Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" (1899) was declared the first million-selling piece of sheet music, but publisher John Stark originally doubted the composition's commercial appeal, saying that the music was too difficult and no one would be able to play it.

Piano rags can be a challenge to play with the fast jumps on the left hand and the often complex syncopated patterns on the right. This undoubtedly contributed to the popularity of player pianos.


Scott Joplin died in 1917 and received a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1976. During his lifetime, ragtime music was considered by many to be scandalous. Now it is considered to be American classical music.

In 1900, the prominent music magazine, The Etude, denounced ragtime as a "virulent poison" and "malarious epidemic" that was "damaging the brains of the youth to such an extent as to arouse one's suspicions of their sanity."

Scott Joplin's first ragtime opera (he wrote two), A Guest of Honor (1903), is entirely lost to us. The plot revolved around Black educator Booker T. Washington's 1901 visit to the White House to dine with President Theodore Roosevelt.

The complete piano works of Scott Joplin were performed at Carnegie Hall in 2017 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his death.

Benny Goodman was the hottest bandleader of the late 1930s and led the most popular dance orchestra of the time. He was also a clarinetist who commissioned classical works from Aaron Copland and Bela Bartok.

Benny Goodman used his status as a pop culture hero to promote desegregation a full generation before Congress passed the Civil Rights Act.

The first concert we know of in the United States took place in Boston on December 30, 1731. New York's first traceable concert was in January 1736.

Thomas Jefferson was one of the first people to import a pianoforte to the US. He originally ordered a clavichord to give his fiancee, but changed his mind once he saw the newly developed pianoforte. He made the purchase in 1771.

The first Steinway piano was made in the kitchen of founder Henry Steinweg in Seesen, Germany, in 1836. (He changed the family name to Steinway when he emigrated to the US in 1850.)

Soon after Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, Mary Todd Lincoln acquired a 7-octave grand piano. It stood in the Red Room, where their sons, Willie and Tad, took their piano lessons.

Composer Sergei Rachmaninoff performed at the White House three different times.

By Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency (1933-45), the piano in the East Room was in need of repair, so Steinway offered to build a new White House piano as the firm’s 300,000th piano. President Roosevelt helped to design the piano, which has eagle-shaped legs and paintings on the case depicting American musical scenes.

QRS, the leading maker of player piano rolls, purchased the piano manufacturer, Story and Clark/ Classic Player Piano Corp. in 1994. This is an interesting note because Melville Clark of Story and Clark founded QRS in 1900.

The first pneumatic player piano was granted a patent in France in 1863.

The International Piano Archives in Maryland is the only library in the world that concentrates exclusively on materials pertaining to classical piano music and its performance. It houses an estimated 96% of all commercial piano recordings ever issued, plus taped copies of most of the remainder. It currently has 11,500 78-rpm records; 25,000 vinyl records (LPs); more than 4000 reel-to-reel and cassette tapes; more than 20,000 compact discs; 3000 reproducing piano rolls; 2500 books about the piano and pianists; over 21,000 piano scores; and many other items and collections.

The piano produces the widest range of sound of any instrument except the organ.

In 2006, the British pianist Stanislav Yovanovitch visited Harbin, a city on the Northeastern spur of China for its annual music festival. During his time there, he joined 1,000 fellow players in a mass rendition Schubert's "March Militaire" in the city square. The event set the world record for most pianists playing one piece at the same time. That concert was one of the items the city listed on its résumé (along with being home to the country’s oldest symphony orchestra) to help it win an official recognition as “Music City” from the United Nations.

The term “grand piano” was introduced in 1777 in Robert Stodart’s application for an English patent for a combination piano-harpsichord. It was called “grand” to distinguish it from the smaller square pianos being made at that time.

The grand piano was invented in both Germany and London in the 1770’s.