Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
OCTOBER 25, 1924
THE MUSIC TRADE
REVIEW
Music's Relation to Player Selling
Some of the Things Every Retail Salesman Ought to Know Regarding Piano Music—What the Essence of
Piano Playing Is—Flexibility of Tone the Prime Quality in All Great Piano Playing—Why the
Reproducer Salesman Should Listen to the Instruments Which He Is Selling
E
VERY salesman ought to know something
about the piano in its strictly musical
qualities, for in these days piano playing
has become a commodity which is sold as a
part, and a very large part, of the player busi-
ness. The piano as a musical instrument has a
mind of its own, as it were, and very decidedly
a voice of its own, and there is much more than
meets the uneducated ear in its subtle beauties
and shades of musical meaning. In order to
sell wisely an instrument which, in effect, is a
purveyor of piano playing, it is essential that
one should realize something of the peculiar
characteristics of piano tone and piano touch,
which make that instrument what it is and
give it its musical and aesthetic powers.
The difference between a great artist at the
piano and an indifferent pianist is that the
former understands how to make the piano do
what he wishes, whereas the other can only do
what his piano permits him to do. When we
listen to Paderewski play the piano we realize
that we have here a man who can take the hard
and imperfectly malleable tone of the piano and
turn it into almost anything he desires. Hear-
ing him, or any other great master of the piano,
one realizes the utter absence of that "knock"
which always accompanies poor piano playing
and which registers the fact that the hammer
has struck the string a resounding blow. When
first one realizes a fact like this one begins to
get a glimpse of what a wonderful thing fine
piano playing really is.
What Piano Tone Is
Now the piano is a percussive instrument.
Its sounds are produced by the blow of a ham-
mer against a tightly stretched stiff string. It
is a "blow" tone, nob a "bow" tone. The vio-
linist, so we say, "pulls" his tone from the
string, for as long as he is drawing the bow
across it, that string must vibrate, and this in
close obedience to the kind of the pressure, to
the rapidity of the travel of the bow, and to a
dozen other little variable factors. The pianist,
on the other hand, can only strike the string-
once, and when he has struck it, can only very
imperfectly, and at the cost of some distortion, .
sustain it by bringing in the sympathetic vibra-
tions of the other strings through the damper-
raising pedal. When we find that despite this
vei y limited equipment a great artist can ac-
tually make the piano sing, and impart to its
tones a limpid, colorful quality quite unattain-
able by any ordinary player, we realize that the
piano is a very wonderful instrument after all.
The Prime Quality
Now, the first quality which one has to look
for in judging piano playing is a quality which
one may call flexibility. A man may be un-
erring in his finger technic and able to produce
a series of double notes up and down the scale
with the greatest rapidity and surety, not drop-
ping a note; but at that his tone may be dry
and uninteresting. Almost every one has heard
the ordinary good piano teacher whose technic
is clean and musical intelligence by no means
lacking, but whose playing is in the highest
degree uninspiring. One says, "how clever," and
that is all.
It is well known that violin music, even when
indifferently played, nearly always attracts,
when well-played piano music is received coldly.
The reason is to be found in the fact that violin
tone is always a colorful, lovely thing of itself,
while piano can only be made colorful and lovely
by the supreme skill of a great artist. The great
artist knows how to make his piano playing
sound as if he had at command several key-
boards, each voiced differently and producing a
different quality of tone. It is said that Mr.
Paderewski prefers to have his hammers left
pretty hard, coloring his tone by the exquisite
delicacy of his finger contacts, together with his
highly cultivated power of handling the dampers
through the pedal. He, or Busoni, or Lhevinne,
or Moisiewitsch, knows how to make the piano
sing, to give it a free flexible voice, not a stift
hard throat. And any one can recognize the
quality. Taking a reproducing piano record
made by one of these men one may be fairly
certain nearly always of hearing not merely
notes, but what we call "tone," which is to say
color, life and variability.
Composers have always recognized the pos-
sibility of coloring piano tone and often put ex-
pression markings on their scores intended to
convey color ideas. Such directions as quasi
fagotto (bassoon-like), in modo di flauto (in the
style of the flute) are not uncommon in modern
music and show that composers know that a
fine pianist can produce all sorts of subtle varia-
tions in the tone he gets out of a piano.
This quality of flexibility, or power of shad-
ing, in respect not merely of loudness and soft-
ness but of color, too, is the greatest and most
certain sign of genius in the pianist. One should
always look out for it, and listen to catch it.
Always in the work of great pianists it will be
apparent. Moreover, any well-recorded repro-
ducing piano music roll will show the character-
istics of each pianist's individual way of playing,
and will reveal his ability to produce that "alive"
tone which is so different from the dull drum-
ming of the second-rater.
I do not want to enter into any controversy
as to just how far all this can be reproduced
mechanically; but it is enough to say that any-
one who will seriously study the records made
by the finest pianists will hear without diffi-
culty the authentic touch when it is presented
before their minds. Genius always speaks a
language clear and positive.
Musical intelligence, which is the quality that
enables a man to understand the meaning of a
composition and to reproduce that meaning so
clearly that his hearers, too, seize it and make
it their own, is another quality of fine piano
playing. So is aesthetic warmth, which prevents
a player from ever becoming too coldly correct.
These vital qualities are noticeable in all piano
playing of the first class, but at that there is
no quality which compares with the power to
color and vitalize the piano's tone which great
artists always have had. There is the authentic
sign of genius.
Listen, Listen
It is hardly necessary to say to reproducing
piano salesmen that constant and careful listen-
ing to the music reproduced by the instruments
they sell, is essential to a thorough understand-
ing of them as a sales proposition. It is not a
question of the buying public being more or
less unable to appreciate fine distinctions. It is
not a question of many reproducing pianos
being sold upon other than strictly musical con-
siderations. What is at issue is the power of
the salesman over what he sells, and this power
can only come when he understands thoroughly
all that his instrument will do. He ought to
know this, no matter how little he may be able
to use the knowledge in some or many of his
sales. The fact that he does have the knowl-
edge gives him power and authority; and the
more of it he has the more power is his to speak
with authority, to radiate enthusiasm and to
utilize that compelling power which is the
quintessence of fine salesmanship in fine things.
Every salesman ought to become acquainted
with the inside beauties of fine piano playing
by listening to the best recordings made for the
instrument he sells; and for all other repro-
ducers as well. No one can lose by such
familiarity and everyone must gain by it.
Hearing on Pullman Rates
in Chicago on November 6
Hearing on Surcharge by Examiners in That
City to Be Followed by Hearing by Full
Commission in Washington on November 24
WASHINGTON, D. C, October 21.—Further testi-
mony on the application of the Commercial
Travelers of America for the removal of the
present 50 per cent surcharge for Pullman and
similar accommodations will be heard by ex-
aminers of the Interstate Commerce Commis-
sion in Chicago on November 6, it has been
announced.
The full commission on November 24 will
hear oral arguments in Washington on the fares
and charges for sleeping and parlor-car accom-
modations, which the commission has been in-
vestigating for some time with a view to deter-
mining whether reductions should be ordered.
Consult the Universal Want Directory of
The Review. In it advertisements are inserted
free of charge for men who desire positions.
LAUTER-
HUMANA
PLAYER PIANO
A Quality
Instrument
That
Commands
the Best
Trade
Wherever
It Goes
LAUTER GO.
NEWARK, N. J.
62nd Year