Don t play this piece fast. It is never right to play ragtime fast.

Syncopations are no indication of light or trashy music, and to shy bricks at 'hateful ragtime' no longer passes for musical culture.

One day the 'Maple Leaf' will make me King of Ragtime Composers.

Because it has such a ragged movement. It suggests something like that.

What is scurrilously called ragtime is an invention that is here to stay. That is now conceded by all classes of musicians... All publication s masquerading under the name of ragtime are not the genuine article... That real ragtime of the higher class is rather difficult to play is a painful truth which most pianists have discovered. Syncopations are no indication of light or trashy music... Joplin ragtime is destroyed by careless or imperfect rendering, and very often players lost the effect entirely by playing too fast.

Panic in Wall Street, brokers feeling melancholy.

Don t play this piece fast. It is never right to play ragtime fast.