Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
MIMIC TRADE
VOL. LXIV. No. 16 Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bill, Inc., at 373 4th Ave., New York. April 21, 1917
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Science and Sense in Piano-Making
T
HE wonderful progress which the American people have made in every material respect has been a
progress made by experimenters, not by investigators—by hard sense and hard work, not by research.
Allowing for all the exceptions one can bring up—and they are many—this great f^Pt nevertheless
stands out: Uncle Sam has made his way by native shrewdness. In a country less favored by nature,
the story might have been different. But that is mere speculation.
In piano-making America leads the world. This is no statement of brag or boast; the fact is admitted
by all. The good American piano is the best piano made anywhere. The commercial American piano is far
better than the commercial European piano. Yet piano-making would seem to be essentially a scientific process,
not an experimental process.
If Americans have been chiefly great as daring triers of new notions, how comes it that American pianos
are really the best pianos?
The answer is not far to seek. It rests on the simple but incontrovertible fact that piano-making is a
scientific industry that has never yet—anywhere—been absolutely conducted on a truly scientific basis.
European nations that boast of their scientific methods and sneer at "Whittling Uncle Sam" have never
produced a piano action like the American piano action, or a player action like the American player action.
The reason, again, is simple to find. Piano-making has never yet had to be scientific. Never yet; but those
never-yet times have been succeeded by "right now" times. Piano-making to-day has to be scientific, or it will
fail, must fail, does fail.
Great and honored names have figured in the American piano industry. Great systems of piano-making still
persist, in all essentials directly traceable to definite streams of ideas set in motion by individual piano-makers.
The Steinway, the Chickering, and the Weber schools may be traced in their influence upon contemporary
piano-making; an influence wholly admirable and advantageous.
But new days bring new tasks. "Other times, other manners," said the old Roman. The times are changed,
and we have changed with them. The piano of 1917 is not the piano of 1890. Tonally, architecturally, tactually,
dynamically, it has to perform functions that thirty years ago were hardly anticipated, much less known. The
musical taste of our people has changed. The talking machine has been an enormously powerful influence. The
dozen great American symphony orchestras have had their big share. The piano of 1917 must be neither brassy
nor woody, neither hard nor soft. But it must, above all things else, be rich and noble!
To-day's piano must sing. It must sound like a diapason in a cathedral organ; and anon like the pipes of
Pan. It must, in short, be an inclusive musical instrument, in itself the synthesis of all tones.
Here is the task set before us to-day. It is not an imaginary task, but one practical and immediately nec-
essary. The piano which is to succeed in the next two or three years is the piano that is wholly expressive of
the day's requirements in tone. There are a thousand distractions, a thousand appeals, a thousand plausible
reasons for doing something else than play the piano these days. Automobiles, talking machines, motion pic-
tures, all maintain their ceaseless lure. We must have, to cope with these competing attractions, a piano that
is relatively perfect; that possesses a tonal fascination beyond reproach and beyond competition.
That means science. It means that the acoustical problems must be studied afresh and applied fearlessly.
It means that in every department of piano-making the great brains must be concentrated on the problems of
betterment, tonal and mechanical. Let there be no mistake! In every department of American industry the
once despised or barely tolerated man of science is now sought after, wanted, demanded! In piano-making the
great old days of merely following tradition are passed forever! We must get away from the thought of them
We welcome and demand American science in piano-making as in everything else.