Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW.
flecca of the
Organ=Grinders.
® H E organ-grinders of New York are a
-c5 colony by themselves, occupying one
house. It is situated at No. 13 Vestry street,
and some peculiar sights may be seen there.
There are upward of two hundred families en-
compassed within its noisy domain. There are
organ-grinders of all kinds, conditions and
sizes, and there are just as many piano men to
keep them company. Then, there are some who
live by supplying storage for the pianos ; others
who are merely helpers, wives for them all, and
myriads of children ; so that, taking it all in all,
the House of Blazes, as the big tenement is
called, is fearfully and wonderfully composed.
The tenement at No. 13 Vestry street was
once a fashionable apartment house, but a hor-
rible suicide occurred there and it fell into dis-
repute. Then the Italians moved in, and now it
is a ramshackle affair, overflowing with human-
ity. It is a communistic institution. All
thoughts are turned towards the one occupation
—turning the crank. The very children sigh
for the time when they, too, will be able to go
on the road.
When you hear a street-piano man under
your window you must not suppose that he
owns his instrument. He may merely rent it.
You can do that in Vestry street for the small
amount of $1 per day. The pianos themselves
cost from $125 up, and that is an amount of
money which every Italian does not possess.
Then there is the expense of having the musical
numbers changed, for you must keep up to date,
so that it is sometimes a matter of money to
own a street piano. From this it will be seen
that there is a good margin of profit in the busi-
ness.
As early as 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning
the organ brigade is astir.
The House of
Blazes never shuts, for that matter, but is the
scene of a continual babel, night and day. Some
of the grinders go as far as Fordham and
through B Westchester County, and even to
Jersey. They have regular routes, do the
dwellers of No. 13, and none encroaches on the
other's domain. Many have regular houses be-
fore which they play, and never leave unre-
warded. Not a few of them wear amulets to
bring them luck.
On the first floor of No. 13, in a front room,
lives an Italian and his family, who make their
living by storing the pianos of the upstairs
lodgers. The rent or storage is $1 per month.
He has as many as ten pianos in storage at a
time. Another autocrat of the House of Blazes
is the man who is the owner of sixteen pianos,
which he rents out at the rate of a dollar a day.
Another institution which is more or less of
an adjunct to the colony is the street piano-
maker, who has his shop at Sullivan and
Grand streets. Nina is his name, and he has it
in his power to popularize or kill any of the
songs of the day. The street piano is an im-
portant factor in the life of the popular song.
Many songs would die quicker deaths were it
not for it.
But Nina always wishes to perpetuate a good
song, and so he instructs his chief musician.
The latter is a South American named Louis de
Honestis. He it is who adapts the popular mu-
sic to the street piano. The latter is really a
Type."
"TV Hi
* * *
RUSSELL
(Successors to STARK & STRACK.)
PIANOS
MANUFACTURED BY
Nos. 171 and 173 South Canal Street,
i5
combination music-box and piano. A large
cylinder covered with pin-points sets in motion
the hammers which strike the strings. A very
wide range is thus obtained.
The playing of the street piano is equal in
point of performance to six hands playing in
the ordinary manner. Honestis is an adept
and a genius as well. He makes the piano per-
form trills so difficult in comprehension that it
is enough to turn a musician's brain to hear
them. " Sweet Marie, " for instance, is taken ;
the theme alone is used, and then is added the
runs, roulades, etc. Each piano is made to play
ten airs.
Violins by Machinery.
'ORWICH, N. Y., has one machine which
cannot be duplicated in all the world,
says the Utica Observer. It stands in the manu-
factory of the Boyce Violin Company. It is a
machine by which violins are made, and made
more perfectly than it is possible to do by hand.
It is the outcome of ten years of thought by its
inventor, S. L. Boyce, and is the first and only
machine of its kind ever made.
Automatic in its movements, and working
with greater than human precision—even pro-
ducing in the copy the raised surface caused by
a drop of oil which had accidentally fallen upon
the model—and turning out violins which rival
Cremonas, I could only exclaim : '' The Devil's
in i t ! "
CHICAGO.
French Comic Songs.
THE
Sterling Company,
MANUFACTURERS OF
Pianos and Organs,
FACTORY :
DERBY, CONN.
It is admitted by all that no piano ever put upon the
market has met with such success as THE STERLING
and thousands will testify to their superiority of work-
manship and durability. Why ? Because they are made
just as perfect as a piano can be made.
THE
STERLING ORGAN has always taken the lead, and
the improvements made this year puts it far ahead oi
all others. EF" Send for Catalogue.
Halleti Davis Pianos
| S j N E of the French papers has been making
«» inquries on the subject of the profits de-
rived from the sale of popular comic songs. It
hardly pays, it seems, to publish songs that
only have a moderate success at the music halls,
as up to 1,000 copies or more the sale barely
pays for the cost of printing and paper. After
that figure is reached, however, the profits are
large. There are two sorts of copies—those which
have only the words and the notes of the air,
and those which give besides the pianoforte ac-
companiment. Comparatively few of the latter
are sold. '' En Revenant de la Revue,'' com-
monly called the '' Boulanger March,'' brought
its happy composer alone 50,000 francs from the
sale of copies. The author of the verses is be-
lieved to have received much more than this.
Nevertheless the business of song writing is not
a very lucrative one, for successes such as that
are very rare. Even the best known men, such
as M. Delormel, M. Petit and M. Gamier, are
believed to earn less than $1,500 a year on an
average.
LEBANON, N. H.—A. E. Hough, one of the
most widely known musicians of the State,
through his connection with Hough's band and
orchestra, died very suddenly of apoplexy at his
home in Lebanon August 226., aged nearly 70
years.
W. B. PRICE, who represented the W. W.
Kimball Co. in Washington, D. C , for some
time past, is now in charge of the pipe organ
depaitment of their Chicago house. During
Mr. Price's stay in Washington he displayed
signal ability and made hosts of friends for his
house and in a social way.
GRAND, SQUARE AND UPRIGHT.
Indorsed by Liszt, Gottschalk, Wehli, Bendel, Straus. Soro, Abt,
Paulus, Titiens, Heilbron and Germany's Greatest Masters.
Established over Half a Century.
BOSTON, MASS.