| Maple Leaf Rag |
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The "Maple Leaf Rag" ( 1897 ) is an early Ragtime composition for piano by Scott Joplin . It was one of Joplin's early works, and is one of the most famous of all Ragtime pieces. In 1916, Joplin recorded the Maple Leaf Rag on a Piano Roll on the Connorized label, along with his other ragtime pieces - Something Doing , Magnetic Rag , Ole Miss Rag , Weeping Willow and Pleasant Moments - Ragtime Waltz . STRUCTURE It is a multi-strain ragtime March with athletic Bass Line s and upbeat Melodies . Each of the four parts features a recurring theme and a striding bass line with a lot of seventh chords. It is more carefully constructed than almost all previous ragtime tunes, and the syncopations, especially in the transition between the first and second strain, were arrestingly novel at the time. While not an extremely difficult piece rhythmically or musically, a pianist must have a well developed command of his or her left arm in order to perform the piece successfully—especially the third section. When it was first published, it was considered significantly more difficult than the average Tin Pan Alley and early ragtime Sheet Music common at the time. The ''Gladiolus Rag'', a later composition by Joplin, is a thinly disguised variant of the Maple Leaf Rag, which is usually played at a somewhat slower tempo. POPULARITY AND LEGACY Joplin wrote the Maple Leaf Rag circa , 1981. Over 1 million copies of the sheet music were eventually sold, making Scott Joplin the first musician to sell 1 million copies of any type of music. In addition to sales of sheet music, it was also popular in Orchestration s for dance bands and Brass Band s for years. The tune continued to be in the repertoire of Jazz bands decades later, with artists such as the New Orleans Rhythm Kings in the 1920s , and Sidney Bechet in the 1940s giving it up-to-date adaptations, maintaining a timeless quality to it. The "Maple Leaf Rag" is still a favorite of ragtime Pianist s, and has been described as an "American institution... still in print and still popular." As the Copyright has expired, the composition is in the Public Domain . It appears in the soundtracks of hundreds of films, cartoons, commercials, and Bally Midway 's 1983 Arcade Videogame , '' Domino Man ''. Long before the Scott Joplin revival that began with the feature film '' The Sting '', the tune can be heard in the film '' The Public Enemy '' from 1931, as in one scene a piano player can be heard slowly working through the piece. In 2004 Canadian radio listeners voted it the 39th Greatest Song Of All Time . EXTERNAL LINKS
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