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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
The Player-Piano Will Not Gome into Its Rightful Sphere Until the Public Is
Made to Understand That It Is Not a Substitute for the Piano, but Is Rather
a New Instrument, Capable of New and Hitherto Impossible Accomplishments
One may assume that while the progress of
any right idea through what may be called the
community mind, is necessarily slow, still it is
equally inevitable. In the business with which
we have to deal in this Player Section it becomes
very often our duty to direct the attention of
readers to the slow but sure march of ideas that
at first statement seem to be the reverse of
plausible, although it nearly always turns out
that the lack of plausibility has been due to our
failure to understand the facts and to nothing
else. Such an occasion now presents itself.
We are about to make a suggestion regarding
the future advertising and exploitation of the
player-piano; a suggestion that we do not for
a moment pretend is a patent scheme for mak-
ing enormous riches out of selling players or
for abolishing all the defects of retail merchan-
dising and substituting therefore some beauti-
fully simple "efficiency" process which will take
care of all our troubles without requiring any
assistance from ourselves. Not at all.
What Has Been Done for the Player
The point is just that for fifteen years we have
been trying, first one way and then another, to
convert the nation to the player-piano. There
is no doubt that we began well. There is no
doubt that in the days when highly trained and
specialized experts worked the retail game for
the retailers, when the manufacturer sent out
his experts to establish player departments, and
recitals were given and the elite of the cities
came to them and stayed to buy, we were be-
ginning well. But those days did not last. The
game looked so good that ere long everybody
wanted to have a hand in it. The results we
all know. Thousands of players have been
sold, it is true, and the player industry has be-
come firmly established. Every piano can now
be had with a player in it (there are, we believe,
but two exceptions), and the novelty of early
days has most decidedly worn off. Yet we are
conscious sometimes of a little dissatisfaction,
of a feeling that all is not quite as well as it
ought to be. Why is this?
To put the matter in another way, is it not
true that the technical progress of the player
has been very much hindered in past years—
and is very much hindered now—by considera-
tion for the demands of a retail trade that does
not know just what it wants? Is it not true that
we are ever turning, first to one supposed im-
provement, then to another, in the hope of find-
ing what we all want to find; namely, something
that will sell on its merits and that will give us
the certainty of satisfying any reasonable pub-
lic demand? When we found that the cabinet
player did not satisfy that demand we turned to
the player-piano. When we found that the
player-piano did not satisfy .the public any bet-
ter, or at least was certainly not the perfect
thing we at first thought it, we began to blame
the roll, and in due time developed the art of
recording, and with it the hand-played roll, so-
called. This was to solve the player problem
finally by providing the public with infallible
means for producing really good musical effects
from the player. But somehow it has turned
out that not even the hand-played roll carries
the final solution. So now we have turned to
the power-driven player and have announced to
ourselves that the only trouble with the player-
piano has been the dislike of the public for the
physical effort of pumping. Some of us are
banking on that idea for all it is worth and be-
lieving that without anything further they can
now be sure of finding the complete solution
of the entire problem of popularizing the player.
Yet somehow there persists the uncomfort-
able suspicion that we are still playing with in-
cidentals and missing fundamentals.
The Attitude of Those with Musical Knowledge
The reason for the comparatively slow prog-
ress of the player-piano is to be found—in our
opinion at least—rather by considering the at-
titude taken towards it by those who have in all
communities possession of the community's
musical knowledge. The music teachers and
the professional musicians have always had for
the player-piano either hearty contempt or a
downright hatred. They have sneered at its
claims and laughed its pretensions to scorn. To
the vast majority of them the player-piano has
been merely an impudent attempt to substitute
machinery for knowledge and to destroy the
value of the studies into which they have put
their abilities and their very lives.
Musicians and Women Are Hostile
Now, whatever we may think of it, the truth
remains that the opinion of professional musi-
cians cannot be dismissed as unimportant. For,
in fact, it is very important. The average citi-
zen usually seeks the opinion of an expert in
matters personally unfamiliar to him. Hence
the disapproval of the musical experts has re-
acted upon the player, to an extent not usually
recognized but actually very great indeed. The
whole feminine sex, one may add, has been from
the start either indifferent or hostile, and this
largely because women, with their natural con-
servatism and their practical monopoly of music
making, have really resented what they have
thought to be the unwarranted intrusion of the
player-piano. They have feared to foster in their
children all loss of desire for music study and
consequent degeneration in musical taste. They
have therefore added their condemnation. And
the effect in toto has been very noticeable.
To make the player what we all know it to
be, in fact, to give it that popularity which its
merit demands, we need to get the musical opin-
ion of the country on our side; and until we
have conquered existing prejudices this consum-
mation can not be brought about.
The Answer to the Problem
The answer to the problem is to be found—-
we believe—in considering one point which, in
all the discussions which have raged during the
past fifteen years, has been quite uniformly over-
looked; namely, that the player-piano is not a
"piano" at all. By the word "piano," of course,
we here mean to imply the general idea of the
musical instrument which the average citizen
has in mind when he thinks of "piano." We are
now talking about the ma.ss of people; not about
experts. The player-piano is the piano plus the
ability to play it, says some wise man. But, in-
deed, this answer is incomplete. The player-
piano is the piano plus the ability to play it in a
way which was never previously thought of, in
a way which transforms the piano from a two-
hand solo instrument to a portable orchestra.
That is the whole point. The player-piano is
not the piano that all can play; it is the super-
piano that all can "operate" but only the musi-
cal can "play."
In short, we have for years been irritating and
antagonizing the musical profession by advertis-
ing the player-piano as a substitute for the
piano. We have asserted that musical study is
no longer necessary, that the player-piano is
"the piano any one can play," that the player-
piano "makes us all musicians"; and all that
sort of thing. The statements have not been
wholly untrue, but they have been extremely
loose and inaccurate. Yet, because they have
not been wholly true, they have aroused the de-
cided antagonism of a by no means powerless
class in the community.
Player Music Is Wholly New Music
Now the truth is that the player-piano is a
wholly new musical instrument, one which does
not depend upon any other, which is really quite
self-sufficient and which must be developed un-
til it reaches a position of complete domination
in the musical field. It is not a substitute for
the piano but a long step ahead of the piano.
It is the piano with an immensely broadened
range, unlimited capacities of chord combina-
tion and almost equally unlimited range
(though this is not yet totally realized in prac-
tice) of dynamic and expressive graduations.
Thus, to compare it with the piano is foolish.
The ordinary piano has indeed eighty-eight
notes, but its practical range may be said to
be about four octaves, which is the compass
used by perhaps nine in ten of those who "play"
it. The musicians who criticize the player and
talk of the beauties of piano playing and piano
tone forget that not one person in a thousand
ever realizes those beauties or knows what they
are. So when we compare the player-piano with
the ordinary piano we commit a double mistake;
for we offend the musician, who will persist in
thinking in terms of Busoni and Godowsky do-
ing wonderful (but sharply limited) things on a
concert grand, while we mystify John Smith
with the appalling correctness and immense tech-
nical range of an instrument so vastly different
from his tin-panny piano, playing old-time songs
or catch-penny dance music on a four-octave
range.
In short, seeing that the player-piano is an
instrument of immense range and power, far
above anything like the ordinary piano has
ever been or can be, and that anyone can make it
play some sort of way, we are like people who
have taken a work of art and handed it over to
children to play with. The children are only
vaguely pleased while all artists are annoyed.
Now, the artists will stop being annoyed when
they see that this particular work of art, while it
may be a toy for children, is also a new and big
instrument for themselves, not a competitor
with their beloved piano, but something new
and altogether different.
The Player-Piano a Super-Piano
There we have the whole thing in a nutshell.
Let the exploitation of the player-piano be con-
ducted on lines that will assure its dual nature
being understood. Let the public have their
rag-time and their dances all they wish; they
will not study music anyhow; and the musicians
know it. But stop telling the musicians that
the player-piano is a substitute for the piano.
Let them understand that the player-piano will
only cease annoying them when they stop abus-
ing it and take to using it, when they begin to
write music for it and encourage the technical
men in making improvements on it. Let us, in
short, realize that the player-piano is a super-
piano and a super-piano with a range, a power
and a capacity for musical expression which
make it a sort of combination of piano, organ
and something else greater than either. When
we have the musicians taking up the player-
piano on their own basis, we shall also have a
good many more of the innocent public taking
it up for their own child-like amusements. In-
cidentally, we shall sell five times as many
players.