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The Music Trade Review
pleasure of those about them, who can express themselves on the
keyboard in a way that will meet their requirements.
The future American artist can take care of himself. The Amer-
ican amateur pianist needs encouragement, aid and facilities.
We have probably completed the cycle of mechanical devices for
playing the piano. The piano player, the player-piano and the repro-
ducing piano are a wonderful sequence of inventive genius and a
monument of achievement of which the industry can well be proud.
They present a simpler merchandising problem than the straight
instrument; they have a wider appeal and to-day a wider market.
But the straight instrument remains as important an element as
it ever was, and it is the straight instrument upon which we must
concentrate to a greater degree, if we are going to solve the problems
which are confronting us to-day.
Why are not more pianos sold to American homes than there are ?
Because there are fewer piano players comparatively than in the
past.
Why has there been this relative decrease? Because playing
the piano has been made a long and difficult process, wearying to
the child and family alike.
How can we expect enthusiasm for the piano if it is too often
bound up in long practice hours of meaningless scales in a child's
mind, an impression which he or she carries into their adult life?
There is the repercussion that makes every piano sale a difficult
one, that makes a condition where, with a New York piano house
having one of the most efficient sales organizations in the country,
prospects have remained on its lists as long as nine years before
they were eventually closed.
And the worst of all this at the present time is that it is so un-
necessary. We teach every child the piano as if he OF she was to .
be a future virtuoso; we make it too much a matter of technic in-
stead of a matter of pleasure. It is to-day, as if in teaching a child
to read, we considered that he was going to be a future Walter
Hampden, and we taught elocution at the same time we were trying
to teach plain, ordinary enunciation.
Recently The Review published a program given by New Orleans
school children who had been studying the piano only six weeks.
Everyone who played, played tunes. They were doing something
that they could understand. They had achieved something, and they
had an opportunity to show what they achieved.
Is it not common sense to consider that they were future, if not
immediate, prospects for the piano merchant ? It was a piano mer-
chant who made them so, and that is work that every piano merchant
in the country should be doing to-day.
What we need is a new orientation in the entire merchandising
problem of the piano. Instead of going after a woman until she
nags her husband into buying an instrument, which is the basis of
far too great a proportion of retail piano sales at the present day,
we need to make piano players, players who take a pleasure in their
playing instead of considering it a drudgery.
Co-operation between the piano merchant and the American child
is what must be had, and it will be mutually advantageous.
Co-operation between the piano merchant and the American grade
and high school authorities is what is needed and, what is more, it
can be had if the industry will go out and get it.
"Sketches in Miniature
of Present Day Artists"
Interesting Booklet Just Issued by the Mason
& Hamlin Co. Contains Much Biographical
Matter of General Musical Interest
A little volume that should prove of real in-
terest to every musician and music lover has
just been issued by the Mason & Hamlin Co.
under the title "Sketches in Miniature of Pres-
ent Day Artists." The booklet, prepared in
elaborate
style, gives
brief
biographical
sketches of over a score of the prominent
artists of the day, including Harold Bauer,
Gabrilowitsch, John Gregory Mason, Tina
Lerner, Dame Nellie Melba, Benno Moisei-
witsch, E. Robert Schmitz, Jacques Thibaud and
others who use the Mason & Hamlin piano,
either as solo or accompanying instrument.
Under each of the biographical sketches ap-
pears a brief line of commendation for the
APRIL 10, 1026
Leave aside the three traditional Rs of education, and music has
as great a standing as any other of the cultural subjects. For if a
person can read, write and figure, his education is done. After that
comes his culture. Culture is a necessity, too, for it teaches the
appreciation of the good things of life and to take pleasure therein.
There are no educational authorities worthy of the name who dis-
pute this fact; curricula of grade and high schools become more
widely cultural every year.
There is the fertile ground that is prepared for the work of the
industry. What seed is it sowing to reap an eventual crop?
These are the unvarnished facts that confront the piano industry
to-day. To overcome them requires more than a disposition to de-
preciate them, more than a feeling of self-sufficiency and compla-
cency. Making more piano players is the only remedy which can be
tested by every one of these facts and that will stand the test. It is
the simple and obvious remedy, and, despite its simplicity and ob-
viousness, it is the true one.
It is going to cost money. Of course it is.
It is working for the dim and distant future. Only in part.
Every child that is taught the piano in school makes one family
an immediate prospect for a piano, and becomes a future prospect
for another in its maturity. The argument about the future does
not hold water, for it is working simultaneously for the present and
the future, a characteristic of every intelligent merchandising plan.
As for the money, could money be better spent ?
And the cost will not be so great. Merchants who have already
spent money on teaching children to play the piano, either gratu-
itously or at a nominal charge per lesson, have found the expense
low and the results good. In several cases this has resulted in the
schools taking up the work through co-operation with the mer-
chants; surely a handsome dividend upon the investment made.
Look at the possible results, and they are more than possible, and
then consider the expense involved.
The American people have been taught an appreciation of music.
There still remains work to be done in this direction, but the great-
est part of it has been accomplished.
What is necessary now is to turn the passivity of appreciation into
the activity of an active organism—the amateur player. The band
instrument manufacturers and dealers are in a fair way to doing it,
with the result that this is probably the fastest-growing section
in the entire music industries. Manufacturers and dealers there
have worked shoulder to shoulder.
The piano manufacturer and the piano dealer must do the same
thing. They must make amateur pianists if the piano industry is
to advance in a proper relation to the increased population and
wealth of the country and therefore the market to which it caters.
Once more it needs to be said that it is not a question of whether
the production of pianos is 200,000, 300,000 or 400,000 annually.
The question is that the piano industry must grow both in unit
output and in value output as the country grows, and that the indus-
try itself will no longer be in a position where the invested capital
exceeds the total value of the factories' outputs.
If it is satisfied, it can probably go along making approximately
300,000 instruments per year. If it is dissatisfied, it must go out
and create a fundamental market for its product.
Mason & Hamlin piano from the artist featured.
The idea is most effective in presenting worth-
while testimonials in a manner that is attrac-
tive and interesting.
Stewart-Warner in Chamber
The latest radio manufacturing concern to
apply for membership in the Music Industries
Chamber of Commerce is the Stewart-Warner
Speedometer Corp. of Chicago. Other radio
concerns which are members of the Chamber
include: The Atwater Kent Mfg. Co., the
Thermiodyne Radio Corp. and the Zenith
Radio Corp. It is expected that a number of
radio exhibits will be shown at the forthcom-
ing national convention at the Hotel Commo-
dore in June.
Consult the Universal Want Directory of
The Review. In it advertisements are inserted
free of charge for men who desire positions.
M. K. Bretzfelder Attends
State College of Forestry
Representative of Krakauer Bros., New York,
the Only Piano Manufacturer Taking Course
in Dry Kiln Engineering at Syracuse
Maurice K. Bretzfelder, of Krakauer Bros.,
piano manufacturers, has just returned from the
New York State College of Forestry at the Uni-
versity of Syracuse, Syracuse, N. Y., where he
spent some time taking a course in dry-kiln
engineering and lumber handling and its general
factory practice.
Mr. Bretzfelder reports that the course was
very interesting and worthy. He has come back
loaded with ideas for drying lumber better and
cheaper. He says that anyone connected with
lumber, either directly or indirectly, can gain
much valuable information by attending one of
these courses which are given in the Spring of
each year.