Scoot Joplin often left instructions in English on his sheet music not to play his piece too fast because, he said, ragtime should never be played fast. As much as I love Joplin's music, I've always disagreed with this. I think you should play ragtime as fast as you want to. I believe it was Arthur Marshall who said that when Joplin showed up at a club somewhere, the house pianist would often break into "Maple Leaf Rag" and playing it very fast and do all kinds of incredible things to the timing. He said Joplin took this kind of thing harder than he should have. He didn't like pieces being toyed with that way.

Joplin's pieces were greatly influenced by classical music and he wanted them to be stately, genteel and dignified. What I think Joplin wanted to avoid was swing. He didn't want his pieces to be swung too much. It has to swing a little or it sounds flat but I think it bothered to hear his stuff swung too widely (from what I understand, he disliked jazz). The thing is, it you play ragtime fast, you can't help but swing it. It naturally lends itself to swinging, the faster the tempo or it becomes a hoorible jumble of notes with no life. This would indicate Joplin was well aware of what swing was and wanted it kept to a minimum so it wouldn't sound like jazz.

If we go back to minstrelsy in the 1830s, we can find sheet music to "The Zip Coon Song" transcribed for piano. It sounds very stately and neo-classical. Clearly not the way it was perfromed in the venues. That's kind of the danger of relying too heavily on sheet music. You gotta swing it a bit.