The Work
What Is The Entertainer?
Quick Answer
The Entertainer is a ragtime composition by Scott Joplin, published in 1902 by John Stark & Son in St. Louis. It is a multi-strain march in C major, 2/4 time, built on the syncopated right-hand melody over a steady oom-pah left-hand bass that defines the ragtime style. It is the most widely recognized piece of ragtime ever written — and, after 1973, one of the most widely recognized pieces of music in any genre.
Joplin published The Entertainer in the same year as Elite Syncopations and the first version of Maple Leaf Rag’s arrangements. He was at the peak of his compositional powers. The piece sold modestly at the time. Seventy years later, it sold millions.
The Entertainer asks for something specific: a steady, unhurried tempo with the left hand locked in place and the right hand dancing above it. Joplin’s own published score carries the instruction Not fast at the top of the page. This is not a suggestion. The piece’s character — jaunty, bouncing, warm — collapses at high speed. Played too fast it becomes mechanical; played at the right tempo it breathes.
“Do not play this piece fast. It is never right to play Ragtime fast. Composer.”
— Scott Joplin’s published instruction on Maple Leaf Rag; applied throughout his catalogue including The EntertainerThe piece sits in a lineage: Joplin absorbed the march tradition (Sousa, Gottschalk), the blues and minstrel song of the American South, and the European parlor piano tradition, and synthesized them into a new rhythmic grammar. What sounds inevitable — the off-beat melody against the steady bass — was genuinely radical in 1902. Most popular piano music before ragtime placed melody and accompaniment in rhythmic agreement. Joplin put them in deliberate, dancing disagreement.
At a Glance
1902Published
34Joplin’s Age
C MajorKey
2/4Time Signature
~3:00Duration
Structure
Form Map: INTRO–AA–BB–A–CC–INTRO′–DD
The Entertainer inherits its formal plan directly from the march tradition: multiple contrasting strains, each repeated, separated by a brief introduction. This is the same architecture that Sousa used for The Stars and Stripes Forever.
Most listeners hear only the A strain — the famous opening melody. But the piece has four complete melodic strains (A, B, C, D), two key areas (C major and F major), and a structural pivot at the Trio that shifts the emotional weight of the whole piece. Click any section below to read its detail.
Click any section to read its detail
Music Theory
How Does It Work?
Ragtime’s mechanics are simple to describe and difficult to execute: a syncopated melody above a steady, march-like bass. The complexity is in the interaction between the two hands and in maintaining exactly the right tempo.
Syncopation: The Engine of Ragtime
Syncopation means placing rhythmic stress on beats or parts of beats that are normally unstressed. In standard 2/4 march time, beats 1 and 2 are the strong beats. Ragtime’s right hand systematically avoids landing on those beats, instead entering on the off-beats and the “ands” between them. The left hand, meanwhile, keeps the steady oom-pah pattern — bass note on the beat, chord on the half-beat — that provides the rhythmic anchor the right hand dances against.
The demonstrator below shows this relationship. Play “Both Hands” to hear the full texture, then “Left Hand Only” to isolate the steady pulse. Notice how the right hand enters mostly on the off-beats — and how the piece would lose its entire character if those off-beat notes moved to the downbeats.
Syncopation Demonstrator
Right Hand
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Left Hand
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▼ = bass (oom) · △ = chord (pah) · ○/● = right-hand syncopated notes (● = accented). The RH enters on off-beats; the LH holds steady on every beat. This tension between the two hands is the essence of ragtime syncopation.
Theory Cards
Syncopation
The right hand enters on off-beats and anticipations, never on the strong downbeat. This is not rhythmic error but deliberate design. The word “ragtime” comes from “ragged time” — deliberately ragged against the steady bass. Without syncopation there is no ragtime; everything else is incidental.
Oom-Pah Bass
The left hand plays bass note on beat 1 (oom) and a mid-register chord on beat 2 (pah). This alternation is the heartbeat of ragtime — borrowed from march and polka, adapted for the piano. The bass note anchors the harmony; the chord stab fills the rhythm. Both must be precisely even or the whole texture loses its spring.
The Trio
A structural inheritance from the march. After two strains in C major, the Trio shifts to F major — the subdominant, a fourth up. F major is warmer, slightly softer-feeling, often more lyrical. The modulation is not dramatic but structural: it refreshes the listener’s ear and gives the second half of the piece a different emotional color from the first.
2/4 Time
Two beats per measure, quarter note equals one beat. This march meter gives ragtime its propulsive, dance-like forward motion. Unlike 3/4 (waltz) or 4/4 (common time), 2/4 has no room for hesitation: beat 1, beat 2, beat 1, beat 2, relentless. The left hand maps onto this precisely; the right hand fights it.
March Form
Ragtime takes its multi-strain structure from the march. Multiple melodies (strains), each 16 measures long, each repeated, with a contrasting Trio section in a related key. Joplin studied this form carefully — his father played brass instruments in a band — and it provided the scaffolding for nearly all his compositions.
Not Fast
Joplin printed this instruction on his scores because performers were already playing ragtime too fast in 1902. He wanted approximately ♩ = 80–96, not the frantic double-time versions that were common in popular performance. The piece at the right tempo is a dance; at the wrong tempo it is a technical exercise with nothing to say.
History
Scott Joplin and the Ragtime Era
Quick Answer
Scott Joplin (1867 or 1868–1917) was born in northeastern Texas, the son of a formerly enslaved railroad laborer and a free Black woman who played banjo and sang. He taught himself piano on a neighbor’s instrument as a child, moved through the Mississippi River towns learning music, and arrived in Sedalia, Missouri in the 1890s where he composed Maple Leaf Rag (1899) — the first sheet music to sell a million copies. The Entertainer followed in 1902.
1867–68
Scott Joplin born in Bowie County, Texas. His father Giles was born enslaved in North Carolina; his mother Florence was a free Black woman who played banjo and sang. The family later moved to Texarkana, on the Texas–Arkansas border.
~1880s
Teaches himself piano on a neighbor’s instrument; receives lessons from Julius Weiss, a German-born music teacher who recognized his talent and tutored him in European classical forms. Weiss’s influence introduced Joplin to the formal structures — march, song, variation — he later used for ragtime.
1890s
Works as an itinerant pianist through Missouri, Illinois, and Kentucky. Plays in saloons, brothels, and dance halls of the Mississippi River towns. Settles in Sedalia, Missouri, where he studies formally at the George R. Smith College for Negroes and develops the mature ragtime style.
1899
Maple Leaf Rag published by John Stark & Son, Sedalia. Joplin negotiates a one-cent-per-copy royalty — unusual and important: it gave him an income stream from a hit. Maple Leaf Rag becomes the first sheet music to sell one million copies and establishes Joplin’s reputation.
1902
The Entertainer published. Also published: Elite Syncopations, The Strenuous Life (named for Theodore Roosevelt), and The Ragtime Dance. Joplin is at the height of his output — and increasingly focused on his opera, Treemonisha, which will consume his final decade.
1907–15
Moves to New York. Continues composing but spends most of his energy on Treemonisha — a full opera he believed would be his masterpiece and would elevate Black music to the concert stage. He finances a single workshop performance in 1915; it receives no professional staging in his lifetime.
1917
Joplin dies on April 1 in Manhattan State Hospital, aged 49, of dementia paralytica (late-stage syphilis). He is buried in an unmarked grave in St. Michael’s Cemetery, Queens. His music is largely forgotten in mainstream culture for fifty years.
1973
The Sting released. Marvin Hamlisch’s arrangement of The Entertainer plays over the opening credits of the Academy Award–winning film, introducing the piece to a global audience of millions. Joshua Rifkin’s 1970 Nonesuch album — the recording that sparked the revival — had already been in release for three years.
1976
Joplin posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize Special Award “for his contributions to American music.” Treemonisha receives its first full professional production by the Houston Grand Opera, forty-three years after Joplin’s death.
2016
The Rifkin Nonesuch recording — Scott Joplin: Piano Rags, Vol. 1 (1970) — certified Gold by the RIAA. One of the few classical recordings of the 20th century to achieve this certification. The revival Rifkin sparked has never fully receded.
Cultural Footprint
Everywhere You’ve Heard It
The Entertainer is one of a tiny number of classical or semi-classical works that has achieved genuine mass cultural saturation: recognized by people who have never heard of Scott Joplin, have no interest in piano music, and cannot name any other piece of ragtime.
Film · 1973
The Sting
Marvin Hamlisch’s adaptation plays over the opening and closing credits of the George Roy Hill film starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. The film won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture. Hamlisch won for Best Score, adapting Joplin’s music for a 1920s-set con-man story. The choice was anachronistic (The Entertainer predated the film’s setting by twenty years) and perfect. Hamlisch’s arrangement introduced the piece to an audience of hundreds of millions worldwide.
Recording · 1970
Joshua Rifkin on Nonesuch
The recording that started the revival. Classical pianist Joshua Rifkin recorded Scott Joplin: Piano Rags for the Nonesuch label in 1970 — at the time a radical act, treating ragtime as legitimate concert music rather than novelty. The album sold slowly, then explosively after The Sting. It was certified Gold by the RIAA in 2016, making it one of the most commercially successful classical piano recordings of the 20th century.
Ice Cream Trucks
The Soundtrack of Summer
The Entertainer became the default ice cream truck melody in the United States sometime in the 1960s–70s, likely via the widespread availability of music-box mechanisms that played it cheaply. The exact origin of this association is unclear, but its cultural penetration is complete: for tens of millions of Americans, The Entertainer is not primarily a piano piece — it is the sound of a truck approaching on a hot afternoon.
Pulitzer Prize · 1976
Special Award for Joplin
The Pulitzer Board awarded Scott Joplin a Special Award posthumously in 1976, fifty-nine years after his death, “for his contributions to American music.” No specific piece was cited; the award recognized the entire body of work. It was a significant institutional acknowledgment that ragtime was American art music, not merely popular entertainment — a distinction Joplin had argued for his entire career.
RIAA Certification · 2016
Gold for Rifkin
The Rifkin Nonesuch album received RIAA Gold certification in 2016 — 46 years after its release. This makes it one of the slowest and most sustained commercial success stories in classical recording history. Its total sales, spread across decades, reflect the piece’s enduring reach rather than a single peak.
Red Back Book · 1973
Gunther Schuller’s Arrangement
In parallel with The Sting, Gunther Schuller arranged a collection of Joplin’s rags for small ensemble — published as The Red Back Book, the name taken from the original Stark publication covers. These arrangements brought ragtime into concert halls and new music ensembles, establishing it as chamber music. The Red Back Book remains in print and in performance.
Discography
The Best Recordings
The Entertainer has been recorded by everyone from novelty acts to concert pianists. These six illuminate what the music actually is — dance music that happens to be art, and art that happens to want to make you move.
Joshua Rifkin
Nonesuch · 1970
The benchmark. Rifkin plays slowly, clearly, with complete rhythmic control. No showmanship, no nostalgia, no novelty — just the music at the tempo Joplin wanted. The recording that proved ragtime was worth serious attention and started the revival that led to the Pulitzer. Start here.
Marvin Hamlisch
MCA · 1973 (The Sting OST)
Historically essential. Hamlisch’s adaptation — slightly faster than Rifkin, orchestrally colored, warmly nostalgic — is what introduced the piece to its largest audience. Not a concert performance but a cinematic one. Understanding why this version worked for The Sting is understanding how the piece can serve a narrative.
Gunther Schuller / New England Conservatory
Angel · 1973 (Red Back Book)
The chamber-ensemble treatment. Schuller’s orchestrations give the rags space to breathe as ensemble music, revealing the melodic lines as separate voices. The Entertainer here becomes something closer to Joplin’s own aspiration — music that belongs in a concert hall.
Joplin Piano Rolls (1899–1905)
QRS / Various
Joplin recorded piano rolls of his own compositions in the early 1900s. The rolls do not necessarily capture his live performance — the reproduction process was imprecise — but they represent his closest-to-authoritative tempo and phrasing choices. Worth hearing before forming strong opinions about how the pieces should sound.
John Milton Downes
Various · 1970s
Part of the wave of scholarly ragtime recordings that followed the revival. Downes approaches the music as historical document as much as performance: careful attention to tempo, dynamics, and the structural proportions Joplin marked. Valuable for understanding the music rather than simply enjoying it.
Dick Hyman / William Albright
Various · 1970s–1980s
Two different interpretive philosophies. Hyman brings jazz improvisation instincts and warmth; Albright brings classical precision and analytical clarity. Together they represent the breadth of the revival and the range of approaches that legitimate ragtime as a performance art.
Myths & Facts
What Everyone Gets Wrong
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Joplin was a one-hit wonder
Joplin composed over 50 ragtime pieces, two operas (A Guest of Honor, 1903, now lost; and Treemonisha, 1911), a ragtime ballet, and instructional materials. Maple Leaf Rag was his commercial breakthrough; The Entertainer became his posthumous signature. The rest of the catalogue — Elite Syncopations, Euphonic Sounds, Magnetic Rag — is substantial and varied.
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The piece should be played as fast as possible
Joplin explicitly printed “Not fast” on his scores. He was reacting to performers who played ragtime at frantic speeds, which he felt destroyed its character. The appropriate tempo is approximately ♩ = 80–96. Playing The Entertainer fast is not virtuosic — it is a misreading of the composer’s instruction.
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It’s an easy beginner piece
The notes are intermediate; the music is not easy. Achieving genuine ragtime feel — the left hand absolutely steady while the right hand syncopates freely above it — requires the same kind of hand independence as Chopin nocturnes. Players who have learned the notes often play it with no syncopation character, just two hands playing simultaneously. That is not The Entertainer.
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The Sting used the original 1902 version
Marvin Hamlisch’s arrangement for The Sting was a significant adaptation — orchestrated, slightly faster than Joplin specified, and adjusted for cinematic effect. It is not the original sheet music performance. Hamlisch won the Academy Award for adapting Joplin’s music, not for composing original score; this distinction matters for understanding what the film actually used.
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Joplin wanted ragtime recognized as classical music
True. Joplin explicitly called Treemonisha “an opera” and considered himself a serious composer in the European art music tradition as much as a popular entertainer. He published a School of Ragtime (1908) that treated the music with formal analytical rigor. His aspiration to have ragtime taken seriously was not posthumously imposed — it was his own, stated throughout his career.
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Maple Leaf Rag was the first sheet music to sell a million copies
True. The million-copy milestone is documented by the Stark publishing records. Joplin’s one-cent royalty on each copy provided him with a meaningful income — unusual for Black composers of the era, who were routinely denied rights to their work. The royalty arrangement was personally negotiated by Joplin with John Stark.
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The revival only happened fifty years after his death
True. Ragtime fell out of commercial fashion by the 1920s, displaced by jazz. Joplin’s music was not significantly performed in mainstream venues from the 1920s through the 1960s. The Rifkin album (1970) and The Sting (1973) constituted a genuine rediscovery, not a continuous tradition.
How to Play
Difficulty & Practice
Honest Assessment
The notes of The Entertainer are intermediate. The feel is harder. Learning to maintain a perfectly even left-hand oom-pah while the right hand syncopates independently requires genuine hand independence. Henle rates it approximately 5 out of 9. Most students can read through the notes within a few weeks; playing it so that it actually swings takes considerably longer.
01
Left Hand First, Always
Practice the oom-pah bass alone until it is absolutely metronomic. Bass on the beat, chord exactly halfway between. Use a metronome. Only when the left hand is truly automatic — running on its own without your attention — can the right hand syncopate freely above it.
02
Tempo: Not Fast
Set your metronome to ♩ = 80–88. If the piece feels too slow at this speed, your left hand is not yet steady enough. The correct tempo reveals any rhythmic unevenness immediately. Play at this tempo until it feels natural and propulsive, not slow.
03
Find the Off-Beats
Before playing the right hand, clap or sing where its notes land: mostly on the “ands” between the beats. If you cannot feel those off-beats independently of the LH pulse, the syncopation will not come. Counting out loud (1-and-2-and) while tapping the left hand is a useful first step.
04
Hands Together, Slowly
When combining hands, go well below your LH-alone tempo. The moment coordination requires effort, the LH loses its evenness. Drop to ♩ = 60 or slower if needed. Add speed only when the LH is genuinely uninvolved in the coordination problem — when it runs by itself.
05
The Trio Shift
When the Trio arrives in F major, resist the temptation to rush. The key change is a signal to breathe, not accelerate. Many players unconsciously speed up at the Trio’s entry. Record yourself and listen. If the tempo changes at the Trio, fix it: the whole piece should run at one tempo throughout.
06
Dynamics: Terraced, Not Swelled
Ragtime dynamics follow march conventions: contrasting sections at different overall volumes, not gradual crescendos and diminuendos within phrases. A strain: mf. Trio: slightly softer and warmer. Repeats: slightly different character. The dynamic structure is architectural, not expressive in the Romantic sense.
Related Pieces
What to Play Next
Common Questions
Frequently Asked
When was The Entertainer written?
Scott Joplin composed The Entertainer in 1902 and it was published the same year by John Stark & Son of St. Louis. Joplin was approximately 34 years old. The publication year is confirmed by the copyright deposit at the Library of Congress, dated 10 December 1902.
What key is The Entertainer in?
C major (no sharps or flats). The original published score is in C major; the Trio section modulates to F major (one flat), the subdominant. Some arrangements transpose the piece for other instruments or voices, but the canonical solo piano version is in C.
What is the time signature?
2/4 — two quarter-note beats per measure. This is the march meter that ragtime inherited. Each measure has one “oom” (beat 1) and one “pah” (beat 2) in the left hand, with the right-hand melody syncopating against this steady two-beat pulse.
How hard is it to play?
Intermediate. Henle rates it approximately 5/9 — accessible to a pianist with 2–3 years of serious study who can read the notes. Playing it with genuine ragtime feel — left hand metronomically steady, right hand freely syncopated above it — is meaningfully harder and takes longer to develop. The notes and the music are different challenges.
What form is the piece in?
March form with Trio: INTRO–AA–BB–A–CC–INTRO′–DD. Four melodic strains (A, B, C, D), each 16 measures long, each repeated. The Trio (C strain) introduces a contrasting key (F major). This is the same architectural plan used by John Philip Sousa for marches — Joplin applied it to syncopated piano music.
What does “Not fast” mean on the score?
Joplin printed this instruction on his ragtime scores because performers of his era played the music at frantic speeds he considered wrong. The correct tempo is approximately ♩ = 80–96 (the lower end of this range is often closer to the ideal). At this tempo the piece has a walking, dancing character; faster, it becomes mechanical and loses its swing.
Was it in The Sting?
Yes. Marvin Hamlisch’s orchestral arrangement of The Entertainer plays over the opening and closing credits of the 1973 film The Sting (directed by George Roy Hill, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford). Hamlisch won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for his Joplin adaptations. The film introduced the piece to its largest audience ever.
Did Joplin win a Pulitzer Prize?
Posthumously, yes. In 1976 the Pulitzer Board awarded Joplin a Special Award “for his contributions to American music.” He had died in 1917. The award came 59 years after his death and three years after the Sting revival brought his music back to mass attention. Treemonisha also received its first full professional staging that year, by the Houston Grand Opera.
Why do ice cream trucks play it?
The association developed in the 1960s–70s as music-box mechanisms that could play The Entertainer became widely and cheaply available to truck operators. The piece was already culturally prominent from the ragtime revival, and its simple, memorable melody reproduced well on music-box technology. No single origin event is documented; the practice spread organically and is now so established it feels ancient.
What is ragtime?
Ragtime is an American musical genre developed primarily in the 1890s–1910s, characterized by syncopated rhythm in the melody (the “ragged” element) against a steady march-like bass accompaniment. It synthesized African American rhythmic traditions with European march and salon piano forms. Scott Joplin was its foremost practitioner and advocate for its recognition as serious art music.
Should I learn it or Maple Leaf Rag first?
The Entertainer first. It is in C major (no accidentals), slightly simpler harmonically, and the famous A-strain melody makes it immediately rewarding. Maple Leaf Rag is in A♭ major, has more chromaticism and more demanding bass lines, and rewards the hand independence you build on The Entertainer. They are close in difficulty, but The Entertainer is the better entry point.
The Entertainer is not complicated music. It is music that requires complete cooperation between your two hands — and between what you want to do and what Joplin asked for. Getting that right is the whole task.