Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW.
Fate of the Old
Pianos.
Those of Reputable flake are Put in Good
Condition and Find Purchasers at
Fair Prices—Second Hand Dealers
Get Poor—If not Sold at a
Profit They are Rented
Until Worthless, and
then Broken Up.
musical persons, who had played on
the piano all their lives, discussed recently
the.question of what becomes of all the old
pianos. One man suggested that every old
piano sold in New Yo>k was shipped off directly
to the West. Another presumed that the dis-
used instruments were first dismembered by the
piano maker and the strong portions of one set
to reinforce the weak spots of another, until an
all round standard of average merit was obtain-
ed. This man knew nothing of piano mechan-
ism. The third man thought that when the
piano had any constitution left it was put aside
solely for renting purposes, but when it was
nearly worn out it was taken apart and its wood,
wires and ivories cleaned and polished ready to
be used in the construction of a new instrument.
All three were wrong.
In whatever condition the old piano is taken
in exchange by the piano manufacturer, in that
condition it remains. He can tune it, put a coat
of varnish on it, make any repairs necessary and
then it is ready for sale again. He cannot patch
up a worn action, and if the piano was originally
a poor one and is almost useless, he can foretell
without much trouble just how long it will take
it to reach the old furniture shop, and will make
all the haste possible to send it on.
The lowest price offered by a dealer in ex-
change for a piano by any maker will be about
$20. If not worth that to a firm it is worth no-
thing. Pianos by first rate makers, even if old
and much used, will always bring from one-
third to one-half their original value. If the
same be nearly new they will bring about two-
thirds. Such pianos of reputable make are no
burden when taken in exchange. They are put
into the best condition possible, and find digni-
fied quarters in the second hand wareroooms of
the best piano houses of the city, from which
they are sold at retail, because they can be
recommended. They are considered as good
stock in their way as new instruments, since
they fill a gap in the case of intelligent musical
people which would otherwise remain vacant.
A musicianly purchaser will prefer a second
hand piano of standard make to a new instru-
ment of inferior manufacture, and as the best
piano judges are not always able to pay the price
of a new piano, a good second hand one is always
salable within the city limits.
TO THE SECOND HAND DEALERS.
When a good firm, however, is obliged to take
in exchange a piano of medium or low grade
make—and the compliance of firms in matters
of exchange has to cover a vast area—they give
them no quaiter on their own floors. Pianos of
this kind aie sold to second hand dealers, who,
if they do not dispose of them directly at a profit,
keep them for rent as long as they can, thereby
clearing before done with them about fifty fold
their purchase price.
Then there is the downright decrepit piano—
the worn out instrument of a bad maker. It
still can make a noise, and so the good firm will
obligingly call it a piano, allow $20 for it, and
straightway send it to the auction room for what
it may bring. Sometimes it brings $15 ; again
a farmer may covet it for $30 or $40. But
whether or not it gets a temporary lift in life, it
is rapidly nearing extinction as a piano. The
day of the grand junk shop is not far off. It
may, if it be an old square piano, serve a time
as a sideboard, but eventually the chopping up
stage comes, and its wood and iron will separate
and reappear in any and every article of furni-
ture except—a piano.
This is one of the fallacies to be dispelled.
Old piano materials are dead to the piano world.
They may construct a sofa frame or the metal
may be dissolved and fashioned into pots and
pans, but they will never go to the reconstruc-
tion of another piano, if makers know anything
about it.
Here is something, however, which may be
done with a piano of standard make in the way
of complete renewel. In the beginning the main
expense of the mechanical portion of a piano lies
in the plate and the sounding board. When
these are of superior make and workmanship
they are good practically for all time. After a
thirty years' use, probably when the voice of
the instrument has almost gone through the felt
of the hammers being nearly worn away, and
the bushing of cloth in the action also worn, a
completely new keyboard can be inserted and
the piano be made to speak again with as much
sweetness and strength as when first made.
For a cost of $150 an originally superior in-
strument can be made over new through this
new action and a comparatively dumb piano be
restored to a $1,000 value. But, it should be
repeated, this can only be done in the case of an
eminently superior piano. Middle class pianos
will not warrant it, and there's no such thing as
patching the action of a piano, either low grade
or superior. If two or three middle octaves get
more worn than the rest they cannot be equal-
ized. When the piano has always had a bad
constitution this is the beginning of the end. A
ten years' lease of life is the most accorded to
these poor pianos, but sometimes after one year's
use they begin to refuse keeping in tune, the
action becomes sticky and there are a host of
other disqualifications before the middle octaves
show Mgns of permanent disability. When they
do they piano has grown useless indeed, and
science has no remedy for it, because it was un-
scientifically constructed in the beginning.
UPRIGHT PIANOS IN FAVOR.
The superior improvements in the upright are
now crowding out the square piano from the
field. Ten to fifteen years ago the square piano
held a place between the upright and grand, but
the upright has advanced beyond it, and to day
no square pianos are being turned out by good
makers. Up to a few years ago fair prices were
given for second hand squares, where today a
firm hesitates even at taking one in exchange.
When they do get on the market they are gene-
rally purchased by the public schools.
The most difficult piano to sell at second hand
from the private wareroom is the concert grand,
because its large size does not make it suitable
for private houses. A short time ago an auction
of accumulated " grands " was called downtown.
They were all of the best make, ranging from
five to thirty-five years old, and costing origin-
ally from $800 to $1,000. They sold according
to age from $75 to $350. One went for $50.
An eclectic gathering assembled to the bidding
for these instiuments. Those who were not pro-
fessional pianists, piano teachers, principals of
schools or heads of colleges or convents, were
astute hotel proprietors from the various seaside
and mountain resorts within a hundred miles of
New York who knew the prestige attaching to a
piano of standard make, and could calculate to
a nicety on the results in attraction of their bar-
gain.
Some pianos are like the persons who play on
them—much benefited by change of .air, and
take on a new lease of life by removal from
one half hot air register, other half open window
current to the well tempered space of a rural
parlor in summer. In winter they get boxed
up and are kept in a dry attic so that they are
guarded against the colds which crack the voice
or the rheumatism which warps.
That little, short octaved square piano, which
vibrated under the fingers of our grandparents
lingers still in the corners of a few homesteads,
but wherever music was in progress on the ad-
vent of the more modern instruments it got
hustled out into the most unlikely and some-
times pathetic quarters. Its value now corre-
sponds to that of the willow pattern plate when
it may be unearthed. Where it has not had a
sacred musical niche for a few generations it
will usually be found in the once genteel homes
in the neighborhood of Washington Square,
Waverley Place and corresponding quarters,
where sometimes its little cracked voice still
speaks as a piano, but more often is shut up for-
ever, the case only being considered worth
standing room from the pile of odds and ends
which can be placed upon it.
Sometimes it still stands revered in a little
country parlor and mingles sweetly yet with
the children's voices in the Sunday hymns. It
even flashes out a dance tune when called upon,
gaspingly, to be sure, but not resentfully, forget-
ting the fact that once in the good old time aris-
tocratic and trained fingers drew from it only the
classic tinkle of Mozait or Haydn or Dussek.
REACHES THE JUNK SHOP.
But principally the little piano has gone
steadily down, sold and resold, until it has
finally reached the junk shop or the cellar.
Not long ago there stood in the oldest and dirti-
est of old cellar storerooms over on the East
side, one of these pianos, which had once be-
longed to the Stuyvesants, but through genera-
tions of change and abuse had at last reached
there. One day the newest of new ladies picked
up her draperies and descended into this cellar to
sort out old brass and old china and mahogany
to furnish her ancient-modern mansion. She
bought the piano for $2.
Straightway she invented a little romance
for it. She dreamed that her grandmother had
once played sonatinas on it, and that she prized
it as a precious musical heirloom which had re-
mained in her musical family for four genera-
tions of culture. The romance did her good.
She really lived up to that piano. She put it in
a pet corner of her music room, in which shaggy
haired Herren were perpetually hurling thunder-
bolts from the new concert grand at the other
end. When the seven and one-third octaves
had every note been given violent attention, she
would sometimes open the quaint little square
case and gaze pathetically at her imaginary
grandmother's faint and narrow compass, and
she and the leonine pianist would make tender
allusions to the pathos of bygone times.
That little piano determined an evolution in
this woman's musical nature, and she has
worked to profit the suggestion of its every key.
It has now before it a cherished old ^ge, but
when it was sold for the $2 it was just on the
verge of going the way of other little old pianos,
being smashed up and having its body turned
into chair and table legs, while its poor little
soul and heartstrings would be flung on the ash
heap.
There is one other old piano in America—a
pre-eminent piano this—which has never suf-
fered leverses in youth or middle life, and now
sits down in its old age to enjoy the tender