Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
MARCH 30,
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
1918
OSE
Wherein the Editor of the Player Section, After a Few Philosophic Remarks,
Mounts His Hobby and Cavorts Gaily Down the Page, Meanwhile Empha-
sizing That the Player Has Unbounded Possibilities as a Musical Instrument
In the complex of emotions, feelings, will and
ideas which make up the human mentality, it is
nearly always lamentably the case that those de-
sires and hopes which are the dearest to himself,
their possessor is unable to express in the course
of his daily life, but must suppress them during
the greater and more productive portion of his
waking hours, bringing them out into the air of
his expanded and free-growing thought only
during moments of what is called leisure.
How many artists are languishing behind
ledgers, Ijow many musicians are newspaper
hacks, how many potential statesmen, poets
and prophets are born, if not to blush, at least
to work, unseen, and waste their, if not sweet-
ness, at least strength, upon the excessively arid
air of an excessively Philistine desert!
To such persons the possession of a hobby
ofttimes alone preserves them from complete
despair, or from the dull indifference which is
akin to it. Give them an opportunity to express
favorite beliefs or true powers through some
pursuit aside from business, and you give them
the same relief as a safety-valve gives to an
overcharged boiler.
Now, it is not the notion of the present writer
to suggest that he is in the least a disappointed
artist or statesman, not to say poet or prophet,
pining away for want of an opportunity. He
has never been supposed to be unduly modest;
but even he has not quite the effrontery for
that. Not at all; the previous paragraphs are
in the nature of camouflage, concealing from the
eye of the casual reader his deadly purpose to
inflict on said reader some of his (not the
reader's) choice ideas that could not be worked
into any other part of this Player Section.
In a word, the present is an opportunity to
mount a hobby and gallop about the field, clad
in an armor that could not be worn for any
other purpose. Almost anything can be worked
in through the friendly Musically Speaking page,
if one only covers it carefully enough, and pre-
pares the mind of the reader by a sufficiently
pathetic introduction.
The Musically Speaking page being then re-
garded as the safety-valve which enables the
writer to blow off his superheated ideas, the
boHer is ready, and the steam may commence to
erupt.
Pianos and the Super-Piano
Last month we took occasion to speak at some
length on the work which has been done by
Doctor Schaaf in the way of research and study,
in the science and art of composition and ar-
The Sensation of the Year in Music Rolls
Exclusively Featured in
IMPERIAL PLAYER ROLLS
rangement of music for the player-piano. Doc-
tor Schaaf's work is that a pioneer, and he is
steadily improving his proficiency, with the re-
sult that his music is showing more and more
clearly as time goes on that the player-piano,
during all the years that have elapsed since its
birth, has been missing its true musical voca-
tion. We say "its true musical vocation," for
we have no disposition to deny that the player-
piano has fulfilled its commercial purpose very
well, nor that, without this preliminary commer-
cialization, it could not have been put on to the
market. But that side of the question, be it
understood, we are not concerned to view.
Now, if the work of Doctor Schaaf and the
researches of the writer show anything at all,
they show clearly that the player-piano has suf-
fered up till now in being thought of merely as
a self-playing piano. That is' to say, all the
emphasis has been laid on its being a piano;
principally and mainly a piano. Therefore, all
the technical work of inventors and all the ex-
ploitative work of the advertising men has been
devoted to making a piano with a mechanism
fitted for pneumatically playing the piano; a two-
liand instrument with a two-hand pneumatic ac-
tion. The technical men have labored to pro-
duce this sort of an instrument; and the ad-
vertising men to prove to a skeptical world that
the thing has really been done.
The statements apply as well to the reproduc-
ing as to the ordinary foot-driven personal-con-
trolled player-piano. In all cases the intent has
been avowedly and even boastingly to provide
a perfect substitute for the hand-playing of the
ordinary piano.
Homophonic Bands: Polyphonic Strings
Now it is quite likely that the adventurous
innovators who first produced the clavichord had
no notion that they were effecting a revolution,
but the fact remains that the first keyboard in-
strument was simply the forerunner in a line
of evolution which has by no means yet come
to an end, and which, in fact, has only just en-
tered into its phase of greatest development.
The men who perfected the piano thought they
were perfecting the most efficient of solo instru-
ment; they did not realize that they were open-
ing up new paths which would go immeasurably
beyond the solo idea. They did not see that in
giving the piano a compass of eighty-eight tones
and an action for manipulating each of these
with equal perfection, they were going far in
potential effectiveness beyond anything the two
hands of the soloist or the combination of any
number of hands in any possible manner, could
pretend to compass. Yet it was so. The piano
may have been designed to serve the purposes
of homophonic music; but it is essentially an
orchestral, polyphonic instrument, only waiting
for the discovery of means to unloose its hidden
powers.
Pneumatics to the Rescue
The player-piano, obviously, comes to the res-
cue here in the best of style. It does not rest
content with providing automatic or semi-auto-
matic means for playing the piano. It provides,
whether this has or has not generally been rec-
ognized as yet, perfect means for utilizing to
the fullest extent the entire compass of the
piano, in a manner which can never be imitated
by the ordinary manipulation of a keyboard.
Now, this being the case, it follows that soonor
or later, music will be written designed upon a
non-solo scale, and intended for the special pur-
pose of putting to useful employment the enor-
mous potentialities of the new instrument it ac-
tually is. The player-piano sooner or later
must become the field of musical experiment;
and that this is even now happening need not
at all surprise us.
The peculiar strength of the player-piano in
respect of the enormous powers it can exert
makes up, and more than makes up, for any
defect it may have now, or may retain in the
future, in the way of touch or of any of the
delicacies associated with finger play.
It is
only necessary to consider the fact that the
player-piano opens up to the musician the one
part of the musical compass where the richest
colors are kept, and where orchestral composers
find their most solid harmonies and most per-
manent tints. The right and left hands of the
solo pianist are constantly engaged in a frantic
endeavor to be in two places at once. It is an
endeavor, naturally, in which they are not, and
cannot be successful. The left hand must cover
the rich expanse of the bass tones; but in reach-
ing them it must desert the middle section. The
right hand must sweep the glittering hill-tops
of the treble; but again when it is here, it can-
not also be on the rich median plain. Are the
solid beauties of the middle parts the ground of
the music? Then brilliant treble and dusky-
shining bass are neglected. Ten fingers will
work over two octaves, whether consecutive or
separated by an interval of unoccupied terri-
tory; they will not at any one moment stretch
over this space. The use of the sustaining pedal
and the wonderful ability to skip from place to
place developed by modern piano technique may
do much to overcome the defect; but it can only
be cured through radical methods.
A Polyphonic Future
After all, suppose we do say that the player-
piano is an instrument which will find its full
and perfect career in opening up an orchestral
many-voiced music, depending less upon con-
trasts of touch (though not at all neglecting
them) and far more upon breadth, thematic de-
velopment, richness of texture and closeness of
a harmony which will yet be of huge width and
thickness! Are we saying anything wrong? If
so, why? The player-piano is a tremendous, an
epoch instrument, it is an instrument of un-
bounded possibilities. All that we say here, in
effect, is that these possibilities are as yet hardly
sensed by those who ought to be in touch with
such things.
It would be a very good thing if we all could
be brought to see that, in reality, the player-
piano, considered solely in its musical capacities,
classifies much more closely to the organ than
to the straight two-hand piano. The addition
of a third pair of hands in thp shape of the or-
ganist's feet, make the organ an instrument of
widely extended harmonic capacity, while its
expressiveness in the way of tone colors, tone
strengths, and crescendo capacity, is certainly
paralleled by the touch and accentual capacities
of the modern player-piano.
The composer who would take the trouble to
look into these possibilities instead of standing
in a corner and sneering at an instrument he
does not understand, and despises only because
he is ignorant, would find opened up to his view
an enormous and almost virgin field of richest
possibilities. The player-piano, let us hope, will
some day cease to be regarded as an instru-
ment designed to make horrid noises in the
apartment upstairs; and will be seen to be what
it is; not an imperfect substitute for hand-
piano-playing; but rather a new instrument of
music.