Uplift, Gender, and Scott Joplin's Treemonisha

Abstract

In May 1911 well-known ragtime composer Scott Joplin filed a copyright application for his only surviving opera, Treemonisha. Unable to find a publisher (the work was rejected by at least three companies, several of which had previously championed his ragtime works), Joplin chose to publish score to opera himself and began to offer it for sale shortly before receiving copyright. (1) Joplin wrote both music and libretto to Treemonisha, a three-act opera that contains an overture, orchestral interludes, and dance numbers. Joplin also composed a lengthy written preface to opera that not only outlines in detail backgrounds of main characters and setting of work, but also describes his use of a recurring leitmotiv to represent the happiness of people when they feel free from conjurors and their spells of superstition (Joplin [1911] 1971,3). The opera centers on efforts of a young, educated, African-American woman (Treemonisha) to enlighten her rural community, highlighting Treemonisha's conflicts with evil conjuror Zodzetrick; by its conclusion, Treemonisha has been captured by Zodzetrick, rescued by her friend Remus, and selected leader of her community. Although opera certainly has its share of heroines, Joplin's fascinating decision to feature an educated African-American woman--one who does not fall hopelessly in love, die, or go insane by end of opera, but instead is chosen to lead her community--deserves serious scholarly consideration. Scholars have increasingly come to recognize significance of Treemonisha within American operatic canon, and research such as that of Berlin (1991/1994), de Lerma (1990), and Sears (2012) has substantially broadened our understanding of opera and its reception. (2) Still, little attention has been paid to actual musical content of this profoundly important work (with exception of a single chapter in Latham 2008, which contains broad, long-range analyses using a Schenkerian perspective). Even more surprisingly, no scholarship has focused on complicated relationship between Joplin's depiction of Treemonisha and prevailing discourses about black womanhood at turn of twentieth century. These issues are particularly pertinent for developing a nuanced understanding of complex ways in which both and gender are constructed in Treemonisha; recent work such as Andre, Bryan, and Saylor (2012) has emphasized necessity for scholars to consider blackness not as a rigid, uniform category, but instead as a multivectored field informed by other intersectional considerations, such as gender, class, nation, and sexuality. (3) This article examines how character of Treemonisha intersects with contemporaneous ideologies of African-American womanhood, arguing that Joplin's depiction of Treemonisha illustrates some of core fractures, debates, and contradictions surrounding racial uplift and gender during this era. After a preliminary discussion of some of differences of opinion regarding gender and uplift at turn of century, next section of this article focuses on how Treemonisha is characterized in plot and libretto; final portion of this article expands on these ideas by also considering two specific musical issues: diminished seventh chords and flat submediant. Ideologies of Racial Uplift and Gender The period during which Joplin composed Treemonisha has often been characterized as an age of Washington and Du Bois, a time in which black male intellectuals proposed and debated racial uplift, an ideology that sought improvement of race through education, self-help, service, and moral and material progress of African Americans. Disputes among black male leaders often eclipsed contributions of African-American women, yet as scholars such as Hazel Carby (1987), Paula Giddings (2006), and Patricia Hill Collins (2009) have noted, black women were far from silent in this era. …

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