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THE
fflJJIC TIRADE
VOL. LXX. No. 10
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman BUI, Inc., at 373 4th Ave., New York. March 6, 1920
Single Copies 10 Cent*
$2.00 Per Year
Are Americans Musical?
P
ROBABLY the most comprehensive and enlightened view of the present musical status of the American
public and also of the part that has been taken by the player-piano and the talking machine in bring-
ing about a more general appreciation of music among the American people that has yet appeared in the
public press was found in a lengthy editorial in the New York Tribune of February 26 under the caption:
"Are Americans Musical ?"
The editorial, which had its inception in the elaborate plans for Music Week and the general success and
wide influence of that important event, agrees with certain critics that there is an undoubted lack of widespread
musical training, technically speaking, in the country, and that we are neither a singing nor a playing people.
It admits that the American home heard little of music until recent years and that where there was music it
was of the crude sort, usually represented by the elementary playing of the son or daughter on this or that
instrument.
The interesting feature of this editorial is the frank credit paid to the influence of so-called mechan-
ical music in giving Americans a new and more intimate aspect of music generally. Following a discussion
of the various criticisms, the editorial says:
"These criticisms are all true, and yet the concert record of New York is not an isolated and unrep-
resentative fact. To the contrary, it is a true indication of a widespread rebirth of musical interest in America,
due entirely to the mechanical music so foolishly disdained by some musicians. It is not with a musical
country like Italy that America of to-day is to be justly compared. The fair comparison is with America of
a generation ago. Any such checking up will reveal the very real progress which Music Week is record-
ing wherever it is held.
"The supercilious folk who suspected 'canned' music of all sorts of evil influences lacked faith in their
art as a matter of fact. There is only one way to develop taste in any art, and that is by saturating one's
self in it. To learn rules, or hear an occasional concert, or memorize a few pieces on a piano after years
of disagreeable endeavor, is not to become musical. The beauty of the player-piano and the talking machine,
artistically speaking, was that they laid down no rules whatever. They simply filled the American home with
music—good, bad, indifferent, as the taste of the owner elected. Taste does not remain stationary, however.
There would be no progress in any art if it did. Music develops its own standards; it improves ears, com-
prehension, taste, as it goes along. That is the experience and testimony of every one who has watched the
progress of mechanical music.
"The development of community singing is an interesting by-product that confirms this view. So in
its way is the revival of dancing. And, best of all, here, as throughout this whole renaissance of music in
America, pleasure is the motive and goal of those who participate. We should rate this as the most impor-
tant fact in the present rise of America from being one of the least musical countries toward, we hope, becom-
ing one of the most musical. We are not taking our music sadly, as a painful duty to the gods of uplift.
We are listening and singing and playing because we enjoy it. This is as music was intended. We may
have still a long way to travel. But we are on the right road."
The editorial again brings to attention the new and pleasing attitude of the newspaper press toward
the great campaign for musical advancement inaugurated by the music industry, and affords a convincing argu-
ment as to the worth and value of music which can be used effectively by the music dealer and by advocates
of music generally. Editorials such as this are well worth reprinting by members of the music industry, not
alone because of their business-getting value, but because their intrinsic worth warrants their receiving the
widest possible circulation.