The Entertainer

About this arrangement

The first tune of Scott Joplin’s ragtime piece of 1902. Ragtime is built on syncopation: the right hand keeps landing off the beat, a semiquaver (sixteenth note) then a quaver (eighth note), while the left hand keeps a steady oom-pah underneath, a bass note and then a chord on every quaver. It is in Joplin’s key of C major and starts with a pickup of two semiquavers, D and D sharp. Joplin plays the high parts in octaves; here the right hand plays single notes, the lower note of each octave, so the tune stays between the D above middle C and the E an octave higher. The left hand is simplified from Joplin’s.

Practice tip: Joplin wrote “Not fast” at the top, and he meant it: ragtime sounds best steady. Learn the left hand first until it ticks like a clock, then fit the right hand’s off-beat notes in between.

A short history

Scott Joplin grew up in Texarkana, on the border of Texas and Arkansas, and became the best-known composer of ragtime, the syncopated piano music that swept America around 1900. The Entertainer was published in 1902 by John Stark & Son of St. Louis, subtitled “A Rag Time Two Step” and dedicated to “James Brown and his Mandolin Club”.

Joplin also wrote an opera, Treemonisha, which was never fully staged in his lifetime. He died in New York in 1917, and ragtime was soon overtaken by jazz.

Seventy years later The Entertainer had a second life. Marvin Hamlisch adapted it for the 1973 film The Sting, and his recording reached number 3 on the American pop chart; it has been one of the best-known piano pieces in the world ever since.

Quick facts

Tune

Scott Joplin, 1902

Key

C major

Time signature

2/4

Length

16 bars and a pickup

Tempo

Not fast, crotchet = 72

Difficulty

Level 6: Moving on (piece 193 of 201)

Type

Classical

Hands

Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left

Copyright

Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use

Questions and answers