Once he finished his studies, Joplin was enough advanced to turn professional and earn his living as a working musician, playing the piano in bars and clubs, writing songs and performing in dance bands, playing piano, banjo, and cornet. These early career experiences pointed Joplin in the direction of ragtime. By the late 1890s, Joplin had sold several pieces for the piano, one of which was "Original Rags", a collection of existing melodies that he wrote collaboratively with other artists, a practice common in rural blues composition of the early 20th Century.
At the turn of the century Joplin composed and sold what would become his ragtime theme, "Maple Leaf Rag" to Sedalia music publisher John Stark & Son. At the time Joplin received terms that amounted to a one-cent royalty for each copy of sheet music sold and ten free copies for his own use, plus an advance. Besides providing Joplin with a comfortable living, "Maple Leaf Rag" pushed Joplin to the front of the class of ragtime composers and firmly placed ragtime into the respectable distinction of an established musical form.
Joplin moved to St. Louis, Missouri shortly thereafter and lived there between 1900 and 1903. There he composed some of his most famous pieces, including "Elite Syncopations," "The Entertainer," "March Majestic," and "Ragtime Dance." In addition to ragtime pieces, Joplin composed two operas, Treemonisha which was published in 1911 and only partially performed during the composer’s lifetime. Treemonisha was formally debuted in 1972 by the music department of Morehouse College in collaboration with The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. The score to an earlier Joplin opera, A Guest of Honor (1903) is lost.
Joplin contracted syphilis early in life which progressed to its terminal tertiary form by 1916, when the disease began to rob Joplin of his ability to play piano. By January 1917, Joplin required hospitalization at Manhattan State Hospital in New York City, where he died on April 1, 1917.
Scott Joplin possesses an important place in the development of piano music in American music. His antecedent was Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1869) a New Orleans Creole educated in Paris and a contemporary of Frederic Chopin. Gottschalk’s compositions were full of pre-war New Orleans, Caribbean, and African influences, giving his music a progressively syncopated sound. Gottschalk’s music logically evolved into the ragtime of Joplin by the turn of the century.
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