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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
MARCH 29, 1919
Being Certain Oracular Optimisms, Devoid of any Trace of Platitudinous
Pessimistics, Emanating from the Editor of This Player Section, and Con-
taining Ideas Philosophically Presented for the Studious and Gay Alike
Truth and the Player-Piano
When a certain person who shall be nameless
was telling me the other day a peculiarly atro-
cious yarn in which the marvelous and the in-
credible slid into each other so easily that one
could not distinguish the place of junction, he
attempted to justify himself by the rather
inept plea, "Well, you know that truth is stranger
than fiction." Wherefore, of course, seeing that
he had delivered himself into my hands, I
thanked good fortune for an easy victory and
annihilated the enemy with the very simple re-
mark: "Indeed it is, to you." But this is not
what I really intended to say. Truth is really
stranger than fiction, and when the truth about
the beginnings and development of the player
industry has become known it will be found to
surpass some of the wildest tales which ever
have been imagined. The controversies as to
the invention of pneumatic action may well be
suffered to rest in oblivion, for it is neither
profitable nor pleasant to renew them, but the
story of how the player was put to the people,
how it was knocked, sneered at, ridiculed, laugh-
ed at, stormed at, hated and almost drowned in a
quagmire of public and private dislike, only to
make its way by sheer merit, is a wonderful
story, and in reality one of the most wonderful
the industry has to show. The piano itself two
hundred years ago had its bad times and was
obliged to overcome the opposition, sometimes
passive and sometimes active, of conservative
clavierists. But the player-piano had to oppose
and overcome an intense hatred of the most ac-
tive kind on the part of musicians and an al-
most equally intense opposition on the part of
piano merchants. Between the two what save
sheer merit could have lifted it out of the ruck
and put it in the right place? Nothing. For
the plain people might have been excused for
refusing to manifest interest in an instrument
which the critics denounced and the merchants
neglected. Yet the public took it up and bought
it; yes, bought it at a time when nobody seemed
to want to sell it. That is the reward of merit
always, to be appreciated by the plain people
before the experts have made 'up their minds,
or when they have made them up wrong. Also
that is one example of the "truth and fiction"
bromide.
"O Temporal O Mores!"
The late Tullius Cicero, who emitted the wail
which appears at the head of the present good-
natured paragraph, was a gentleman whose turn
for oratory has obscured the fact that he wrote
a deal of drivel in his day, which his contem-
poraries in part and his successors almost en-
tirely mistook for profound philosophy. Never
did the renowned Marcus drivel more eloquent-
ly than over the degeneration of his times
Well, of course, it was some degeneration all
right. Without the slightest desire to claim the
Tullian toga I find that the cry O temporal
O mores! has something to be said for it to-
day. The experiences of the last year might
have been thought sufficiently scarifying to in-
duce our people to think a little more seriously
of things, but so far the reaction has been com-
plete from the most intense absorption in the
serious to the most complete abolition of it.
We are living, for the moment, in a very, very
frivolous world. The folks are so happy at get-
ting the boys back and taking them out to
dances that they are forgetting to look around
them. The piano men are selling so many
grands and the player men so many players that
they have no time to think. Yet there is need
to think. Things are in a simply wonderful
state for the time being, but there are big prob-
lems looming up. Industrial unrest is not a
joke, it is a very serious matter indeed. Can-
didly, I am sure that the good sense of the Eng-
lish-speaking peoples will pull them through any
difficulty, but that does not mean that the dif-
ficulties are to be ignored. The world of in-
dustry, as well as of social relations, is going
to be strained pretty strenuously, and it will be
brought out safely by. the application of Eng-
lish-speaking ideals, not by a provincialism
which refuses to look beyond the days of
Washington or Jefferson, any more than by a
patent Teutonic Kulturism, whether it sprung
from the Wilhelmstrasse or from the Kremlin.
What we want to-day is the double capacity to
rejoice in an undoubted industrial prosperity,
and to look ahead keenly to a coming political
and social excitement, which will be as interest-
ing as perhaps it will be surprising. When Sen-
ator Cicero eloquently orated on the conspiracy
of Catiline he spilled much profuse verbiage in
a most profuse manner, but he was on the right
side.
He saved the Republic (and bragged
about it for the rest of his life, yet did save it).
Our present word-spillers are on the wrong
side. They don't want to save the republic.
They intend to destroy it. Cato said every
day for years "Delenda est Carthago." Our
boudoir Bolsheviki are saying, "Delenda est re-
publica Americana." Cato got his wish. Do
not our domestic Trotzkys hope to get theirs?
The Future of the Song Roll
The song roll, as a mere roll with the words
of the song on its margin, is in itself quite a big
thing indeed, but it is only at the beginning of
its possibilities. The idea of running a whole
song cycle, for instance, on a series of rolls is
still among the possibilities to be worked out,
while there is no doubt whatever that a big
market could be created for the entire vocal and
piano music of such comic operas as, say, the
Gilbert and Sullivan series. Who would not glad-
ly pay for a complete set of rolls of "The
Mikado?" Or of "The Pirates of Penzance" or
"H. M. S. Pinafore?" Indeed, considering the
vast popularity of such operas as "Faust" and
"Pagliacci," and the way in which the public
has gobbled up the talking machine records of
these works, what right has one to argue that
they would not "go" on music rolls also? It is
a funny thing, but well worth remembering,
that the inability of most of the folks to sing
operatic airs successfully does not in the least
militate against their humming, chanting, or
just plain bawling them forward and backward
all over the house, when they have once got to
like them. Bring on your operatic song rolls,
but perhaps it would be as well to begin with
Gilbert and Sullivan.
Personally, I have a
voice that can only be compared to the sounds
which result from the friction between a brick
and a piece of wood, but I should love to sing
"The Mikado's" song about making the punish-
ment fit the crime, even so!
"Vox Populi, Vox Dei"
I am not a worshiper of the "soverin peepul"
as such, I must say, for proletarianism as such,
or for the idea that the less you have learned
in school the better democrat you must be. A
fairly long experience proves to me that what
a good but mentally inexact friend calls a dirty-
faced democrat connotes in reality a contradic-
tion in terms, since a real democrat must have
learned to wash his face and to like it washed
before he can have the least idea what democ-
racy means, which meaning is not the meaning
of Nikolai Lenine or of the I. W. W. But
there is one thing about the plain people one
must acknowledge sincerely, about the people,
that is, not the "soverin peepul." The American
people, the real people, instinctively go for the
right of a question when they have a fair chance
to see both its sides. They showed this won-
derfully when they built up against expert and
professional opposition the present player-piano
industry. That has nothing to do with politics,
says some one. Perhaps not, but politicians and
boudoir Bolsheviki might as well notice, for
there is a moral.
WANT TAX IN MUSIC ROLL PRICES
Indiana Dealers Urge That Prices Printed on
Boxes Include the War Tax
INDIANAPOLIS, IND., March 24.—One of the im-
portant moves made at the eighth annual con-
vention of the Indiana Piano Merchants' Asso-
ciation held here last week was the adoption of
a resolution requesting that manufacturers of
music rolls have printed on the box the price
of the roll plus the war tax, thus making the
list price all inclusive. It was explained that
dealers in some cases have experienced difficulty
in persuading customers of the justice of ask-
ing 3 cents over and above the printed price on
the box to cover the war tax.
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