Solace – A Mexican Serenade – MASTER SET (1909)

A Mexican Serenade

Scott Joplin (1868 – 1917)

Flexible Ensemble (C score and parts - details below)

Solace – A Mexican Serenade – MASTER SET. Music by Scott Joplin arranged for a flexible, varied ensemble (quartet).

The time signature is 2/4 throughout. It uses an ABACD form. The tempo in the original piano work is simply “slow march time”.  This arrangement suggests a beginning tempo of eighth note = 100 for the A strain and a slight increase to eighth = 108 for the B, C, and D strains. As Joplin himself said: “never play ragtime fast”. It is in the original keys of C major and F major.

This is a master set that includes a C score and parts to these arrangements: flute quartet, double reed quartet, clarinet quartet, saxophone quartet, and string quartet. The parts may be combined in any way you like, so long as parts 1 through 4 are covered. The following parts are included:

Part 1

• Piccolo (when using this part with other ensembles, play on C flute as written)
• Oboe 1
• B flat Clarinet 1
• Soprano Sax
• Violin 1

Part 2

• C flute 1
• Oboe 2
• B-flat Clarinet 2
• Alto Saxophone
• Violin 2

Part 3

• C flute 2
• English horn
• B-flat Clarinet 3
• Tenor Saxophone
• Viola

Part 4 (bass part)

• Alto Flute (if using this part with other ensembles, include another instrument on bass as well)
• Bassoon
• Bass Clarinet (low C extension preferred)
• Baritone Saxophone
• Cello

Visit the individual quartets (flute, double reed, clarinet, saxophone) to hear audio of each arrangement and see instrument ranges.

About the Composer

Scott Joplin (November 24, 1868 – April 1, 1917) American composer and pianist. Scott Joplin’s is the name perhaps most associated with ragtime. Born sometime between the summer of 1867 and mid-January 1868, Joplin’s career took him from a modest homestead on the Texas-Arkansas border to New York’s Tin Pan Alley New York City, where he would eventually try his luck with composers like a young Irving Berlin. Although he continued composing until just before his death in 1917, Joplin’s greatest fame came from his years in the Midwest where he was acknowledged as the “King of Ragtime.”

Joplin enjoyed his greatest success in Sedalia, Missouri, where he studied music at George R. Smith College and played with several ensembles, among them the Queen City Cornet Band. He opened his own piano studio and taught and encouraged other composers whose names eventually joined his in ragtime history. These young talents included Arthur Marshall and Scott Hayden; Joplin collaborated with the former on the cakewalk “Swipesy” (1900) and the latter on the two-step “Sunflower Slow Drag” (1901). (Years later in New York, Joplin met and mentored another future ragtime great, Joseph Lamb.) Joplin’s musical activities in Sedalia brought him in contact with the source of ragtime-piano playing in African American social clubs. In fact, Joplin’s engagements at the popular Maple Leaf Club inspired his most famous tune, “The Maple Leaf Rag” (1899).

Joplin’s theories about ragtime are stated eloquently in his self-published School of Ragtime (1908). Written in the style of an art music treatise, School demonstrates how serious Joplin was about ragtime–a type of music that many in contemporary America condemned as frivolous. He warned that not all syncopated music “that masqueraded under the name of ragtime” was genuine. Only by giving each note its proper value and by “scrupulously observing” the music’s markings could a pianist achieve the correct effect. Above all, he cautioned, “never play ragtime fast at any time.” “Joplin ragtime,” as he termed his style, would be destroyed by careless interpretation.

Although he and his music were largely forgotten after his death, the ragtime revival of the 1970s brought Joplin renewed attention. In January 1972, his opera Treemonisha (1910), which he had been unable to stage during his lifetime, premiered in Atlanta. When his 1902 rag The Entertainer became the cornerstone for the soundtrack of the 1973 film The Sting, the popularity of ragtime soared.
Library of Congress, accessed 5/30/2024, <https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200035815>