Scott Joplin's Treemonisha: America's Forgotten Opera
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- Опубліковано 19 жов 2024
- A video looking into Scott Joplin's fantastic but mostly forgotten opera Treemonisha.
If the topic is of interest to you the following links might be useful:
www.newworldrec...
www.americanmus...
This article is a little heavy on the politics, but well researched nonetheless: www.crj-online....
Here is a link to amazon so you can get your own copy of Treemonisha, something which I highly recommend: www.amazon.com...
I didn't know he wrote an opera. I only knew him from pieces like Maple Leaf Rag and The Entertainer so I always thinked of him as a writer of popular songs. This made me respect him much more!
There is a great deal of incredible pieces written by early jazz or ragtime composers that are unfortunately more or less ignored or forgotten….
7:16
"We will trust you as out leader" this number is now my favorite in Treemonisha. When your listening to anything and don't give something enough attention, it comes back at you and is new material to appriciate. Thats part of the beauty of listening to music, you happen to skip something over, but its open for you to come back and see what you really missed.
Upon each new learning of a rag or waltz it becomes more evident to me that Joplin was a complete genius. Thank goodness we have as much documentation as we do. Great video!
Well done! Treemonisha is a hidden treasure and Joplin is a great Master!!
All of that music thrown into a garbage can and lost forever.😢 It's an understatement for me to say, "That's heartbreaking!" I'm going on Amazon to see if I can get my own CD or DVD of Treemonisha. I can't find it at Best Buy or even Barnes & Noble. I viewed The Houston Grand Opera's production a few days ago on UA-cam and I was really blown away. Of all the operas I like, Scott Joplin's opera is my favorite.
Heard the Houston Opera version of Treemonisha around a year ago and I was very moved by it on different levels. I studied opera and piano so for me this was a great discovery, something that happens not so often anymore in my muscial life. Would love to hear it live someday.
I never knew Joplin wrote an opera! What a wonderful find.
He wrote 2 but one was lost. I think it was called "Guest of Honour".. Treemonisha will be another lost Opera because of the subject . So sad that Joplin will be lost.
wonderful video and deep research on the subject, thank you... it's such a pity all this work of Joplin was lost,,, the first opera, the piano concerto, etc. but at least we have some pieces left and some wonderful rag times
great work, man, keep it up
It’s so interesting to me why this was forgotten, it’s controversial for its time, and now it stands as a great example of black excellence. Why is it not remembered?
I watched the recorded performance, and in my PERSONAL opinion.... though the music itself was fantastic (and singers were definitely top-notch, perfect casting), the story/characters I found a bit on the predictable/2D side. It becomes a Damsel in Distress story.
In Denmark it was on stage 35 years ago. So not all forgotten by the world.
From what little I’ve heard of the piece, the lyrics tend towards the amateur and naive. Still worthy of being heard, but the faults of the libretto will likely insure that it remains a curiosity.
@@jonathanjensen4193a lot of songs, etc had basic wording back then.
It was forgotten *before* it reappeared in '72 and won a pullitzer in '76
Not forgotten now 😂
Good video, thank you for talking about this too little known opera. Even if we can't blame the lawyer, the loss of these unpublished manuscrits is a shame. There are a lot of musicians who saw these manuscrits at Lottie Stokes Joplin's home when she was alive and nobody had the idea to encourage her to make them published, or at least to make copies of the manuscripts. For example, Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis interviewed Lottie Stokes Joplin for their famous book "They All Played Ragtime". They saw these manuscripts, they ask a pianist (James P. Johnson) to play them some sheets and they did nothing more with these manuscripts. How can anyone pretend to do a serious work of musicology and completely ignore a treasure like this, I think that all musicologists would dream to discover unpublished music from a famous composer and would hurry to share them.
Very true. Even if there were issues these should have been overcome in some way.
It’s unknown what happened to the manuscripts, they may be gone, they still might exist with out being ever found, but none the less there in a grey area. Some were given to other people like “Pretty Pansy Rag” and were seen as late on the end of the 70s.
Recently, I really got into your channel, and I very recently decided to check out Treemonisha, and now this video is being shown to me.
wow, even a piano concerto :(. where's that time machine when you need it...
For real! I daydream about going back in time and salvaging those pieces, while also getting a chance to chat with the great man himself.
instablaster
@@Ragtime95 maybe when you die you have the ability to go back in time LOL
@@aswomebro2601 Possibly, but what fun would it be going back if you’re a ghost? Lol
Res a lenda que ele escreveu uma sinfonia, um concerto para piano , outra opera e a trilha sonora para duas peças de Vaudeville
Very good and interesting video. It does justice to Scott Joplin. Thanks for uploading.
That was super-interesting! Thanks for making this video. I hope that someday I can see this in performance.
The story of the boxes sent to the garbage sets the wheels in my head turning. Paper, especially when stacked together, tends to survive well when buried, and dumps have been successfully excavated for other treasures; I think of the 1983 video game dump in New Mexico excavated in 2014. It would an expensive endeavor of course, but the paper manuscripts, once they were thoroughly studied and documented, would be extremely valuable to collectors and would probably more than finance any excavation...of course all of this is assuming the city where the boxes were disposed of in 1961 put their trash in a landfill, rather than an incinerator.
The issue is that all garbage in 50’s New York City was dumped into Hudson Canyon. It is probably under the ocean with everything gone.
I like where you’re going with this, and I hate how many variables there are to this story. Specifically how the manuscripts were disposed of. But I think it would be worth the endeavor to find these lost manuscripts!
The music actually sounds like it would fit in an old Hollywood film score. That’s how American it is!
Thank you! Just bought my ticket to Treemonisha which is being performed now by Opera St. Louis!
Treemonisha will be performed in May and June 2023 by Opera Theatre of St Louis (St Louis MO)...The last time it was performed in St Louis MO was in Summer 2000
Who is designated to sing the soprano role in the 2023 performance of Tremonisha, by the St. Louis Opera Company? It's a perfect Kathleen Battle role.
@@edensdoor9592 I agree... Brandie Sutton
Treemonisha was performed in 2024 in France at Bordeaux. Very good voices (only white singers!), but without an orchestra, only the piano. Perhaps more authentic, but this was too light especially in the overture.
I would like the Bordeaux's voices with the Houston's orchestra...
Thank you for helping me discover this
Treemonisha deserves to be heard all over the world, just like Porgy and Bess is.
Thanks for a great video! 😊
By now it is hoped that the OP has found Rick Benjamin's production of Treemonisha, with a reconstruction of an arrangement that would have been more likely than that of Schuller's.
Benjamin is the founder and leader of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, and I would heartily encourage the OP and other readers to find this CD/Booklet and try it out.
It also mentions the 1965 recording of some pieces from Treemonisha by Ted Puffer and the Utah State Chorale. Piano and voice, but still pretty historic and inspiring.
Scott Joplin is America's unique and beautiful answer to Claude Debussy. I was lucky to encounter him as a child after "The Sting" came out, and there was never any doubt that he was and is basically a classical composer. My dad loved his music and was an opera nut as well; when he found out that Joplin had written an opera, he was over the moon about it. The last grand chorus piece at the end is the best operatic choral piece I've ever heard, neck and neck with the Hebrew Chorus from Nabucco.
I love how you used "response to debussy" it's interesting how the timeline is like one big story, everything that transpires is caused by the passed action. But to some degree, because even if something is inspired, it can still be authentic.
@@mrgrinch8540 I don't think Joplin was explicitly writing his music to speak back to Impressionism, really. But I do think that that's where the short salon pieces of the 19th century diverged between Europe and the US. Classical piano in a very broad overgeneralized sense went from Chopin to Debussy in Europe and from Chopin to Joplin in the US.
Rick Benjamin said there was one performance in Bayonne NJ of a selection of prices from the opera. The orchestral parts for these might still be out there if the musicians kept them.
Que doloroso que no haya llegado hasta nosotros la partitura del concierto para piano y orquesta de S. Joplin, es una verdadera pérdida , muy dolorosa, porque hubiera sonado como el solo sabía hacer, con el color y la frescura de su música.
It is about time this wonderful opera gets respect!
And yet, it still doesn’t! I don’t get it!
Very, very underrated masterpiece of music.
I never forgot. I know every song!
One reason Treemonisha. is not performed is that The owner of the copyright who collected and published Jopins works refused to let any of the numbers from Treemonisha be played in commercials she was well intentioned but wrong because the music from Treemonisha is very good and all the most popular operas have all been in commercials this would have kept Treenmonisha in the mainstrean music promotion is very important and with out promotion even some of the best music is often overlooked that happened in the 70s when Joplins Music was very popular with the Sting many producers wanted to produce it but were turned down now its 2020 and very unfortunately Treemonisha is still very much overlooked it would surely bring in money for struggling Opera companies when the Pandemic is over
The thing that annoys me the most is people passing off Joplins genius and only looking at the story of Treemonisha. How she was a female leader, and girls using fact today to help themselves. Like dont touch Scott Joplins art, just go protest like everyone else
Thank you for this!
Just read about him in Music history class.
Surprising! He did not only invent ragtime which was essential for the entire catalogue of pop-music the following century, but was also large scale classical pieces of top quality. Strange that there's a bunch of people claiming Mozart was black... Why don't they instead try to exalt this great innovator to the degree he deserves?
1. blackness is an exaltation in itself
2. representation is essential. how are young black musicians supposed to be what they cannot see?
100% true
Actually he PERFECTED ragtime, ragtime according to him, has been around since Black people were brought here
Joplin didn't invent ragtime but he was a pioneer of the form.
WOW! Great stuff! 😊
What a shame. A great nation should have opera; I would love to see more attention given to the few gems we've produced here like this one.
Also, his wife, Lottie, caught Joplin burning armloads of his manuscripts and had to physically restrain him. He was sent to an asylum shortly after and he died there in 1917. Who knows what he burned that is now lost forever? Plus, he even composed while in the asylum but he would always tear it up and throw it away. The opera score also appears to be missing large swaths of storyline. He only paid for an abbreviated score. Reginald Robinson and Chris Ware located a photo at Fisk University that Lottie had had taken in the 40s. It showed Joplin's piano with some of his surviving manuscripts displayed on it. One of the pages was an unknown piece with lyrics. Reginald plays this fragment on his album "Euphonic Sounds"--the only rendition of this fragment (which lasts 31 seconds, I believe). It sounds like it came from the opera--Joplin never wrote lyrics to his rags--but that Joplin must have decided to exclude it from his published score. Whether that was just a surviving page or if Lottie had more pages from this piece, we will never know.
The throwing away of those boxes is a crime against art and humanity.
I have always romanticized ragtime, and I have thought it to be quite refined in it's exuberance.
I'm not an opera fan but I am a ragtime fan and I think Joplin was a genius.
I have owned the DGG recording since its release.
I hope you've put it to good use :)
I love my CD collection. They are all put to good use! Are you a musicologist? A player? A student? Just curious how you've come to the informative level of musical analysis contained in your videos. They're excellent!
I'm a composer :). Thanks for the compliments, stay tuned!
I agree with you, that the fact that this opera is not in the standard repertoire is a tragedy. And I feel that it is a bigger tragedy that other large scale compositions (the symphony, piano concerto, etc.) that Joplin composed towards the end of his life have been totally lost. Scott Joplin died at a comparatively young age, partly due to depression over there being no support to stage Treemonisha. The moral is that everyone loses (as we have lost what may well have been some outstanding music) when there is bias in judging a person, rather than judging them on the basis of their talent. In Joplin's case that bias was partly racial, also partly the origins of his music in the bordellos and saloons.
Apparently his losses weren't racial, since even Black people were uncomfortable with Treemonisha
@@thesucka397how were they uncomfortable with it? Never heard that before.
Scott Joplin is a great composer. I discovered Treemonisha 50 years ago with the recording made in Houston.
This opera must be compared to Mozart's "Magic Flute". In both cases, it is the struggle of knowledge against obscurantism.
However, there is a big difference, in Joplin, it is a woman who brings knowledge! And what's more, she is black! It is doubly revolutionary for the time in a segregationist country.
Treemonisha is the first and greatest American opera.
It's hard to imagine Gershwin would have been who he was without Joplin preceding him.
Man this really pisses me off about the lost manuscripts and all of the work we will never hear from Joplin. Imagine a new genre being discovered!! Seeing jazz and blues take a whole new route due to Joplin’s creations would be amazing!!
In an alternate reality where Blues and Jazz had a sibling which was the product of Joplin’s lost works would be an interesting Alternate History video to explore.
We have ideas about them.
The list contains
The Blizzard (1900)
A Guest of Honor (1903)
You stand good by me, Babe (1905 song)
Mayflower Rag (1911)
Pretty Pansy rag (1915, last seen in the late 70s, 12 pages longer)
Recitative Rag (1915)
Syncopated Jamboree (September 1915 vaudeville act)
For The Sake of All (1915, song.)
Recovered Joplin fragment (1916, partially rediscovered in 1997, song)
In My Mourning Glories (September 1916 song complete up until the trio and was an orchestration)
Untitled Waltz (1916, only completed until trio)
If (September 1916 comedy)
Symphony no.1 (September 1916 allegedly very long)
Piano concerto No.1 January 1917, his very last work ever, only first few bars likely completed.)
And many others we know nothing about, such as the lost stark piece and other Joplin publishers.
Most of these have been seen by Biographers or have been mentioned in the 1915/16/17 editions of the New York Age, a well know news paper of the time.
It’s possible that his lost manuscript have a very very slim Chance of survival or recovery , but only some, others like Treemonisha’s original manuscripts have been destroyed, Joplin himself even destroyed some of his own works while suffering from severe dementia, fearing they’d be stolen after his death. After 1913 most of his works became much more somber and melancholy, just like Silver Swan and Magnetic Rag. all his works after that were either listed as either “lost” “incomplete” or “unpublished”. I’d go into more detail about his lost works, but I’ll refrain to not take up too much time.
The thing that annoys me is that a high quality DVD of Treemonisha, Houston 1977, has never been published. Surely one must exist somewhere. The only videos of it look like they were made by someone in the audience holding a video camera. I contacted Houston Grand Opera and they told me the reason is that nobody can be bothered with the huge task of tracing everyone involved and assigning royalties. I don't believe that. Other older and large operatic productions and "blockbuster" films don't seem to have a problem with sorting these things out. Treemonisha was a colossal event in world music, not just America. What is really going on ?
5 it's obvious why treemonisha is so forgotten by modern audiences. It's because considered to use ethnic stereotypes and attitudes even though it was written by a black man. The same attitude is used towards gershwin's Great opera Porgy and Bess. Somebody needs to get informed about the difference between culture, folklore and the definition of negative effects stereotypes. When this happens these great works of art will once again being known to the world As they should be.
Why is there not a larger American opera scene?
IT WAS KILLED
The immigrants wanted to forget their European culture
Because apparently, The Magic Flute was the only opera ever written.
Sadly it is not performed these days possibly because of the subject matter. The main story line is about Treemonisha being educated by white people and the black people being uneducated. It is a shame because it is a beautiful work. Joplin was a man before his time.
That part was autobiographical. Scott needed to have a better piano to practice on as a boy. His mother offered to do chores for a wealthy old white woman in town for free because she had a beautiful grand that Scoot could practice on. The woman requested to hear Scott play so he obliged. She told others in town about this black piano prodigy and a German immigrant music teacher named Julius Weiss took young Scott under his wing and taught Joplin classical music.
The Met still hasnt performed Treemonisha because they still cant accept that a Black Man could write an opera but not just any opera but from start to finish one of the most beautifully melodic Operas by Any Composer of Opera...Ever The Met needs to produce Treemonisha and then it will become part of the Operatic Repetroire and bring in lot of money to cash strapped Opera Companies
It’s hard to understand why, a masterpiece composed by America’s most important African-American composer. You’d think they’d be all over that in today’s age. And yet it’s never been performed in any of the world’s major opera houses.
@@Dan474834Well Treemonisha was still under copyright whebever rediscovered in 1972
and was controlled by a woman who controlled the rights many opera producers wanted to stage it in the 70s and many w advertiser s warned to put the operas music in TV comnercials the Opera went to public domain in 1986 when interest in Joplins had waned
Idiot this’s you calling opera a “whitey” thing, you narrow-minded idiots call opera boring, sucks. This even not a perfect opera just a “half opera” with bunch of mistakes. What are you talking about ???
Do you know of its possibile ti get this orchestration? I mean the score
Forgotten? It won a Pulitzer Prize in 1976. I got the cast album of the Houston Grand Opera production for my birthday that year. Hardly forgotten. Also, the "Maple Leaf Rag" was written in 1897. It was published in 1899.
Correct.
Original Rags was also written in ‘97 or ‘98.
Has great trombone parts
Keep your eyes out folks. Lost media is found every day.
But was everything REALLY thrown out???? Hmmmm....🤔