtime music, Scott Joplin took part in a musical revolution in America at the turn of the twentieth century and left an enduring mark on the musical culture of the country. Best known during his lifetime for Maple Leaf Rag (1899), Joplin wrote some two dozen compositions in the catchy, syncopated style that served as accompaniment to cakewalk dancing, to new forms of urban sporting life, and to a more generalized revolt against nineteenth-century gentility and restraint. He helped establish the conventional structure of ragtime compositions and successfully blended familiar genres of European music with African American rhythms and melodies into a genuine musical hybrid. After 1900, ragtime music emerged as the first nationally recognized American music, and Tin Pan Alley publishers flooded the popular sheet music market with thousands of snappy, syncopated songs and piano pieces.

Scott Joplin...