Solace: A Mexican Serenade

Composer: JOPLIN, Scott
  • This piano rag was first published in 1909, by New York publisher Seminary Music.1
    • The first edition cover features an evocative illustration of one woman comforting another in a desert landscape. 
    • The publisher, Seminary Music, was a change for Joplin after many years with his former publisher Stark. Seminary’s office in New York adjoined that of Ted Snyder Music, where Irving Berlin worked early in his career. Joplin later claimed that Berlin had seen a copy of his opera Treemonisha through this connection, and had stolen a melody from it for Alexander’s Ragtime Band.2
  • The Latin flavor of this slow rag comes from a habanera or tango rhythm in the left hand.3

Sources

  1. “Solace (Joplin, Scott),” IMSLP, accessed August 6, 2021, https://imslp.org/wiki/Solace_(Joplin%2C_Scott). 
  2. Edward A. Berlin, “Joplin, Scott,” Grove Music Online (October 16, 2013), accessed August 6, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002253061. 
  3. Scott Joplin, Solace: A Mexican Serenade (New York: Seminary Music, 1909).

Cut IDs

24193