Julius Weiss

Julius Weiss (born in 1840 or 1841) was a German-born American music professor, best known for being Scott Joplin's "first piano teacher." He is credited with inspiring and influencing Joplin, considered "the king of ragtime," during his early years. He taught Joplin music and other subjects for a number of years, beginning when Joplin was eleven years old, and did so free of cost. Joplin's parents, a former slave, and domestic worker, had no way to pay for private lessons. One writer refers to Weiss as "legendary," since little was known about him until 60 years after Joplin's death. Joplin's widow recalls that in her husband's "later years (1907 to 1917), he sent his teacher, by then ill and poor, gifts of money from time to time," until "the older man died."

Weiss was born in Saxony, Germany, where he received most of his early education. He attended the University of Saxony, from which he graduated,presumably when he was 19. He moved to the United States in the late 1860s and first settled in St. Louis, Missouri, in order to teach music. In the late 1870s he was hired to privately tutor the children of a wealthy landowner in the lumber industry, Robert W. Rodgers, in Texarkana, Texas. After moving to Texarkana he taught the Rodgers children various subjects, including German, astronomy, mathematics, and violin. He also took on other students in town, and listed his profession with the town recorder as "Professor of music." Musicologist Edward Berlin notes that one of Mr. Rodgers' children credited Weiss for having inspired his lifelong appreciation and love of opera.

According to Joplin biographer, Rudi Blesh, Weiss, then about age 39, "heard young Joplin play and as a result gave him free lessons in piano, sight reading, and the principles to extend and confirm his natural instinct for harmony." Although young Joplin was said to have received some beginner's guidance from local teachers, it was Weiss who first introduced Joplin "to European art music," and the "European masters." Blesh writes that "the professor is said to have played the classics for him, and to have talked of the great composers, and especially of the famous operas."

Berlin points out that Weiss, through his teaching, had "a profound influence on the young Joplin." It is assumed that "the essence of what Weiss accomplished was to impart to Scott an appreciation of music as an art as well as an entertainment. Weiss helped shape Joplin's aspirations and ambitions toward high artistic goals," by introducing him to theories of music composition, European culture, and the benefits of education.

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