Music Trade Review

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WESTERN COMMENT
REVIEW OFFICE, RKPUBLIC BUILDING, CHICAGO, I I I . , AUG. 28,
DETROIT, as it stands today, irresistibly reminds one of New
1927
York
as it stood towards the beginning of the great subway era. There
is the same sense of immense possibilities for the
Detroit
future, the same breathless pause in front of the
Does
door of a new age about to be opened, the same
It
carelessness of prediction as to what may happen
—for may not anything happen ? Today, of course, New York is
a bit impatient with those who remind her of her past enthusiasms,
for she has found the new age has brought her much more of
trouble and problem than of liberation. Detroit on the other hand
is just entering upon that golden period of adolescence when all
the world is open for conquest and beyond the Alps lies an Italy
fairer than other travelers have ever dreamed of. And so perhaps
that is why Detroit manages its affairs with a sort of youthfully
massive audacity, alike the admiration and the despair of its com-
petitors. Let us frankly admit that Chicago cannot do it; at least
where the music trade is concerned. This third annual conven-
tion of the Michigan Music Merchants' Association makes a case in
point. From the beginning to the last note of the bands playing
during the street carnival, it was one great success. Nor were the
music merchants alone responsible. The city itself took a hand,
put up money, had the mayor there to preside over the finale, made
the thing a municipal event in every sense of the term. One pauses
from wondering at the good sense of the Detroit municipality to
make the effort of imagining what would be the result of asking the
Honorable William Hale Thompson to take an interest in a piano-
playing contest. If it were a rodeo or a prize fight, that of course
would be something else again, as the immortal Abe Potash would
say. It would in fact be a dog of another color, Mawruss. It will
not require more than a fair showing of the same spirit in a baker's
dozen of other great cities to stir up the piano factories with a
mighty stirring such as they have not felt for years. Nor are signs
lacking that the spirit is present in these places, waiting perhaps
for a little strengthening of the flesh, but both waiting confidently
as well as expectantly. For our good old industry is not dead
by a jug-full—unless perchance, as ill-natured ones have asserted, it
has gone dead from the neck up only.
Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler passed from the stage a few days
since she drew behind her departing figure, as it were, a curtain
which, as it fell, blotted from sight a whole epoch
Fannie
of art-life in the United States. So rapidly have
Bloomfield
things and events moved during the last few years
Zeisler
that it is hard for us to imagine the state of musi-
cal barbarism in which the whole land so starkly stood on that day
more than fifty years ago when the youthful Fannie Bloomfield
made her first appearance at an orchestral concert. Boston, Cin-
cinnati, New York indeed showed some signs of musical life, but
they were faint and feeble signs. Fifteen years later in fact, Theo-
dore Thomas could induct the people of Chicago to come to his
Summer Garden concerts on the Lake Front only by sandwiching
in between stray movements from symphonies (a whole symphony
at one sitting was unthinkable) fantasies and "nature pictures"
in which players of oboe, clarinet and flute, chastely concealing
themselves in the shrubbery, imitated from time to time the war-
blings of the little bird.es. From that state of aesthetic barbarism
we have come far indeed, and it is one of the many fine things
to be said for Mme. Zeisler that she stood from the first stead-
fastly for the best, that she conquered the respect and then the
love of her own country and especially of her own Mid-West, after
she had triumphantly conquered the artistic heart of a critical
Europe; and that her influence was always in the right direction,
always healthy and always powerful. These are not light achieve-
ments. Among artists of the last half century she stood in a very
small group for the dynamic intensity of her playing, for her
absolute absorption in her work, for her steadfast adherence to the
beautiful and the genuine. Among women artists she stood in some
WHEN
respects alone. She had many pupils and she influenced the art of
pianoforte playing probably more deeply than did any other single
individual in this part of the world. She was a great artist, and
she was also a great women, for she could be wife and mother
as well as artist; and what that double task means in drain upon
energy and soul only those who have experienced it can ever tell.
BANK clearings for the month of July in the Chicago Federal Re-
serve District were about 2 per cent lower than they were a year
ago, and loans by the Federal Reserve System to
Business
member banks in the same district were also a
Stands
little lower than for the same period in 1926.
Revealed
Building permits dropped markedly, both in num-
her and in value, showing that the long-continued building boom
has pretty nearly run its course in Chicago, although at the end
of 1926, after a steady drop, the figures were considerably lower
than they are now. During 1927 indeed the number of building
permits issued in Chicago was at one time almost up to the peak
point of 1926 and lower only than the extraordinary greatest height
of that remarkable year 1923. Business failures on the other hand
declined both in number and in amounts Involved—and were much
fewer than is usually expected at this time of year. The combined
average price for July of wheat, corn, and oats was 99^4 cents as
against $1 for the previous month, wheat having risen during
August. Cotton prices, as might have been expected, showed a
continuous rise, owing no doubt to the distressing conditions in the
flooded areas where so much of the crop originates. The Govern-
ment forecast indeed as issued on August 8 shows that the prob-
abilities are for a decrease in yield over last year of about 25 per
cent. Pig iron production continued to decline slightly but exports
showed no more than the usual seasonal position, while imports on
the other hand registered a marked upturn. Commodity prices
showed during July, again, the first substantial advance, as cal-
culated on the Bradstreet index, during many months. The prin-
cipal advances occurred in hides and leather, textiles, fruits and
livestock, while declines were registered in provisions, oils, bread-
stuffs and miscellaneous products. Stocks continued to advance
during the month but, as we know, a sensational break took place in
August on the New York Exchange. Bond prices on the other
hand recovered and during July the average price of forty selected
bonds increased from $90.41 to $91.25.
seven weeks from now Grand Rapids will be the scene of a
very significant gathering. The Wood Industries Division of the
American Society of Mechanical Engineers will
Wood
hold its second national meeting, to which will
Engineers
come from all over the Mid-West men interested
Meet
in the science and art of applied mechanical wood-
working. The piano industry cannot stand aloof from an affair
of this sort, if only because the piano industry occupies so promi-
nent a position among those industries which have brought the art
of applying machinery to the fabrication of fine wood products
to the highest pitch of excellence. Wood working has long ago
ceased to be a small-time, small-scale industry, employing only such
mechanical aid as might have been forced upon it by considerations
over which it had no control. It has emerged from its chrysalis
state and has become sufficiently important to have acquired a tech-
nology all its own. Nor is the primary industry of lumbering in-
cluded in this description, for lumbering is a quite individual branch
of the wood industries, separate and often in fact hostile, supplying
the material from which the fabricating industries produce their
goods, but working up this material from its raw state in the
forests and so coming to have a large mechanical importance of
its own. The fabricating industries on the other hand are indus-
tries in which personal skill continues to have, and probably always
•will have, a preponderating influence, for the fabrication of wood,
whether into musical instruments or into fine pieces of furniture,
is an art as much as it is a branch of machine technology.
SOME
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