 As a composer, Joplin refined ragtime, developing it from the dance music played by pianists in brothels in cities like St. Louis.This new art form, the classic rag, combined Afro-American folk music's syncopation and nineteenth-century European romanticism, with its harmonic schemes and its march-like tempos, in particular the works of John Philip Sousa.With this as a foundation, Joplin intended his compositions to be played exactly as he wrote them – without improvisation.