Weeping Willow - Scott Joplin

Weeping Willow, Bethena, The Nonpareil, The Pineapple Rag, Solace: A Mexican Serenade, The Paragon Rag, the Magnetic Rag--Phil Grant, piano

If reading from YouTube, scroll down to the dotted line

Scott Joplin is my favorite composer since Schubert, and in fact there are many similarities. Both were afflicted by syphilis. See below for more, and especially my rendition of Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq7R7gXpGPE

Those who, like myself, don’t know where they’d be, if they’d be, if it weren’t for the greatest works of Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert — and Joplin — might be interested in my book, Cabeza and the Meaning of Wilderness: An Exploration of Nature, and Mind, available at www.meaningofwilderness.com. While perhaps only 10 to 20% of the book directly concerns music, all of it, in one way or another, delves deeply into that wilderness of Mind from which all great art arises. Note that if purchased from this site, a risk-free money-back warranty (within 55 days from date of purchase) is offered — and you keep the book.

Also, I encourage anyone with even the slightest interest to visit my webpage at the above website, “Learning or Relearning the Piano as an Adult; A Spiritual Endeavor.” Since I myself only started at age 19, I feel I might be able to offer especial insight into the difficulties involved, and how they may be overcome. Also on that page I provide information on the stunning virtual piano I use for recording.

Scott Joplin did not smile. People would tell him jokes just to try to get him to smile. He would not smile. But, apart from his inherently serious disposition, one might say he didn’t really have a heck of a lot to smile about. While admittedly he was sort of famous and earning a modest income of $300-400 a year from The Maple Leaf Rag, biographer Edward A. Berlin writes with astonishment that, two years before he wrote Weeping Willow in 1903, and two years after he wrote The Maple Leaf Rag, Scott Joplin was described as a “mediocre pianist.” How could this be, Berlin asks, for someone who favored the piano as his major medium of expression and developed a style that was so eminently pianistic? The only explanation he can come up with is that the syphilis that had already passed a death sentence on him had begun to cause dis-coordination of his fingers. Imagine: you’ve known for years that dread disease was going to bring you to an early, horrible end. But on top of that now you learn even the years you do have... 

Plus, now in 1903, his marriage was on the rocks. One remembrance states: “Mrs. Joplin wasn’t so interested in music and her taking violin lessons from Scott was a perfect failure. Mr. Joplin was seriously humiliated. . . . His wife had no interest in his music career.” And their baby daughter had died in infancy. They would soon divorce.

The next year he would meet the love of his life, Freddie Alexander. In June . . . they were married. In July . . . she came down with a bad cold. In August . . . it became pneumonia. In September . . . she died. She was 20 years of age. While she had been alive, Joplin had dedicated The Chrysanthemum to her. The very next piece he published after her death is Bethena; A Concert Waltz, an extremely beautiful work — sadly poignant, in Berlin’s words — unlike any he had previously written. Berlin notes that the photo of the beautiful — not just physically but spiritually — woman on the cover doesn’t reveal her race; Berlin thinks she could be a mulatto. Could this be Freddie?! he wonders. To me she looks as if she’s in a wedding dress, holding a bridal bouquet in her hand. Freddie at her wedding to Joplin? And the piece itself is deeply moving, as if Joplin were describing what the great waltz of life would have been, could have been, should have been . . . if only.

And he never wanted to be known for his rags and other short piano pieces, rather as a composer of serious classical music, albeit with a syncopated style. So he started work on a grand opera, perhaps patterned after Wagner: Treemonisha (with Freddie the model for the heroine of that name? wonders Berlin), a noble exhortation for those who shared his ancestry to education and self-reliance (perhaps deemed politically incorrect these days [I recently learned that Berlin had recently written a revised book on Joplin — one third larger — and I saw at Amazon a used copy of it was being sold by … the San Francisco Public Library! They must have decided that Joplin was a white supremacist. I ended up buying it new through Walmart]). Composing it and then determinedly attempting to find the means to produce it consumed his final years. No one was interested. In desperation he self-produced a rather pathetic performance with, instead of a full orchestra, himself at the piano. 17 people showed up. Most walked out. Eventually it received the production and the appreciation it deserved . . . in 1972.

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In 1909 he composed another work radically different — and one of my favorites — from his popular rags: Solace: A Mexican Serenade. On the cover is a drawing of two presumably Mexican women. One is kneeling on the ground with one hand clutching her head, obviously in deepest grief, with the other standing in front of her one arm draped down her back and the other on her elbow, looking down with deepest compassion. I have to believe both of these women represent Joplin himself. Beethoven called us “finite beings with an infinite spirit.” Joplin’s finite being, full of grief over his loss of Freddie, is consoled by his rare ability to access, through his composing— with which, even during ordinary conversation, he seemed always absorbed — our infinite spirit. Albert Einstein wrote, in the first quote with which I begin Cabeza, in a letter at the end of his life to someone who had written asking for consolation over the loss of someone near and dear: “A human being is part of the Whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us. . . . Our task must be to free ourselves. . . .” In Solace, and in his other most spiritual pieces, Joplin reveals he understood this in his own way.

So, getting back to Weeping Willow, we see Joplin in truth had nothing to smile about — as far as his finite being was concerned. But of all the music I love, from Monteverdi through George Harrison, there is no piece that makes me, deep down inside . . . smile . . . like Weeping Willow. In it, as well as in The Pineapple Rag and The Paragon Rag, there is such a joyousness, unencumbered by the finite being, that strikes me as being surpassed only in the greatest works of Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert. In Cabeza I write about Franz Schubert who was also under the death sentence of syphilis. Knowing at age 31 he would soon die, he still was, as I write in Cabeza, able to reveal to us through his music: “. . . the extraordinary beauty of the mind that knows, despite and because of its most dire circumstances, that there is no choice but to find its way free of wanting and fearing.” That extraordinary beauty that is the infinite spirit that resides within us all. Joplin, despite and because of his failed marriage, the death of his child, the progression of syphilis into his very own dearest fingers . . . did the same.

Sergei Rachmaninoff, upon learning he had lung cancer, said, “Goodbye dear hands.” Joplin must have felt the same way. Around 1915 at a reception where many ragtime pianists were present, it was demanded of him over his repeated protests that he play The Maple Leaf Rag. One of the other pianists reported how it went: “So pitiful. He was so far gone with the dog [syphilis] and he sounded like a little child trying to pick out a tune. . . .” (Of the piano rolls recorded under his name the following year, Berlin believes they must have been heavily edited; I even wonder if someone else actually recorded them.) T.S. Eliot wrote at the end Four Quartets of “A condition of complete simplicity / (Costing not less than everything)” that leads to a state where, quoting English mystic Lady Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well / And all manner of thing shall be well.” In Weeping Willow and his other greatest works, I sense Joplin had no choice but to pay the price of not less than everything and give up all his wanting and fearing, and thus, at least in those moments enter that state of complete simplicity where ALL is WELL.

Probably around 1913 he “married” his third wife, Lottie Stokes (Freddie is the only “wife” for whom a marriage certificate can be found). She seemed to have appreciated him for she said in 1950: “He was a great man, a great man! He wanted to be a real leader. He wanted to free his people from poverty, ignorance and superstition, just like the heroine of his ragtime opera, Treemonisha.” But she had the unenviable task of dealing with the tertiary syphilis attacking Joplin’s brain. Biographer Ray Argyle writes: “He became impossible for Lottie to manage. His fevered mind provoked outbursts of anger and aggression and he began to destroy his manuscripts, declaring they were worthless trash.” She had no choice but to have him committed to a mental ward where he died a few months later. He left large piles of unpublished manuscripts — the ones he hadn’t destroyed himself — including a Symphony and a Piano Concerto. Sadly Lottie, though she did keep these priceless papers, did nothing to instill interest in them. At her death they passed, as Berlin details, to someone else . . . to someone else . . . to someone else . . . and then seemed to vanish into thin air.

Schubert, who during his lifetime was known mostly for his songs, composed his very greatest works — his Sonata in B-flat (to which I devote a chapter of Cabeza) and the String Quintet in C — two months before his death, when syphilis began attacking his brain and he knew the end was near. But typhoid fever provided a merciful — for him and for us — end. For him because he didn’t descend into the insanity Joplin did. For us because it didn’t drive him to destroy these unutterably supreme masterpieces without which I don’t really know where I’d be, if I’d be. And they were kept intact by his brother and others until discovered by those such as Robert Schumann (himself to die of syphilis a few years later). Joplin’s lost works, especially the Symphony and Piano Concerto, I feel certain would reveal as profound an understanding of the human condition as Schubert’s. Weeping Willow, The Nonpareil, Bethena, Solace, and The Magnetic Rag all show the direction he was headed, into a realm I call the wilderness of mind few have dared to enter. His loss . . . is ours, too. Here the famous words of John Donne apply all too literally: “Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.”

But still, we do have Weeping Willow. Thank you, Scott.

Note to the above. Someone I’ve been sending my musical renditions to the sent me this response to the Joplin.

Phil,

This is fun to listen to. I like these performances more than others I’ve heard. Clear intention and line throughout in both hands. I too like Joplin. Although I confess I feel like I’m missing something when he is occasionally described so highly. As you write, a tragic life, but I would be interested in hearing more about what puts him as your favorite music since Schubert. There’s quite a lot in between. There must be more than introducing syncopation to “serious” music.

My Reply: Glad you like the performance. I wouldn't have bothered if I hadn't thought I could do better

As I said in my description, Weeping Willow, the Pineapple Rag, and the Paragon Rag there is such a joyousness that it seems like there must be a spiritual underpinning to it that I've only heard in the greatest works of Bach, Beethoven and Schubert.

Bethena is more like a beautifully portrayed nostalgia.

The aptly named Nonpareil as well as Solace are what I consider the most profound gems there. The only music I MIGHT like better is Brahms Trio number 1 which I wrote about at the end of my discussion of the C minor Sonata.

The Magnetic Rag, considered by some his greatest rag — and the last one he published, three years before his death — I'm still trying to get a handle on. It starts out very pedestrian but then immediately soars into extraordinary beauty. The second and fourth strains perhaps portray his foreknowledge of what syphilis will end up doing to him. But he closes with the extraordinary first strain, which I slow down intentionally. I suggest this rag may be a survey of his entire life in a way that the quote of Rilke (that I put on my renditions of Beethoven sonatas 30-32, Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, Etc.) conveys: "As soon as we accept life's most terrifying dreadfulness, at the risk of perishing from it… Then an intuition of blessedness will open up for us… To show the identity of dreadfulness and bliss, these two faces on the same divine head, indeed this one single face, which just presents itself this way or that, according to… The state of mind in which we perceive it —: this is the true… Purpose of the elegies and the sonnets." Maybe Joplin had some insight into that. My sense is that his music is less encumbered by the finite being than the music I know after Schubert.

I hardly think it has to do with syncopation per se. My least favorite part of Beethoven 32 is the syncopated third variation, although I understand why he wrote it. I didn't get the last three Beethoven sonatas until, in 1968 on an LSD trip feeling utterly crucified and had them playing in the background — and the meaning of their eternal profundity slowly seeped into my mind. I started meditation shortly thereafter. You don't seem to get that the first three movements of the Ninth Symphony are Beethoven's greatest work, Plus you don't seem to have gotten the late Beethoven quartets or the Schubert quintet in C. But it's true that in my list of music on my website everything is Schubert or earlier other than the Brahms Trio.

https://www.meaningofwilderness.com/music-of-cabeza/

And I don't even listen to anything Beethoven wrote earlier than 1820. Likewise Mozart except for a few parts of his mass in C minor. Same with the vast majority of Bach. I can say there's much great music there but I just don't find it spiritually interesting— compared to where I'm at now and everything else they wrote. A long time ago I would work on more of the Well Tempered Clavier and three of the partitas, but I gave them all up for the Art of the Fugue and the Musical Offering.

But all our lives are tragic, aren't they? For the finite being at least. As Albrecht Dürer said, "we live by the Spirit. All else belongs to death."

PS. The Unfree Will, Chapter of Cabeza discusses how neuroscientists have determined that while we do not have free will it seems that we do have what one quipped as free won't — the ability to abstain from reacting to our unfree impulses. I call this my way of sitting which I also describe as a way of giving in to everything, giving up all wanting and fearing, and letting go of the whole thing. I find this quality in The Nonpareil especially the third strain

https://youtu.be/86vOGz1qLM8?t=802

And likewise in Solace (I'm setting these videos to start at the point I'm describing)

https://youtu.be/86vOGz1qLM8?t=1403

And it's also there in the Brahms trio — the secondary subject

https://youtu.be/6d5VLp502Ec?t=165

It may also be in Beethoven's fourth piano Concerto — which Lang Lang called the greatest of all concertos — which may be his greatest work prior to the last sonatas 28-32. I'd likely listen to it now along with some of the other works of his middle period… If his last works weren't so much more profound.

There is an anecdote about Brahms: when his friend the most famous violinist of the era Joseph Joachim — who formed a quartet to specialize in the late quartets of Beethoven — played a Bach Sonata for solo violin. Then Brahms played one of his own pieces on the piano… But crashed his fists down onto the keys exclaiming that his own works were so banal compared to Bach he couldn't bear to play them. And this isn't even the greatest of Bach.

I wrote this at the end of my discussion of the Schubert C minor Sonata: Also of note is that Beethoven was working on a quintet in C with two cellos when he died. Schubert is said to have visited him on his deathbed and both were close friends with the amateur violinist Carl Holz (whose quartet played Beethoven's greatest quartet, the 14th, for Schubert on his deathbed). Schubert's final work just happened to be the great Quintet in C — with two cellos! — which comes very very close, especially in the second movement, to Beethoven's late quartets. My favorite performance is by the Lindsay Quartet. And of even further interest is that this quintet was not performed until 1850 and not published until 1853. I find it of greatest interest that my favorite work of Brahms, the Trio No. 1 in B major, was written in 1854 when Brahms was only 20 years old. Although he revised it in 1889, some of the greatest parts were left untouched. I truly have to wonder if Brahms heard an early performance of the Schubert Quintet and was profoundly influenced by it. If anyone can enlighten me on this subject, please do so. This is from Wikipedia: "From 1845 to 1848 Brahms studied with Cossel's teacher, the pianist and composer Eduard Marxsen (1806–1887). Marxsen had been a personal acquaintance of Beethoven and Schubert, admired the works of Mozart and Haydn, and was a devotee of the music of J. S. Bach. Marxsen conveyed to Brahms the tradition of these composers and ensured that Brahms's own compositions were grounded in that tradition."

Here is a selection that I discuss in my  Last Sonata essay from the trio of the third movement of the Schubert quintet:

Schubert’s above-mentioned quintet—so akin to the B-flat Sonata as if he, aware of the great wonder he was bestowing upon pianists, did not want the string players to be jealous—this quintet has also a Trio, which goes even further. All activity drops away and we descend, deep, deep within: allowing the boundaries of the self to dissolve, allowing Being to permeate being, and mind to know Mind. Nothing more . . . and nothing less.

https://youtu.be/BktqoU6p-vQ?t=2566

Albrecht Dürer, by the way, was likely homosexual or bisexual and may himself have died of syphilis. As Oscar Wilde said, "there are two great tragedies of life. The first is not getting what you want. The second is getting it." For the finite being ultimately everything is a tragedy, but that's why I start my essay The Last Sonata with "… the greatest tragedy, if you believe in tragedies…"

Wilde also said: "all of us are lying in the gutter, but some of us are gazing at the stars."