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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
The Fifth of a Series of Articles, Written in Collaboration With a Music
Lover, Wherein Is Described How the Player-Piano Awakened in Him a
Desire for Good Music, and His Experiences While Learning to Play Rolls
[Editorial Note:—This is the fifth in a series of "experi-
ences" which have been set down as told to the Editor
of the Player Section by an amateur music-lover whose
musical education has been obtained through the medium
of his player-piano; which, however, he had to master of
himself without the slightest assistance from anybody in
the trade. Dealers and manufacturers may well ponder
the \yords of this disinterested owner, who has so much
that is pertinent to say and says it so well.]
The desire to understand big, broad music,
music which is sketched in wide effects and
massed colors, as it were, comes, I suppose,
at about the same stage in the career of every
musical amateur. The musicians, however, not
to mention the makers of musical instruments,
seem to me to have entirely overlooked dur-
ing the past few years, the enormous changes
in the methods of musical culture which the
player-piano and the talking machine have made.
For instance, my sisters all "learned to play"
the piano. None of the three ever learned well
enough to feel at ease at the key-board, al-
though each of them struggled through a long
and tedious routine for some years. My daugh-
ter had a certain talent, and always played
rather well; yet 1 am compelled to say, that for
some reason or other, she never caused me,
through any playing she ever did, to think
twice about music. When she was married
and gone, my wife and I missed her music more
than we had ever supposed we should; but this
was only through the effect of contrast, I sus-
pect. For a long time I could not see why I had
never cared for my daughter's playing in any
more than a casual way; but it was not until I
had my player-piano and knew something about
it that the solution came to me. Of course, it
is simple enough, when once you know the
secret. Tt is simply that ordinary piano playing
is in fact horribly monotonous in color, ex-
tremely narrow in range and confined to works
of relative simplicity and relative paucity of
idea. Truly, many persons will say that they
prefer the "old sweet melodies," but then such
persons represent—so I see now—a backward
stage in musical evolution. To them music
appeals only through the senses. To them
music is not a form of expression, but an agree-
able noise.
The Player-Piano to the Rescue
But the truth will not be downed, no matter
who refuses to see it. Ordinary piano playing
is extremely unsatisfying, because it means
the indifferent rendition of a very small num-
ber of not very intelligent musical ideas. Only
the real pianist ever gets beyond this stage;
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and only the real artist ever gets to a point
where his playing of anything is interesting
and beautiful.
Even this latter magic does
not make bad music good. The player-piano
here steps in, however, and brings with it im-
mediate rescue.
The Unmalleable Piano
We seldom realize, till we come to think se-
riously about it, that the piano is a hard, mo-
notonous instrument in the hands of nearly
everybody. Its tone quality is thin, its range
of color values is very narrow, and only an
artist can make it sing. Only an artist, there-
fore, can satisfy the longings of anyone who
has once tasted the delight of real music. But
there are few artists anyway, and one does not
keep them at home even then. The piano is
not the true instrument of musical culture.
But the player-piano is! True, the player-
piano has no better tone than the ordinary
piano. But it has something to make up for
what it lacks tonally. It has unlimited range,
unlimited technical capacity, and the ability to
render in full score any and every piece of
music ever written for any instrument or band
of instruments.
It does, therefore, promote
musical culture; because it does the one thing
needed above all others; it kills monotony and
sameness.
The Orchestral Player-Piano
The player-piano in short is an orchestra for
the home, and as soon as a man has learned
how to handle a player-piano tolerably well, he
begins to realize what it is to have a home
orchestra. That is what the player-piano is;
and besides this, it is, with its library of music
rolls, an orchestra always available, that does
not go on strike or ask for more money. It
is indeed an orchestra definitely limited in
volume of tone and in range of color; but an
orchestra in capacity to reproduce music of all
types, in unlimited technical capacity and in
susceptibility to the control of its conductor.
The Queer Musician
It was to my player-piano that I now began
to turn for some real intimate understanding of
larger forms of music.
This intimate ac-
quaintance with music of large form is some-
thing that only the player-piano can give. It
can give it for two reasons; first because it has
the technical power, and second because it can
reproduce at any time and without any special
preparation, anything that can be put before it,
no matter how large or how complex. Musi-
cians don't seem to know this. I once read
some remarks by a musician on player-pianos
in which it was gravely argued that the player-
piano is quite unnecessary even for the render-
ing of orchestral works for the purposes of
study. "You merely have to get two good
pianists, said this gentleman, and let them play
the music together from a good four-hand piano
arrangement."
Did the gentleman suppose
that this kind of pianist grows on bushes, or is
bought at the store? Yet musicians wonder
that nobody pays much attention to their little
ways.
The Intimate Touch
It is the intimacy that the player-piano gives
which is its greatest charm. The ability to
reproduce at once, in any way one wishes, with
every note in it, the score of some great sym-
phonic movement, and to have this before one
so clearly that every note stands out with the
definiteness of the lines in an engraving; to
have this is to have a treasure! Admit all the
limitations of the player-piano, admit, as I cer-
tainly do, that it is defective in certain direc-
tions, and that no doubt it should be played
much better than I play it; even so, you still
have left something that connot be obtained
through any other means. You still have an
unsurpassed instrument for giving you right
at home the beauties of the finest music, with
a clearness, keenness and simplicity that the
actual orchestral interpretation, owing to its
very richness and immensity, positively lacks.
It is for this reason and quite apart from any
capacity the player-piano may or may not have
for ordinary solo piano music, that I love it;
and although I scarcely knew it at the time, it
was for that reason that I felt I wanted to work
out music I had heard at a concert, right at
home, by myself, with my player-piano.
I have purposely digressed from the thread
of these adventures, to say something delib-
erately analytical; but now having got the thing
out of my system T feel better; and will con-
tinue the adventures.
Beethoven and Hofmann
I know not for how many years young Josef
Hofmann has played the piano; but he must have
been at it since infancy, for he is yet, I am told,
under forty. However it may be, he must have
been born in a room where the death mask of
Beethoven decorated the wall; for he is, I do
truly believe, the greatest Beethovenist of to-
day. I man by that, the greatest player of Bee-
thoven's music.
It was he who first intro-
duced to me that master's concerto in G major.
I remarked in a previous installment of these
adventures that I had heard at a concert this
concerto and two other pieces which I pro-
ceeded to try out on my player-piano after-
wards. The concerto stuck to me in the queer-
est way, and especially I could not get out of
my head the memory of Hofmann's short stocky
figure, with the little stocky hands, as they
looked, so quietly and yet so amazingly mas-
tering and dominating the intricacies of the solo
part, while all around him sang the glorious
orchestra, mounting into the empyrean under
the firm touch of Damrosch's baton.
I do
not pretend that at the time I had the slightest
notion what the concerto was all about; nor
indeed did I know very much as to what a con-
certo might be. But this much I did know;
that Hofmann played something very beautiful,
that there were some melodies that haunted
me, that the piano sounded like silver and
golden bells, that I was very much pleased and
very much inspired, and vaguely satisfied. Still
T did not know what it was all about.
Taking it Home
But I sent out next day and got rolls of the
concerto, and had them sent home. That night
T made the first really big experiment of my
career as player-pianist; I sat down to Bee-
thoven, to try him out.
Now, it happened that in the house was a
small collection of old books which my daugh-
ter had left behind from her school days, and
among them was a little dictionary of music,
as it was called.
I thought of this before
starting to run through the concerto, and on
looking it up discovered that a concerto is a
piece in symphonic form for orchestra, but
with a solo part for piano, violin or some other
instrument, written in. This did not tell me
much, especially as the term "symphonic form,"
was Greek to me; but anyhow it reminded me
that Hofmann and the orchestra had played al-
ternately most of the time, and sometimes to-
gether, and that the whole thing 'was a sort of
enormous duet between them.
(Continued on page ( S)