Joplin Suite (1997)

Burkhard Mohr (b. 1955) — Joplin Suite (1997) for organ

1) Joplin-Prelude
2) Joplin-Interlude
3) Good Memories (Silent Prayer)
4) Joplin-Finale

“Joplin Suite” (1997) was written as a tribute the important American ragtime composer Scott Joplin (1868–1917). The suite is not written in Joplin’s style, nor are any of the movements rags. Rather, the work takes a stylized and distilled influence from elements of Joplin’s characteristic style and explores it freely across the four movements, expressed through Mohr’s own idiom.

German composer Burkhard Mohr (b. 1955) was born in Gamsbach/Oberhessen and was educated in Frankfurt where he studied music and theology. He also attended the Darmstadt new music courses with Stockhausen, Kagel, Ligeti, and Xenakis. He has worked as a church musician in Frankfurt-Höchst and Wiesbaden and also taught music for many years at the technical university in Frankfurt. Mohr has composed numerous musical works in many genres, including several operas and orchestral works along with much chamber music and music for choir and organ. Mohr’s music usually concerns itself with the blurry boundaries and connections between atonal (12-tone) and tonal (triadic) materials and with the unexpected (or traditionally extended) formal designs that can result from teasing out these connections.

Published by Strube Verlag (strube.de)