Hi all. I'm looking to purchase sheet music to Joplin's famous THE ENTERTAINER, but I do not want a simplified version. I want the original, and one that has the score with some fingerings. Any ideas?

Background: In the apartment building I live in, people are always cleaning out their apartments or moving, and they often leave books in a "free" area. Naturally, I try to check this area out before others pick up some goodies or it hits the trash heap. Well, a couple weeks ago someone threw out a pile of sheet music books. One of them was a Scott Joplin compilation of his works. Basically, an original printing of this: http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/King-O...e-Piano/3594423

Although I am studying for only Grade 1, I like to play around with one or two higher level pieces (in addition to this I'm also working on Mozart's Fantasia in D minor) from time to time, and I'd like to begin one bar at a time on The Entertainer--original score, not the easy versions.

So, tonight I worked on the first bar of Entertainer. In about 10 minutes I had it down pretty well. Not too bad. But the fingerings are a bit messy. In the original, as some of you may know, there's lots of leger lines which may look a bit scary, but I'm OK sight reading them, yet suggested fingering would make life easier. Anyone know of a version that has some fingering notations?

Cheers,
Ezra

The proper version of this has a lot of fairly big jumps in the left hand IIRC and I think a fair bit of playing octaves (and chords spanning them) in the right hand - I have no plans to tackle this until I hit grade 5

I'm working on the Fantasia in D Minor too - it's really nice and definitely playable apart from the fast runs

I have the same book "Scott Joplin, King of Ragtime" and there are many nice pieces in it. I also have the set of three books which were published at the same time as Joshua Rifkin recorded many of Joplin's pieces, around 1974. "The Entertainer" is in Volume 1 of this set, and my copy is from a British publisher, Paxton, and printed by Novello and Company Ltd.

The two versions are identical, and neither have any fingering, so I can't help there other than to say that in my opinion published fingering is not to be slavishly followed anyway, it is what works best for you (but I am not a teacher! ). I can say that the printed version is exactly that played on the record, and as Rifkin is or was somewhat of an expert and a good player of Joplin's rags, I can't believe he would have used any simplified version, so I would say that you already have the full published version as written by Joplin.

Yes - I know I have the full published version as written by Joplin, but I was wondering if this exists with fingerings somewhere? Kind of like Bach's Prelude in C is available as originally written, but some versions have fingerings and others do not. Always easier to have some initial guidance on fingering, even if I decide to change to my own later on.