Just as with painting, many aspects of American music derived from European influences. In music, some of the European models then in vogue dictated attention to the music of the common people. Antonin Dvorzák, a prominent Czech composer, lived in New York City in the mid-1890s as director of the National Conservatory of Music. He urged his pupils to express the spirit of liberty and to draw upon folk music in their work, and he incorporated some African-American themes along with other American folk music into his ninth symphony, From the New World (1893), perhaps the most popular symphony composed in the United States.  Charles Ives drew upon American folk themes in his early compositions, dating to the first years of the 20th century even though they were not performed until much later.

Better known at the turn-of-the-century was a black composer who drew directly upon African American themes: Scott Joplin. Joplin, more than any other single person, is associated with ragtime, which became popular during the late 1890s and early 20th century. Born in Texarkana, Texas, in 1869, Joplin piano with a local German music teacher and traveled through the African-American communities from New Orleans to Chicago. As he traveled, he came into contact with ragtime music and he began to write his own. In 1899, he published The Maple Leaf Rag, soared to fame as the best known ragtime composer in the country, and eventually composed African-American opera, Treemonisha, performed in Harlem in 1915. Though condemned by some at the time as vulgar, ragtime formed a major element in the development of jazz.

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