Music Trade Review

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MARCH 25,
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
1922
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The Possibilities of Reforming jhe Present Principles of the Art of Arranging
Music for the Player Are Very Great, and When They Are Accomplished
They Will Open Up an Entirely New Field for Exploiting That Instrument
Those of us whose memories go back twenty
years will remember the peculiarities of the sixty-
five-note music roll in its earliest manifestations.
The nipii who built the first successful cabinet
piano players had to make their way through a
very tangled undergrowth of difficulties, troubles
and prejudices. Their chief difficulty lay in the
complete novelty of the work they were under-
taking. They had to learn everything by expe-
rience, nor is it surprising that they did some
rather funny and some rather disastrous things
in the course of their gropings toward the light.
The First Problem
The arranging of music for the piano player
presented to them a difficulty of the first order.
One of the earliest discoveries was that the piano
and the piano player fit into each other only by
dint of some effort and some mutual sacrifice.
The technical capacities of the player mechanism
are hindered by the mechanical limitations of the
piano. The tone production of the latter and
the higher refinements of the art of playing it
are limited by the mechanical limitations of the
player mechanism. This became evident as soon
as the arranging of music for the perforated roll
was seriously taken up. It was found that a
knowledge of the peculiarities of the piano was
necessary in so far that these, never noticed by
the manual pianist, who had been trained to ac-
cept them and unconsciously overcome or ignore
them, stood out pitilessly when exposed by the
cold technique of the player mechanism. Thus
the arrangers soon found themselves overwhelmed
with complaints as to the expressive limitations
of the player-piano and they set themselves to
work to discover means for overcoming the
worst of the differences between player and
manual piano music.
In due course they did discover methods for
smoothing out the hardness of unskillfully played
player music and learned to produce a perforated
THE BASIS OF SALESMANSHIP
(Continued from page 3)
type of player-piano, foot-expression, automatic-
expression, coin-operated or reproducing, should
keep in mind constantly that the foundation of
salesmanship is persuasion. You cannot persuade
a man or woman of that which does not exist to
him or her. The player-piano does not exist to
these men and women as the greatest music
maker. It exists to them as a mechanical imita-
tor of real music.
music roll which was an adequate reproduction
of the musical notation, put together in such a
way as to minimize the natural limitations of the
player mechanisms—limitations, however, which
were not of technique, but of intelligence, which
could only be supplied by human interference.
With the gradual perfection of the art of re-
cording the selection and grouping of tones pro-
duced by a pianist and of reproducing these in
usable form on a perforated roll the art of ar-
ranging piano music pure and simple has reached
a point where little, if any, quarrel can be had
with it. But there remains a further and still
more important consideration which did not
come to the front till the previous problems had
been substantially solved. This problem relates
to that wealth of music which is not originally
in two-hand piano form.
Non-piano Music
The wealth of non-piano music—that is, of
music not originally composed for the piano—
which is available through the medium of the
music roll and the pneumatic action of the player-
piano represents an accession to the musical
armory of the modern music lover which could
in no other way have been brought into his
possession. One of the finest features of the
player-piano is to be found in this work it has
done for the untrained music lover in making him
acquainted at first hand with the greatest works,
reduced to piano, of the masters of orchestral and
operatic composition. No one could wish for a
moment to destroy or enfeeble this feature. It
is too valuable to lose. Yet it is in need of
rather drastic reform as to manner and method if
it is not to decline through lack of use.
Player-piano arrangements of orchestral music
are very slow sellers. The reason for this state
of affairs may be explained in many ways. One
explanation is undoubtedly accurate as far as it
goes. It rests on the idea that the public, which
The way to rid the public mind of this belief
is to revive the art of demonstration, which has
been in abeyance, to cease pandering solely to the
jazz fiends in respect of music roll publishing, to
advertise and educate, to agitate and organize for
music, music, music. It is to believe in the player-
piano ourselves before we make a bluff at asking
others to believe in it. In a word, it is to culti-
vate truthful, fact-bedded enthusiasm. With that
we can persuade. With that we can organize a
merchandising policy that shall put us where we
belong.
is intelligent enough to want this sort of music,
is not to be put off with imperfect arrangements,
thin and poorly scored, which cannot be made to
sound orchestral and which, at worst, are libels*
upon the music's original shape.
Concrete Illustrations
To take a concrete illustration there are thou-
sands of music lovers all over the country who
would very much like to have at their disposal
arrangements of the Wagner operas if they could
make them sound well on the player-piano. The
overture to "Tannhauser," the march and cortege
from the same opera, the "Love-death" in
"Tristan," the "Ride of the Valkyries," the
"Rhine Maidens," the "Forest-weaving," the "En-
trance of the Gods into Valhalla" (to take in-
stances at random) from the "Nibelung's Ring,"
are all favorites with thousands. But it is safe
to say that not a single music roll catalog that
could be named contains a really satisfactory
player-piano arrangement of any of these ex
cerpts. The sensitive hearer notes at once that
these arrangements are thin, weak and tedious.
He finds that he cannot realize the inner voices,
that he has trouble in getting good tone-quality
and that the general impression left is of the
piano struggling hard with something too big
for it. It is neither piano playing nor orchestral
music.
The Central Defect
The reason for these defects is to be found in
the fact that most of the excerpts named, as well
as the extant player-piano arrangements of or-
chestral overtures, symphonies, symphonic poems,
etc., have been taken from piano scores. Great
orchestral works are usually in due course re-
duced to piano, two hands, for the use of stu-
dents. The same is true of great operatic scores.
For instance, Kleinmichel made an excellent ar-
rangement for (two hands) piano of the entire
"Nibelung's Ring" of Wagner. The work is very
well done. Kleinmichel knew what Wagner was
aiming at and he arranged his music so as to
get the nearest approximation to this which could
be had at the hands of a skilled pianist with a
good piano. But the result is not orchestral.
So when the Kleinmichel reproduction is trans-
lated faithfully to a perforated music roll and
played on the player-piano the result is doubly
disappointing. The great insight and skill of
the good pianist and Wagnerian expert are, of
course, not available and the defects which must
exist when an orchestral score is reduced to the
(Continued on page 6)