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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
JULY 30, 1921
The Art of the Player-Pianist
Illl
The following is the ninth in a series of articles by Wil-
liam ]!rai(i White. The aim of the series is to teach the
salesman and the music lover the secret of playing the
playtr-piano artistically, a secret apparently known to few,
but which can readily be imparted to anyone who is inter-
ested in music and is willing to give the player-piano a
fair trial. At the present time, when it is more than ever
necessary to attack the selling problem from the stand-
point of demonstration, this series should be extremely
valuable.
SECRET OF THE DAMPERS-II
Whoever has listened to much piano playing
of the ordinary sort knows that it is the excep-
tion to find a man or woman who can produce
from the piano a really attractive and interesting
tonal quality. Nearly all piano playing sounds
horribly alike, and when Paderewski said,
"Everybody plays the piano and nobody plays
it," he was not far from the exact truth. The
piano itself resists, as one might say, the at-
tempts of the pianist to extract tonal beauty
from it, for it is naturally a hard and unmalle-
able instrument, producing tones which are far
more distinguished for power and stridency than
for flexibility and beauty. The very great har-
monic richness of the piano has to atone for its
comparative lack of other sensuous tonal beauty
and the excuse is plentifully used by musicians.
Much piano playing is hard and unbeautiful,
without a doubt Most player-piano playing is
even worse, as might be expected.
But every so often one runs across a pianist,
rran or woman, who possesses the power of
actually making the piano sing. When we try
to discover how this magic is accomplished we
always find that the secret is in the management
of the damper pedal. Tn the article of last month
I explained at some length what takes place
Ill
when the dampers are lifted from the strings,
and this time I shall try to give some hints for
the practical handling of the dampers by the
player-pianist, hints set forth after a manner
which he can rationally hope to apply practically
without any great difficulty.
It is necessary to say in the beginning that
a man or woman who entirely lacks a sense of
beauty of tone will hardly learn to understand
the secrets of the damper pedal. But the nor-
mal man or woman, even if he or she is musically
uninstructed, nevertheless is not tone-deaf.
Practice and a growing love for music, stimu-
lated by persistent work at the player-piano, will
turn sometimes the most apparently hopeless
cases in the right direction. So one need not
fear merely because one is not a trained musi-
cian.
Melody and Harmony
I have already pointed out in previous articles
and at great length how music is based upon
melody and harmony, the two combined. I have
also showed that although it does not matter
much how badly related to each other succes-
sive sounds may be, if they are not allowed to
run into each other, it matters a great deal
when such sounds become simultaneous. The
various tones which go to make up a chord must
not be so far out of ordinary relationship with
each other that the result is unpleasant when
they are sounded together. So likewise when
two chords succeed each other, if their rela-
tionship is close, the sound of one may run
into the sound of the other without unpleasant
results, but in an opposite case the result may
be very unpleasant and "blurry."
When music is to be played in sharp military
crack-of-the-whip style, of course, each chord
should stand out by itself and there should be
no running of one into the next. But when the
music is of the singing style and the pianist is
endeavoring to render it in the most continuous
way possible—as if he were drawing his sounds
from a bowed and not from a struck string—then
he will want to do everything possible to make
the sounds overlap.
Again, in a good deal of modern music, from
Chopin and Schumann onward, it is often of
great advantage to allow the outlines of the
successive sounds to be slightly blurred, so as
to soften the general effect in a kind of lumi-
nous "haze," as it were, just as gentle rain-clouds
will soften down the hard outlines of a sun-
lighted landscape.
Blurring
Now, seeing that the tones can be sustained
when the dampers are raised, it follows that if
we allow the dampers to remain up while two
successive chords are duly sounded the tones
of the first will run into the tones of the second.
If the chords are related to each other so that
the result is pleasant, then we have done right,
unless for any reason we needed at that in-
stant a short, sharp and jerky instead of a soft,
singing, "atmospheric" effect.
In reading the music roll we often notice suc-
cessive chords which are cut short and spaced
widely apart from each other.
These are
"staccato" chords; that is to say, they are in-
tended to be sounded shortly and sharply, with
an interval of silence between them. The dam-
(Continued
on f>tuir 6)
The Player Your Customers Want
Is the instrument which meets the need
of the large majority. That is the
HENRY G. JOHNSON
Player-Piano
It's a fine, full-toned piano containing what we believe
to be the best player action on the market. It's the
Player
of the Hour 99
because it can be easily sold (at a fair profit to the
dealer) at a price the people want to and can pay.
HENRY G. JOHNSON PIANO CO., Bellevue, Iowa