Ragtime in New Rochelle

In chapter 21 of Ragtime, the fictional Harlem piano player Coalhouse Walker Jr. plays a couple of Scott Joplin compositions for Mother, Father, Younger Brother, and the Little Boy (with the stubborn Sarah listening from upstairs). The first of these is "Wall Street Rag," which was composed and published in 1909 (so it would have been cutting-edge music at the time). Younger Brother is familiar with ragtime music from his "nightlife period in New York," but "he had never expected to hear it in his sister's home" (159). The narrator describes the family's reaction to these strange and wonderful sounds, the likes of which their out-of-tune parlor piano has never experienced before: "Small clear chords hung in the air like flowers. The melodies were like bouquets. There seemed to be no other possibilities for life than those delineated by the music" (159).

Walker follows this with "the most famous rag of all," Joplin's most popular and well-known piece, "Maple Leaf Rag" (1899)--"This was a most robust composition, a vigorous music that roused the senses and never stood still a moment" (160).

        

(This is from a piano roll recorded by Joplin himself.)