MUSICAL
TIMES
PRESTO
Established
1884
Established
1881
THE AMERICAN MUSIC TRADE JOURNAL
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CHICAGO, ILL., MARCH 15, 1929
Seml-Monthi.v
FirHt and Third Saturdays
Growth of School Piano
Classes and Their Effects
Plans Promoted in Stress of Trade
Necessity Prove Highly Successful in
Operation and the Wisdom of Their
Purposes Becomes Plain
All the plans for increasing the interest in
piano playing are. based on the hopes of in-
creased piano sales. The promoters look upon
those induced to study the piano as possible
prospects for piano sales, now or in the fu-
ture. It is the main purpose that induces the
piano dealers to become active participants in
the piano promotional schemes. The phases
of the activity are varied but the object of all
of them is identical. To promote and encour-
age the means to furthering piano study, for
therein is the source of future piano sales; the
assurance of a revival of the piano business
and its ultimate permanence.
A Trade Asleep.
For too long a time the piano trade pre-
sented a strangely indifferent attitude to-
wards a depressing condition within it. Thou-
sands voiced doleful regrets at the circum-
stance to one who studied the causes and
adopted the sensibly aggressive stand the oc-
casion demanded. The alert ones saw the
plainly apparent cause of the indifference of
the public towards the piano. That was the
decrease in the desire of the young people to
learn the piano. And in that regrettable hap-
pening the piano trade was in a great measure
responsible. Piano sales could not be continu-
ous in a world where the most assured means
to sales were suffered to die.
Everybody with a commodity to sell is his
own competitor, was the dispirited comment
of the piano dealer with the flexible backbone.
That always was true. There never was a
time when the things that mean comfort,
pleasure and luxury did not cut in on the op-
portunities of the piano. There are many
new ways of spending money besides buying
pianos, but the old inducement for piano buy-
ing still continues. And what these induce-
ments are has happily been re-discovered by
the piano trade.
Hope in the Children.
The fact that children of school age natur-
ally are ambitious to learn to play the piano
was one too long existent without creating a
suggestion to the bulk of the piano trade.
Now, happily, the fact is a powerful motive
for the most marked activities in the trade in
all sections of the country.
The recognition of the hope for a revival
of a prosperous piano business through means
of the children first came from the alert music
dealers in various parts of the country. They
were the men whose vigilance always quickly
saw disturbances and deterrents to piano
group sales and took efficient action to coun-
teract them. When the piano classes were
first inaugurated by the most practical among
the ambitious music dealers, the scheme was
readily recognized as one full of hope. It was
based on an understanding of the human na-
ture of the child. Children have a natural
antipathy to anything, resembling a chore.
But add the element of play to disguise the
activity and the young ones eagerly join in.
Most children look upon the individual music
lesson as drudgery, whereas the piano lesson
with companions in a group class is a new
and highly delightful form of play.
Group Systems Appear.
In due time the group piano teaching sys-
tems appeared—the Miessner system, the Cur-
tis system and others, all effective in their
methods. Everywhere dealers established
schools in connection w r ith their stores, the
two systems named being about equally
chosen. The group classes, which held out
possibilities of a steady improvement in future
sales soon proved helpful in improving present
day sales. Dealers and salesmen got a new
angle on the prospect field and again human
nature—the pride of fathers and mothers in
the musical progress of their children—en-
tered into the sales schemes of the piano de-
partments.
Classes in Schools.
The extension of the piano group classes to
the schools soon followed the extensive use
of the group class system in the music stores.
The schools clearly presented a big opportu-
nity but there was an obstacle to their exten-
sion therein. School boards and school prin-
cipals are not always amenable to the promo-
tion of cultural schemes. But the music deal-
ers in a great many places brought the neces-
sary pressure to bear on the opposition with
the result that group piano classes in the
schools may be said to be the rule rather than
the exception.
Growth of Sales.
The best arguments for the piano classes in
stores or in the schools concern the children
themselves and the stores with pianos to sell.
Presto-Times has had the keenest pleasure in
learning the excellent results in piano sales
attributed to the classes. A great amount of
the piano sales today are frankly attributed to
the piano classes in stores and schools.
Piano Lessons for Children Influence
Present Day Sales and Assure Perma-
nent Business in Future Years for Piano
Manufacturer and Dealer
An unpleasant phase accompanying the
piano class movement in its earlier stages was
the antagonism of the local music teachers,
who blindly argued that the group classes
were taking the bread out of their mouths. It
is agreeable to relate now that such a feeling
has disappeared from the teachers. When it
was found that the majority of children hav-
ing their ambitions aroused in the group piano
classes, continued their studies with private
teachers, the music teachers became warm
proponents of the group classes.
Spread of the Class Movement.
This year it is estimated by observant ones
that more than a million children will be en-
rolled as pupils in the piano classes in the pub-
lic schools. The number in the parochial and
private schools will also be large.
How the music trade individually and col-
lectively in any community may further the
cause of music in the schools is shown in the
activity that has produced such beneficial re-
sults iti Chicago. According to figures given
by Dr. Browne, superintendent of music in the
Chicago public schools, 350 teachers are em-
ploved in 500 classes with an enrollment of
20,000 pupils. That phase of study is expand-
ing and Dr. Browne anticipated 100,000 pupils
in the near future, with a corresponding in-
crease in the number of teachers and classes,
and the extension of the piano course to in-
clude all the schools in the Chicago system.
In Chicago Schools.
At a recent meeting of the Chicago Piano
and Organ Association, Adam Schneider told
of the successful effort made to help the
school piano classes by providing loan pianos
for the schools in which adequate provision is
not made for the purchase of pianos. Mr.
Schneider is active in inducing piano manufac-
turers to loan pianos to the schools and how
successful he has been is realized from the
fact that over 4,000 pianos are now in use in
the school classes.
Adam Schneider's Part.
Getting pianos from the manufacturers was
easy to a man of Mr. Schneider's persuasive
powers but getting them into the schools is
not always an easy job. That sounds strange
but when it is understood that school board
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