Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
E. S. Conway as President of the Art of the Self-Playing Piano.
Association.
MECHANICAL IT APPEARS ONLY IN ITS NAME
There are busy men in the piano trade
in Chicago during 1 the hot summer months,
men who believe in making hay while the
sun shines and who fully understand the
attractions of Chicago as a summer resort.
One of these busy men is Edwin S. Con-
way, the secretary of the great W. W.
Kimball Co. While mankind are profuse-
ly perspiring Mr. Conway is at his desk
mopping his brow and working as steadily
and zealously as any drayman in the em-
ploy of the Kimball Co. and doing his level
best to keep the Kimball factory the first
among the great piano manufacturing
establishments of the country. How well
he succeeds, the trade know.
By the way, in this connection we find
pleasure in nominating Edwin S. Conway
for the presidency of the National Piano
Manufacturers' Association when that body
meets in Chicago next May. All in favor
of that motion please say aye. The ayes
have it, Mr. Conway.—The Indicator, July
18, 1899.
We wish to call the attention of our
always interesting contemporary to the
fact that the nomination of E. S, Conway
for the presidency of the Association has
already been made. In The Review of
April 15th, the first issue after the Con-
vention of the National Piano Manufac-
turers' Association, there appeared an edi-
torial commending the choice of Chicago
as the next convention city, which closed
with the following words:
"In national organizations there is an
unwritten law regulating the election of
officers. When a city is selected as a place
for association meeting, there is invariably
a compliment paid by the organization to
some member of the local trade in that
city by electing him to the presidency of
the organization. What could be more fit-
ting when the association meets next May
than to elect as presiding officer a member
of the trade of the city whose guest the
association will be, and what more fitting
representative of the western trade could
occupy the office of chief executive than
Edwin Stapleton Conway ? A man who
typifies to a marked degree the very ele-
ments which have made the West such a
great factor in the manufacture of pianos
and organs. Then, too, Mr. Conway pos-
sesses those happy attributes of being a
parliamentarian of ability and a business
man of powerful acumen."
Now that our suggestion has been so
fittingly seconded and so ably supported
by The Indicator the ayes unquestionably
will carry the day.
MARKS ONE OF THE GREATEST
ADVANCES EVER MADE IN THE
REALM OF MUSIC.
A very earnest and clever appreciation
of the Pianola appeared recently in the
New York Press. It is of especial mo-
ment and weight because it is not a brief
for the Pianola, inasmuch as it has not
been inspired or solicited. It is evidently
written by a student of present day ad-
vances in the realm of music, and his an-
alysis of the situation is of sufficient in-
terest to merit reproduction. He says:
"Great strides have been made recently
in the improvement of mechanical aids to
piano playing, and the possibility of pro-
ducing good music without the expenditure
of years of taxing labor and large sums of
money has appealed strongly to many per-
sons.
"One of the latest and most satisfactory
instilments for self-playing does away
with a chief objection to mechanical instru-
ments, inasmuch as this device has three
degrees of power and is able to give strong
accents, light and shade, and to vary the
time. In most cases the mechanical
fingers have only one degree of force, and
this is what produces the unvaried, lifeless
sort of music which has been so much
condemned. But with this newer instru-
ment the performer is able to control the
tempo, to obtain different degrees of power,
and by the use of the pedals color his
work artistically and feelingly. Its scope,
too, is far reaching, and appeals alike to the
amateur pianist, the ambitious student and
the composer. Its object is distinctly revo-
lutionary in the realm of musical education.
" It can be attached to any piano, the me-
chanical fingers being operated through
pneumatics, the composition being repro-
duced from perforated roll music. Where
there is any light running work to be
played, such as dainty, melodious waltzes,
there need be little effort on the part of the
person operating the instrument, as the
finger work is nearly perfect, and the effect
difficult to improve upon, but in more com-
plex compositions the execution may be in-
dividualized according to the taste and feel-
ing of the performer. Indeed, he may do
this the more effectively since he is not dis-
tracted by the necessity of paying atten-
tion to the fingering and other minor de-
Bradbury Special Grands. !
tails. What is seldom accomplished even
The two new Bradbury grands which F. by the most finished musicians, the equali-
G. Smith is having built for his Washing- zation of both hands, is assured by the use
ton representative W. P. Van Wickle, are of this self-playing instrument. The softest
being made after especial and rare designs, legato and the most impressive staccato are
for prominent citizens of Washington. said to be equally attainable by it.
Talking of them, Mr. Van Wickle says,
"From one horror this invention will
"They are grands of which Mr. Smith save us to a large degree, which alone
may well be proud."
should merit gratitude—that is the preva-
During Mr. Van Wickle's visit to the lence of mediocre pianoforte playing.
city last week he ordered a lot of Bradbury There can be no mechanical instrument so
and Webster pianos for his establishment bad as the human mechanical player, ham-
in Washington. Speaking of business pros- pered besides by lack of accuracy and the
pects he says: "We have had an excellent thousand defects of the average amateur.
trade this year, and look forward to in- It will inspire the untaught but ambitious
creased business in the fall."
to feel that he can produce as easily the
grandest concerto ever written as the sill-
iest jingle of inane conceit. Undoubtedly
the personal element is an added joy in lis-
tening to music in the case of a great
souled musician, but the great are rare in
music as in other lines of art, and in their
place we have more often the futile at-
tempts of the inartistic and the unskilled.
The self-playing device translates the mu-
sical thought of the composer far more
satisfactorily than the average human
player.
"Instead of long years of ill-directed
efforts at 'learning to play the piano,'
the student who lacks talent for technique
may in these latter days utilize his time
and intelligence in < learning to know'
something about music. With the help of
the improved mechanical instrument he
may familiarize himself with the noble
works of Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Schu-
mann or Liszt, analyze and compare them
and educate himself musically to far more
practical and artistic advantage than, ex-
cept in rare cases, he could hope to do
under the old methods. It will be as easy
with the mechanical helps for the well-
educated person to know the great com-
posers of music as he does the great writ-
ers of literature, and at an inestimable
saving of time and labor.
" I t is characteristic of the age that in
the matter of technical execution the
fingers should give way to labor-saving
substitutes.
"For those who have not the time to
learn to play the piano and for those who
live in regions where good music is a
rarity, almost unknown, the self-playing
piano is a boon of the highest value, open-
ing up to them a world of music which
else would have to remain closed.
"To composers it is said the self-playing
devices will prove a great gain because
they need not be restricted by the limita-
tions of ten imperfect human fingers, but
may enlarge the scope of the keyboard to
hitherto undreamed-of possibilities.
"Schools and private classes have already
acknowledged the advantage of having an
instrument which can play anything, re-
gardless of difficulty. With this instru-
ment an intelligent teacher can play a
concert piece with tempo, power and inter-
pretation in a way that would be tremen-
dously helpful to a pupil trying to work it
up for a concert. The teacher may have
musical ability, but poor fingers, and the
instrument will help him to correct his pu-
pil in those places where he most needs it.
"In Chicago classes have been formed to
study orchestral concert music in advance
of its performance by the orchestra, and in
that connection a mechanical instrument
has been used with marked success.
"There is a function peculiar to the im-
proved mechanical piano player which
makes it especially notable as an invention
of revolutionary and evolutionary character
in music. It has a recording device, by
which a direct record of any performance
given by any pianist upon a piano can be
made. Whatever the composition, the in-
strument makes definite and lasting record