"Grace and Beauty" is a classic rag

Classic Rag

Classic Rag is a term used to describe the style of ragtime composition pioneered by Scott Joplin and the Missouri school of ragtime composers...

 composed by James Scott

James Scott (musician)

James Sylvester Scott was an African-American ragtime composer, regarded as one of the three most important composers of classic ragtime, along with Scott Joplin and Joseph Lamb....

 and published by John Stillwell Stark

John Stillwell Stark

John Stillwell Stark was a United States publisher of ragtime music. He is best known for publishing and promoting the music of Scott Joplin....

 in 1909.

The A section starts out with a rising melody

Melody

A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...

 that slowly descends through repeated patterns. Like many of Scott's rags, the C and D sections contain the echo device reminiscent of the ring shout

Ring shout

A shout or ring shout is an ecstatic, transcendent religious ritual, first practiced by African slaves in the West Indies and the United States, in which worshipers move in a circle while shuffling and stomping their feet and clapping their hands...

 spirituals of the 19th century, while the B section uses a melodic variation of this device.

External links

• Sheet music of Grace and Beauty at Wikisource
  Wikisource
  Wikisource is an online digital library of free content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Its aims are to host all forms of free text, in many languages, and translations. Originally conceived as an archive to store useful or important historical texts, it has...