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THE
MUSIC TRADE
REVIEW
The Player-Piano Will Never Occupy the Place in the Musical Life of the
Nation that Rightfully Belongs to It Until There Is a Definite Desire
Among the People Generally for Good Music—How This May Be Created
For several years the conviction has been
growing amongst those whose opinions are most
worth while, that the real basis for any anxiety
over the sales of player-pianos is to be found
in the musical barrenness of American life.
Those who are making their livings from the
sale of musical instruments certainly ought to
be interested in the state of the public mind re-
garding musical matters; for it is plain that the
more musical people are, the more musical in-
struments they will be likely to buy. An im-
mense amount of pure unadulterated rot has
been talked about the improvement of musical
taste in America, nearly all of which, in fact,
should have been left unsaid; for not only has
it been untrue, it has also been positively mis-
leading. It is in no sense of the term true to
say that the interior, purely American, com-
munities of the great Central territory, are alone
musical or desirous of being so.
The Value of the Player
The player-piano ought to be the one best
musical missionary to all the people, for reasons
too obvious to need repetition here. Yet it is*
a well known fact that, in the first place, the
player-piano is not acting at all as a musical
missionary, and in the second place that the
sales of it are not more than keeping pace with
the growth of population while they are actually
falling behind compared with the growth of that
population's purchasing power.
Now, it is a fact recognized in the creation of
the National Bureau for the Advancement of
Music that the piano and the player-piano need
a campaign of boosting; and the further fact
has been recognized that the most effective
boosting is found by awakening in the American
heart a real love for music of a healthy, clean,
national kind, music that shall stimulate finally
the production of a real American music, a real
expression of the real feelings of the people.
Now this is an admirable ideal in every sense
of the term. It is an ideal moreover which is
capable of realization. Not only so, but if it
does come to success, then the effect upon the
musical instrument business will be immensely
beneficial and quite permanent.
But exactly
how do we propose to get the American people
to like music? That, after all, is the important
thing.
The Problem in Small Communities
Get away, for a moment, from the great cities
and their problems and imagine yourself, for
instance, out in Fergus county, Montana, a tract
of territory as large as the State of Vermont,
having an area of approximately 9,000 square
miles, with a population of 25,000, less than
three to the square mile. You have one town
of 4,000 population, one of 2,000, and three or
four of less than 500 apiece. The country is a
great mass of mountains and valleys, with a
broad basin in the middle filled with farms and
a group of mining camps outside. The people
are thrifty, industrious and prosperous. They
are pure American in the main and represent
what would be called the backbone element of
the nation.
Now, how would you set about to awaken in
the minds of this fine community a general com-
mon desire for musical thought and musical
recreation? Orchestras don't come there, not
everybody plays the piano, and the player-piano
is.very little known. You don't find community
choruses, or grand operas, or academies of
music. You do find hard work, fine open life,
broad acres and material prosperity. How are
you going to make that community musical? Or
the hundreds of other communities like it?
That is the problem before us. It is a prob-
lem which can only be settled, furthermore, by
the individual music dealer in the individual
community. There is really not much use in
telling these people to sing and play. You must
show them how to do it; and get them doing it.
Now it seems to us that the National Bureau
for the Advancement of Music might do worse
than consider plans for assisting ambitious coun-
try dealers to do really effective work in their
own communities towards the advancement of
musical thought, feeling and performance among
the plain people. We do not expect to do more
than put the idea before the readers of The
Review in the most general sort of way. Later
on, perhaps, it may be possible to go more into
details.
But there are certain broad principles that
underlie this idea, and these we can rightly set
forth here.
Creating Interest in Music
The first is that the only way to acquire a real
liking for music is to do more than merely listen
to it. One must do something towards making
it, no matter how crudely or imperfectly. So
then, the very first thing to do is to consider
what is the simplest, the easiest and the most
practical way of getting people to make music
themselves.
Everybody can sing, more or less. Every-
body likes singing. The most "unmusical" per-
son in the world, using the term in its technical
sense, likes to sing, even if the singing be very
bad. Nothing is easier than to announce that
anybody who likes to sing can get the chance,
with free instruction thrown in, by meeting once
a week at such and such a store or hall. They
will come, no fear,
When they have come, too, they will sing.
All you need is a piano, some one who can play,
and music which can be sung in the straight-
away style, like hymns are sung. There is
plenty of that old fashioned glee music which
is as easy to sing as hymns are, and which only
needs one or two singers in the crowd to get it
started. The others will soon join in, and in no
time you will have a full-fledged chorus going.
It may not be a very good one and probably,
in fact, will be anything but good; but that is
not the point. The point is that if you get peo-
ple singing, you also will get them thinking
about music, and you will get them practicing,
or wanting to practice, at home. That means
pianos or player-pianos; or both! Don't for-
get it; when you get people singing you get
them wanting pianos, and eventually they will
get pianos to satisfy that want.
From the starting of an amateur singing so-
ciety to the giving of concerts by that society
is but a step, and from that again to a musical
club made up of performing amateurs is but an-
other step. All this takes time, of course, nor
is the way smooth. But the point to be ob-
served is that preaching to the people about be-
ing musical, and singing, and playing, is pure
waste of time. If you want them to sing, get
them together and start them at it.
How the Dealer Can Help
Is there anything absurd about a piano deal-
er taking a real live creative interest in the mu-
sical atmosphere of his community? Is there
anything absurd, let us ask, in a farmer pre-
paring his land before he expects to reap from
it? Does he gather without sowing, or sow
without ploughing? Why, then, should a piano
dealer expect to sell pianos profitably in an un-
tutored territory where musical thought simply
does not exist? The truth is that he cannot
rightly expect to do anything of the sort; and
if he does so expect, he will be grievously dis-
appointed.
On the other hand, what is more conducive to
the sale of player-pianos than the demonstra-
tion that they are useful to those who wish to
sing? With the new song-rolls now every-
where available, and with a singing community,
does it not seem that here is a splendid oppor-
tunity to do creative work that will prepare the
territory for later pleasant days of reaping busi-
ness rewards?
These suggestions are respectfully submitted,
purely as such, both to country dealers who
complain of the difficulty of selling player-pianos
and to the director of the National Bureau for
the Advancement of Music.
PATENTS PNEUMATIC ACTION
WASHINGTON, D. C, February 19.—Patent No.
1,214,865 was last week granted to Morris S.
Wright, Worcester, Mass., for a pneumatic ac-
tion for musical instruments.
One of the primary objects of the invention
is to provide a comparatively inexpensive pneu-
matic action, for the described purpose, and
one that is exceedingly compact in design,
strong and durable, and at the same time highly
efficient in operation.
The Master Player-Piano
Is now equipped with an
AUTOMATIC TRACKING DEVICE
Which guarantees absolutely correct tracking of even the most imperfect music rolls
WINTER & CO., 220 Southern Boulevard, New York City