The Easy Winners

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The Easy Winners

by Scott Joplin

Cover to the first edition sheet music

Genre
Ragtime
Form
Rag
Published 1901
Publisher Shattinger Music Company
Instrument: Piano Solo
"The Easy Winners" is a ragtime composition by Scott Joplin. One of his most popular
works, it was one of the four that had been recorded as of 1940. [1]

Contents
[hide]

1 Title and cover

2 Musical structure

 3 Trio and strain D

4 Publication history
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

Title and cover[edit]

The title of the composition is a reference to athletes who win a sporting event without
difficulty. The cover depicts scenes of baseball, football, horse racing and sailing.

Musical structure[edit]
According to musicologist and Joplin biographer Edward Berlin, "Easy Winners must be
judged one of Joplin's great works. It has a classical balance between its strains, its
moods, and in its progression from the smooth calm of strain A to the sporadic agitation of
strain D."[2]
The composition follows the structural pattern typical of many Joplin rags, although the
pattern is extended to include an introduction before strain A and another before strain C,
or the trio. Thus, the structure reads:
Intro A A B B A Trio-Intro C C D D
In keeping with the sports theme of the composition, Joplin