While Joplin was busy working on his opera Treemonisha in 1910, he somehow found time to write the brilliant Stoptime Rag. Foot stamping (or 'stomps') had already become a mainstay of ragtime performance and 'stoptime', or literally stopping the music in order to introduce a heart-wrenching silence or a 'stomp', was becoming very popular. For the very first time Joplin gives the tempo indication, 'Fast or slow', in other words, that the foot movements of the performers should govern the speed, r...