If you are familiar with the ragtime classic, The Entertainer, it is possibly due to the 1973 hit film, The Sting. Scott Joplin's rags, of course, were performed and admired long before that movie was released. While we don't often associate Scott Joplin with classical music, he can certainly be credited with elevating the art of ragtime to a hitherto unseen level. This is particularly true of his later pieces, which expand the established dictates of what a rag is "supposed" to sound like. In this episode, we will examine one of these works, Euphonic Sounds, and discover what it is about Joplin's rags that merits their inclusion among the vast pantheon of masterworks: namely, their unique transcendence of its own genre.
