PRESTO
June U, 1925.
TREASURE CHEST OF
THE WORLD'S MUSIC
Interesting Bit of History Intermingled with
Sketch of the New Schulz Grand with
Aria Divina.
THINGS SAID OR SUGGESTED
Nobody cares to inherit an empty treasury; no-
body likes enthusiasm so rank that it downs every-
thing else in its mad hysterics; nobody likes a piano
that sounds like a battle between a cayuse and a
coyote.
* * *
George P. Bent is a man who can keep a little com-
pany in an enchanted atmosphere of mirth and mu-
tual delight with one another and with him. In the
days when he was head of a great piano factory in
Chicago he was secretly guiding and inspiring his
men.
* * *
Better than to be taught how to see and what to
think and feel, is to be so aroused that one is forced
to see, think and feel for oneself. So any good mu-
sic teacher will tell you.
* * *
The "Drake-A-Day," house organ of the Drake
Hotel, added to the interest of the men of music.
It printed fine portraits of a fine lot of gentlemen,
as well as the arrivals as they put their names on the
"dotted line."
* * *
A Slip in the Statement.
In the Miniature Presto a somewhat peculiar error
of statement appeared with relation to the time of the
first convention at Manhattan Beach. The item
started with "it is just fifty years," etc. Of course
every one knows that it will be just 28 years ago,
on the 18th of August, that the representatives of
exactly 50 piano industries, and about one-sixth as
many music trade editors, gathered at the Beach and
formulated the National Piano Manufacturers' Asso-
ciation of America. The manufacturers later met in
secret conclave while the trade editors cooled them-
selves outside. That caused one of them to print
this stanza:
"Did you hear the piano makers' talk,
While outside the editors did walk,
And when the talk was through
How they all did kick and balk—
There was a hot time in the old trade that night!"
* * *
It was very, very dry about the Drake all week.
The jokes too, were dry, someone saying that even
Platt Gibbs' puns seemed to have been growing
alfalfa because of the arid spell.
* * *
A young fellow named Myers ran about saying
that he represented the Piano Trade Something. Few
had long to Waite, however, to get his meaning for
the Piano Trade Magazine was there in all its beauty.
'Scuse this ancient joke; it's a Louis IV style square.
* * *
A type-hunter among mankind does not necessarily
mean that such a man will make the best hunter for
piano prospects or the best closer.
* * *
Leanings of Music Men.
They all lean different ways, these music trade men
in convention at Chicago, in spite of their unanimity
and oneness of purpose. In his home town the pi-
ano dealer is apt to live too smug a life; he does not
recognize that sustained self-denial is dangerous,
nor that the good is always the enemy of the best.
They have come to Chicago to procure material, new
and old, with which to "carry on," to use an ex-
tremely English phrase. They do not need to do any
uplifting after they return home. If they have been
uplifted themselves enough to put in a nice stock,
the goods will speak for themselves. That's the ad-
vantage in dealing in goods that give voice.
* * *
When a piano or phonograph salesman is rolling
along smoothly, with his chariot hitched to a star, he
is apt to think he is "some pumpkins." It is only
when he is thrown upon his own resources that
either he or the staring critical world can piece those
resources together into an airship in such fashion
as to sail away again.
* * *
In hiring a new salesman it is well to give the
fellow a trial in his own way. There are mannerisms
and restraints which mask altogether from some eyes
the fine substance and quality of the man.
* * *
Chicago is the greatest convention city of them all.
Its cohesion, due to being the greatest railroad center
of the world, draws the man who would go any-
where into it. Its former frightful ugliness has been
replaced already by the most startling magnificence
of architectural outline, and yet those who are be-
hind the future of developing things here tell us that
"The Chicago Plan" has been but barely begun. If
this is only a beginning, with Detroit and New York
both attempting to eclipse it, what, oh what will
the completed plan look like?
* * *
A man who has neither interest nor patience with
views that differ from his own is like a piano with
only one string; he travels in a monotone. A man of
that type is wrong from ignorance, but thinks he
must be firm. Detroit takes that sort of conceit out
of a man; Flint takes that sort of conceit and throws
it into the tall weeds.
* * *
Making standardized goods has progressed so far
that the world no longer will take a young fellow
blessed with third-rate ability in the hope that it may
make of him a serviceable lieutenant of an industrial
enterprise. It is no longer true that "blood is yoost
so thicker like water."
* * *
He of Circus Grand Fame.
In a descriptive circular concerning the new M.
Schuiz Co. creation,—the Bardini Grand with the
Aria Divina,—there is a very interesting bit of his-
toric story. It reads as follows, and a picture of the
new instrument may be found elsewhere in this issue
of Presto:
Charles of Austria and Louis XIV of France
strove for the possession of northern Italy at the
close of the Seventeenth Century. Piedmont and
Venetia were a rich prize, lands blessed with the
achievements of the Renaissance. For three cen-
turies sculpture, painting, and architecture had flour-
ished and, in addition, Milan, Genoa, and Venice
harbored fortunes in tapestries, glass and silverware.
But no craft succeeded more admirably in enriching
future generations with the beauty of its handiwork,
than the wood-carvers and cabinet-makers of Italy's
cathedral cities.
The inspiration for the Bardini Reproducing Grand
piano was found in a group of late Seventeenth Cen-
tury furniture which now forms part of the Bardini
collection in Florence. It is the work of Piedmont
guild, and in adapting the design for piano case-work,
every care was taken to retain the graceful symmetry
and elaborate wealth of detail that characterized the
original. The result is no ordinary period case, but
a faithful re-creation of authentic antique craftsman-
ship.
Fitted with the Aria Divina Reproducing Action,
the Bardini grand piano becomes a veritable treasure
chest of the world's music. An uncanny fidelity to
the technique of the artist, and tone, exquisite for its
lucid purity, provide an irresistible fund of glorious
entertainment.
It is only a few years since Platt P. Gibbs was
the chief functionary in the preparation of pro-
grammes for entertainment, dinners and excursions
among the music trade men.
Now that those things have outgrown a one-man
job, the Chicago Piano Club has taken over that
work. Mr. Gibbs, at 434 So. Wabash avenue, Chi-
cago, is still publishing singing-school books, anthem
and male-quartette selections. At conventions he
Donahoc & Donahoe, music dealers of Fort Dodge,
is still silent and solemn as ever.
la., moved from 907 to 917 Central avenue. A new
store front has been installed in the new quarters,
* * *
The bulletin board at the convention was w r ell- which has 5,750 square feet of floor space.
filled with names from A to Z. A full bulletin board
always is an indication of a large number of exhibits
letter to the Fort Wayne Organ Works—it makes
at a convention.
the Packard organs."
* * *
Mr. Bond later became the head of the industry at
They gathered by the placid lake
Fort Wayne, and now the name Packard, thus ac-
And mingled as they orter,
quired, graces the fallboards of fine pianos.
But not a man was seen partake
If Frank Jordan could take a straight order for a
Of one wee drop of water.
thousand of the fine Schillcrs, what kind of a piano
* * *
salesman would it require to cross that Jordan?
What has become of the old-fashioned salesman
* * *
who longed for a customer who longed for a piano
The Piano Travelers' Association badge of mem-
with the longings of a child? What has become ot bership was the most elaborate yet. It presented
the rural salesman who could always summon forti- the Chicago skyline in solid gold—or some other
tude to his aid? What has become of the old-fash- metal—with some boats loaded with pianos in the
ioned boss so mean that the only thing that redeemed offing.
him of his meanness was his suavity?
* * *
* * *
When Dick Lawrence said that the piano industry
It was noticeable that among the subscription-
takers for the trade papers at the convention were had "absorbed" a lot of other big industries, or their
several ex-vacant-lot salesmen recently connected products, he didn't mean that the piano trade had
with Detrpit's biggest suburban booms. There were digested the auto, and phonograph and radio, but
no more-persistent go-getters at this convention than that, notwithstanding them all, the piano trade was
these boys, who later may be drafted into the piano still alive and "kicking."
* * *
game itself.
"Better
than
all
the
measures
of delightful sound,
* * *
Better than all the treasures that in books are found,"
Tips Given in Variety.
Music trade manufacturers and dealers are not was the friendship seen and felt at this convention.
stingy when out having a good time; this was made It was a grand holiday for all parts of the country
plain by the tips given in Chicago. "Look at my in pianodom, with "nary" a second-hand man poking
tips," said a bell-boy at a leading hotel. "Here are and rummaging among them.
* * *
bawbees and iron men; pistoles and pounds, United
Two old men sat in the lounge of the Drake in a
States and Canadian quarter dollars, rigsdalers and
rins, yens and yirmiliks, xeraphims and zehners, sous discussion concerning the comparative influence of
and stivers, taels and testones, liras and leg dollars, natural organization and artificial education, each
marks and moidores, nickels and nobles, annas and influenced by a certain superstition of his own. They
angelets, fuangs and franks, dimes and dinars, julios must have been action makers, for one of them
and jacobuses, kopecks and krones, doubloons and gravely wiped his spectacles, put them on again and
ducats, guineas and gulders, half dollars and hard- said: "The whole process of the action was mechan-
heads, centavos and crazias, unicorns and pesos, on- ical and necessary."
luks and onces, buboos from Japan and bits from our
* * *
own Southern States."
The Zenith Radio Corporation distributed pictorial
folders showing the perspective of the new Straus
* * *
building, in which it has its executive offices and broad-
Precision of Mr. Bates.
studio on the twenty-third floor, 310 So. Mich-
A conversation between A. S. Bond, of the Pack- casting
igan avenue, Chicago. It asked all visitors to the con-
ard Piano Company, Fort Wayne, Ind., and W. B. vention
to visit the thirty-story tower in that building
Price, of Price & Teeple Piano Company, Chicago, "and look
over Chicago and Lake Michigan."
brought out the precision that had always character-
* * *
ized the work of J. A. Bates, of Ludden & Bates
The design on George P. Bent's menu card for his
fame, who was one of the oldest men in attendance
dinner to the aged Tuesday night showed an old be-
at the convention.
Mr. Price related an incident of his own service in spectacled traveler in Holland Dutch costume with his
the Bates house when a mere youth. Mr. Bates cotton umbrella in one hand and his other hand at his
had asked him to write for some Packard catalogues, mouth studying the sign "Dinner to and for the aged."
and young Mr. Price had addressed the envelope to He is evidently thinking well of it, judging from the
expression the artist put into the silhouette.
the Packard Organ Co., Fort Wayne, Ind,
"No,
_young
man,"
said
Mr.
Bates,
"address
your
Enhanced content © 2008-2009 and presented by MBSI - The Musical Box Society International (www.mbsi.org) and the International Arcade Museum (www.arcade-museum.com).
All Rights Reserved. Digitized from the archives of the MBSI with support from NAMM - The International Music Products Association (www.namm.org).
Additional enhancement, optimization, and distribution by the International Arcade Museum. An extensive collection of Presto can be found online at http://www.arcade-museum.com/library/