Classic Mode

Music Trade Review

Issue: 1932 Vol. 91 N. 1

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
EDITORIALLY
Welcome 1932!
In extending our best wishes to the music industry
for a new year full of accomplishment T H E REVIEW
takes the opportunity of expressing our appreciation
of the loyal support that has been given this publication
during the past year by representative houses of the
industry.
For our part, we pledge continued efforts throughout
1932 in our service to the music trade in all its
branches.
A NEW YEAR IS WITH US—
WHAT DOES IT PROMISE?
W
Year, is the courage of those men who have devoted, their
lives to the manufacture and sales of musical instruments.
They have carried on in the face of great difficulties, have
adjusted themselves to unpleasant conditions and will, with-
out question, reap the reward for their persistence. It takes
no small measure of courage to develop manufacturing
activities and carry on most of the work with a bottle of
red ink close at hand and no definite chart of the future,
but the only alternative is to quit.
We will let the national trade leaders carry the burden
of prophesying for 1932. What we do know is that there
is less talk of depression and more of ways and means for
meeting the situation and carrying on. Every upward trend
of business, and they are to be found, is welcomed with
enthusiasm that is most encouraging. And in every upward
movement, the music trade is going to participate in full
measure.
HAT of 1932?
The business prophet has lost his standing.
Platitudes and involved phrases have ceased to
brighten the spark of confidence. The leaders
in business hesitate to make definite statements regarding
the future because the signs and the omens heretofore con-
sidered infallible are no longer useful as guides to what is
in store for American industry. In a way this is good be-
cause it has led the business man to face the facts and work
for a steady improvement in trade rather than to sit by in
anticipation of an overnight return to normalcy.
However, all is not blue, particularly for the music
tradesman, for there are definite facts that offer much en-
couragement. In a great many centers it is found that the
business of the music merchants, comparatively speaking, is
in better shape than that of merchants in other lines often
considered more essential. The percentage of those retailers
who have passed out of the music business is considerably
lower than the average in many other industries, and those
who are left represent a most desirable element, many of
the survivors having already passed through one or several
previous periods of bad business. It is significant that when
wheat and cotton advanced in price the result was an im-
mediate improvement in sales of musical instruments in those
localities directly affected, which may be taken to prove that
the music trade will be close to the front of the line in the
march upward.
At the same time the movement for personal expression
in music is gaining impetus steadily, particularly in the
schools of the country. It is true that, at the moment, this
wide-flung interest has not demonstrated itself convincingly
in terms of musical instrument sales, but certainly it is pro-
viding a most magnificent field for future activities. Nor
is it necessary to be over-patient, for the impatient music
merchants who have decided upon hard work as an outlet
for that emotion are actually getting results now. Selling
is more difficult, prices are lower, terms often longer, and
profits smaller, but in a surprisingly large number of cases
there are tangible profits. To operate, even on a small profit,
while weathering present conditions, is an achievement.
The most encouraging sign of all, as we face the New
HERE'S PROOF OF THE WIDE
INTEREST IN MUSIC TRAINING
I
NDISPUTABLE evidence of the widespread interest in
the musical training of children on the part of school
authorities and teachers is found in the experience of M.
Hohner, Inc., the prominent harmonica manufacturers,
during recent months. Late in August the company adver-
tised in a number of educational magazines that there was
available a new book on the playing of the harmonica includ-
ing instructions in the organization of harmonica groups.
Within a period of three months there were received and
filled requests for over a quarter of a million of the books, com-
pletely exhausting the first printing of 200,000 and making
necessary a second edition. A careful compilation of the
replies indicated that approximately 80 per cent came from
teachers.
Although the small cost and easy playing possibilities of
the harmonica may have had much to do with the interest
shown, the manufacturers of other musical instruments also
report a steady increase in school interest in music training.
This interest is not developing the buying urge as rapidly as
might be desired, but there is no doubt but that it is having
a tremendous influence on musical merchandise sales today
and represents the one really bright spot in the future pros-
pects of the business.
Its potential possibilities are
tremendous.
PERSONAL EXPRESSION IN MUSIC
FIND ITS WAY INTO THE NEWS
F
ROM two widely separated points recently have come
reports that should prove most encouraging to those
who make, sell, and are interested in the future of the
piano and piano music.
From Belgium there is a newspaper report that there has
been a noticeable increase in the demand for pianos in that
country because of the revived interest of its inhabitants in
personal expression. They have reacted from the mechanical
THE
MUSIC
TRADE
REVIEW,
January, 1932
Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
SPEAKING
music of the radio, the talkie and what not and have again
returned to the study of the piano and personal playing.
The other report is from San Francisco, where the motion
picture interests themselves, who have been charged, and with
some basis, with the substitution of mechanical music for
what is termed "living" music, have veered around and made
the orchestra the big talking point in two fine new theatres
in that city, the New Mission and the New Fillmore.
Herman Heller, one of the most prominent of motion pic-
ture orchestra directors, has been engaged to conduct the
orchestra in alternate appearances at the two theatres, and,
what is more important, has had two grand pianos placed in
his orchestra pits of both houses.
In short, these reports from points five thousand miles
apart or more give credence to the statements that personally
created music is again coming to the fore and with it will
come an increased demand for musical instruments in general.
It cannot be expected to be an overnight revival, but cer-
tainly there is a very definite movement in the right direction.
HERE'S A MUSIC MERCHANT
W H O HAS A REAL COMPLAINT
O
N more than one occasion T H E REVIEW has
referred to the complaints of dealers regarding
the activities of music publishers, and the manu-
facturers and jobbers of musical merchandise and
band instruments, in coming into their territories and selling
direct. The practice not only cuts into the dealer's legitimate
profits to a considerable extent, but also discourages him
from tying up capital in an adequate stock. A typical case
is that reported by A. C. Waterman, a music merchant of
Somerset, Pa., who in a letter to T H E REVIEW says:
"A subject that is just fresh in my mind is the bootleg
methods used by sheet music publishers and jobbers. We
had a small orchestra account to whom we were selling music
and they take the name of the publisher and this publisher
is now selling them direct. This same practice is followed
by most of the instrument manufacturers and wholesalers,
and I wonder if the music publishers and jobbers, manufac-
turers and wholesalers would rather have this kind of an
outlet for their merchandise than legitimate music houses;
it rather looks that way to me. How can a merchant stock
merchandise, pay his bills and be a desirable account for
anyone under such unethical business methods?
"We had a situation of this kind up with a band instru-
ment manufacturing company some time ago and had con-
siderable correspondence with their sales manager, which
resulted in this: that inasmuch as a merchant in a small
town does not carry a complete stock of every line on the
market, he is open to cutthroat bootleg competition from
whatever manufacturer or wholesaler that he does not buy
from, rather than have these manufacturers refer the inquiry
to their nearest dealers."
Here again arises the question: Who is going to take care
of the local trade, the manufacturer and jobber, or the re-
tailer? Even in normal times there is not enough business
to split up several ways especially where wholesale discounts
are offered to retail purchasers. It isn't simply a matter of
loyalty but rather one of definite business policy.
HERE'S AN EDITORIAL O N THE PIANO
THAT SHOULD RECEIVE WIDE PUBLICITY
T
HE following editorial, which appeared
in the Minneapolis Journal on Decem-
ber 20 under the caption "The Piano
Comes Back," is so comprehensive and en-
couraging that it requires little comment be-
yond the hope that other newspapers can be
induced to see the light and make similar
comments. The editorial read:
For a time it looked as if the age of me-
chanical music would do away with the liv-
ing-room piano entirely, but the dealers tell
us that it is coming back. Tommy and Mary
are once more strumming out their finger
exercises, and it may be that family music
will one day again hold the household to-
gether on Sunday evenings.
Who can forget the group that used to
gather around the old parlor organ back in
the gay Nineties, to sing In the Gloaming,
and Listen to the Mocking-bird, and best of
all, the old familiar hymns and Moody and
Sankey Gospel tunes? We shall never for-
get the first time we heard a piano, when,
timid lad of eight summers, we marched with
the model school into the normal chapel. A
THE
MUSIC
TRADE
piano! It was the symbol of all luxury, of
the romance of wealth and culture.
Yet a few years, and modern methods of
manufacture brought the piano within the
reach of everyone, and no home was com-
plete without one. But—
Art is long, and time is fleeting.
Sister learned Old Black Joe with varia-
tions, and the Waves of Ocean Galop, but
the higher reaches of music remained an un-
explored country. The mechanical player
and the phonograph all but abolished ama-
te\ir strumming, and began the musical edu-
cation of the American public. Why bother
to practice, when you might be listening to
Bach and Beethoven? Why sing hymns,
when the records brought Caruso and Scotti?
Soon the radio pushed aside the phonograph
and the pianola, and one turned the dial to
hear the living voice of singer and violin and
orchestra. It was unbelievable magic, and
we went radio mad. Alas, the advertising
broadcast took possession of the new magic,
and crooning and jazz drove real music from
the air. A hungry-hearted world is turning
REVIEW,
January,
1932
once more from machinery to life, and the
forgotten piano is dusted and tuned, while
clumsy fingers seek again for the lost chord.
It may be hard on the neighbors, when
the unaccustomed amateur picks out Schu-
mann or Mendelssohn with one finger. But
no harder than the loud speaker, and in-
finitely more promising! After all, the finest
appreciation of music is born of the attempt
to create it. To work over the score of a
symphony or a sonata until every theme, every
transition passage, every suspension and solu-
tion becomes utterly familiar, is to know and
love it, even though one is never able to play
it. To sing a great aria, be it never so falter-
ingly, is to gain a deeper understanding of
its thought and purpose.
The War brought a revival of "community
singing" along with the Liberty Bond drives.
There is a thrill to chorus singing that noth-
ing can replace, and the old-time Sunday
night group around the piano opened the
heart and sweetened the spirit. We may
still have the great music through the phono-
graph and the radio. But we shall the bet-
ter enjoy it, and the sooner outgrow the
atrocities of the present broadcast, if we learn
once more to make music of our own, how-
ever clumsily. It is the doing, not merely
the passive receiving, that trains the mind.

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