Scott Joplin’s Ragtime

In this lecture recital, distinguished performer and scholar, Marilyn Nonken, performs and speaks to the music of Scott Joplin (1868-1917) and his collaborators Scott Hayden (1882-1915), Arthur Marshall (1881-1968), and Louis Chauvin (1882-1908).

These early-twentieth-century American artists formed a tightly-knit community, orbiting Joplin in their mutual roles as performers and composers, teachers, students, classmates, and kinfolk. Together, they created a soundworld merging urban and rural vocabularies, a ragtime music exploiting a rich harmonic, melodic, textural, and cultural vocabulary. Yet a critical ear towards their musical collaborations allows today’s audiences to recognize the diverse voices of each, distinguished by their individual approaches to expressive timing and form, sonority, and virtuosity.

This event will be held at the 2023 AMS-SMT Joint Annual Meeting in Denver.