Music Trade Review

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WESTERN COMMENT
Schools, Fairs and Telephones
REVIEW OFFICE, CHICAGO, I I I . , JANUARY 28,
1929.
year we all felt so bad, or so it should seem, that when the
program of the annual dinner of the Chicago Piano & Organ Asso-
ciation was under consideration, nothing sug-
gested itself as a feature except something a
thousand miles distant from the piano industry.
Difference
So we listened to a teller of funny stories.
This time, however, it was different. Chicago piano men ap-
parently felt that any industry which could go through a year
like 1928 and survive the experience must be too tough to kill;
and so they made up their minds to sit up and take notice;
to face the facts and to grapple with actualities again. And so
we had two speeches at the P. & O. dinner last Thursday which
had a bearing, very directly and decidedly, on our business.
One of these was by the distinguished musician who is in charge
of music in the Chicago public schools. The other was by the
assistant to President Rufus Dawes of the Chicago 1933 World's
Fair Commission. Dr. Lewis Browne had much to say that was
interesting. In fact, despite his modest disclamor of any accom-
plishments in the line of public speaking, he made a very good talk,
packed full of information, every word of which had an immediate
and vital interest for the piano industry. As might have been ex-
pected, he spoke especially about the experiences of the public
school system of Chicago in offering class instruction in piano to
grammar school pupils at a nominal fee. This experiment has been
going on during some five months. Despite a great and lamentable
shortage of pianos, which Doctor Browne both confessed and de-
plored, it appears that classes are now being held in some two
hundred and fifty schools with almost 7,500 children enrolled. Dr.
Browne alluded to the very generous offer by the Chicago piano
trade, of one hundred pianos on free loan to the Board of Educa-
tion until the end of the present half-year, and he said that this
timely help would probably immediately increase the number of
children taking class piano lessons to 20,000. Now, it must be
perfectly evident that twenty thousand piano pupils in the public
schools will represent at the very least five thousand new and
live prospects for pianos. Dr. Browne told some interesting stories
of children persuading parents to buy cheap second-hand uprights
in order that there might be some sort of piano in the home on
which the child might practice at leisure the lessons learned in
LAST
thought that this has been because of the practice, hitherto always
adopted, of treating it as a sort of entertainment and considering
its providers as amusement concessionaires. The Chicago Fair of
1933 will not only improve the practice, but radically will change
the principle. Music will be presented as one of the great Fine
Arts, will be treated educationally, dramatically, audibly and visibly
on the largest possible scale. Efforts will be made to obtain a co-
operative exhibition, on an adequate scale of magnitude detailing the
history of music and musical instruments, the science of music, the
technology of music and the practice of music as it is, or will be
then. Dr. Albert expects to see music placed in its proper and
rightful high position and he believes that the public will respond
to the occasion.
So much for that, which, by the way, is all to the good and deserves
more than passing attention. Personally I believe that within the
next four years we shall have developments
The
in the sciences which will enable listeners in
Great
all parts of the world to hear every note of
Challenge
music, every speech, every address, delivered
at the Centennial World's Fair. I hardly expect that television
will have become practical on a large scale by that time; but
of course one cannot tell. At any rate, here is something to
be thought of with very great care: Within four years the
music industries of the United States will have presented to them
the opportunity to rise to a great occasion. Music is the modern
art par excellence, the one art which perfectly fits into the modern
rhythm of life. In every other of the liberal arts technical advances
are constantly being made. Consider the case of applied electrical
engineering with its constant output of new and useful appliances.
Consider even the conservative and established furniture industry.
Consider the photographic, optical, graphic and plastic arts. All
are showing technical advances. But the musical arts, for some
extraordinary reason, combine great advances in expression with
complete stagnation in instrumental means. The piano . . . but why
tell an old tale again? Do we not all know that the piano of 1928
is the piano of 1878? And are we not all familiar with the ges-
ture of contempt which greets every effort to stir up new facts and
new ideas? It is an old story and only too well we know it. But
we cannot escape its consequences. 1933 stands ahead of us. Are
we to be the one and only industry, four years from now, boasting
that it is old-fashioned, bragging that it is the same yesterday, to-day
and forever? Are we to take to the Chicago Centennial the plans
and technique which we showed at the Philadelphia Centennial?
the school-classes.
• .
.
i
DR. ALLEN ALBERT, assistant to the president of the Chicago
World's Fair Centennial Celebration of 1933, was equally interest-
ing and equally to the point, albeit in quite an-
F° u r
other way. He came particularly to tell the
Years
assembled piano men what is planned for music,
Ahead
and what part music is to take in the great Fair
which will bring, it is believed, millions of visitors to Chicago
four years from now. Dr. Albert talked a lot of good sense
about something which is of the utmost importance to every
Chicagoan, and for that matter to every other citizen of the
United States. After showing a very interesting group of pic-
tures illustrating the planning and execution of the physical
framework of every great World's Fair since 1893, with pointed
observations on the strong and weak points of each, he went
on to point out that the 1933 event will avoid entirely the old-
time plan of staging competing exhibits in the industries and
arts. Instead, each great industry will be invited to put on a co-
operative exhibit of large size, showing what is being done in that
industry as a whole. Moreover, the music plans are likewise to be
thought out in a new way. Music, strange to sa.y, has always been
one of the weak points of previous World's Fairs, and Dr. Albert
THREE cheers for the Baldwin house. Reports tell us that the
number of pianos made and sold in the various factories and stores
of this great company during the very bad
Cheers
twenty thousand. The
y e a r jo^g w a s a i m o s t
Baldwin
Baldwin people are in the piano business and
they are of the opinion that pianos were made
to be sold. Yesterday a Baldwin canvasser called my telephone
while I was writing some memoranda on recent laboratory work-
in piano tone. He turned out to be a young man to whom
had been assigned all the Whites in the Chicago Telephone di-
rectory and who had been going patiently through them, calling
every number in turn and talking Baldwin piano wherever he could
get a hearing. Hard work, as he confessed, but it is selling pianos.
With three grands in the laboratory and one in the apartment, I
could not promise to buy another, but we had an interesting talk
about piano selling. I have kept account for some six years and
find that three-fourths of the few piano canvassers I have encount-
ered have been Baldwin.
—W. B. W.
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