Music Trade Review

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8
THE
MUSIC TRADE
REVIEW
THE PLAYER-PIANISTS' DEPARTMENT
ji lit is in every way eminently desirable that a publication
which undertakes to give so much space and so authoritative
ft treatment to the great player industry, as does The Re-
view, should not neglect what is after all the real excuse
for the player's existence, namely, the music that is evoked
from it. Recognizing the extraordinary importance of do-
ing everything possible to spread more widely appreciation
and love for music among player-pianists, The Review's
Player Section for the present month contains below, and
will in future regularly contain, a department devoted to
the musical interests of player-pianists and of the player-
piano. Each month one musical article of general interest
will appear, together with useful hints, notes and comments.
This is in addition to the regular sub-section of the Player
Section which analyzes the monthly issues of music rolls,
Professional demonstrators, salesmen and player-pianists of
every degree will find each month on the Player-Pianist's"
page of the Player Section much valuable information. And
the Editor of the Player Section will at all times be glad
to answer Inquiries on any and all musical player matters.
THE MUSIC OF THE DANCE.
People who like to trace analogies—sometimes
very far-fetched—between the simplest things of
daily life and some very remote ancestry buried
in the mists of past time, are very fond of refer-
ring to the music of the dance as a prime ex-
ample. And in this case there is, indeed, a good
deal of cause for the belief that in analyzing dance
music we are really starting a trail that would
carry us- back into the very beginning of tine
itself. Although music is, as a finished product,
the youngest of all the Fine Arts, with a history
of not more than three centuries, yet in some
form or another it has always existed. True, the
music of the Middle Ages would not be recognized
to-day as "music" at all, while the tone-art of the
ancient Greeks and early Egyptians is even further
removed from anything that we now know and
recognize as musical.
At the same time, however, we must remember
that what we now call music is entirely an arti-
ficial sort of thing. Every nation has its own
musical idiom, and very often that of one race is
entirely unintelligible to another. We speak of
music as an universal language, but in truth the
statement is only accurate for people of similar
race and custom. Scales, to say nothing of tun-
ing schemes, differ so much between the Eastern
and Western musicians that the music of one is
perfectly unintelligible to the other.
This much, however, is true—that the music
of the dance is, of all the various forms of musi-
cal expression, most nearly alike among all people.
And this fact is based upon the further fact that
the dance is, in its elements, a form of rhythmic
motion entered into by the body, to which music is
devised (after civilization has arisen high enough
to permit this) more as a stimulant and incidental
generator of the feelings which are first stirred up
by the motions of the body in dancing, than as the
original exciter of those emotions. In fact, we
may suppose that music was devised to help people
who wanted to stimulate themselves to the dance,
rather than that people began to dance because
music first developed the idea of dancing. The
notion of moving in rhythm came first and music
followed.
But, although this is undoubtedly true, it is also
. true that music first began to develop itself into
an ordered form of expression through the medium
of the dance. And we shall find that, just as the
most savage uncivilized races have all some form
of dancing, so also they all have some kind of
dance music. And this is a very interesting
point. For it indicates that the desire to dance,
and also the desire to listen to dance music, is
something eminently natural and instinctive, and
that our dance music of to-day has an ancestry
of great antiquity and respectability.
With this idea in mind it is worth while surely
to consider with some little care whether we can-
not, as player-pianists, take a more sensible view
of almost all music. For the plain fact is that
practically everything we have in music is derived
originally from tunes and rhythms slowly and
painfully devised by our ancestors for dance pur-
poses. And so, when you realize the fact that not
only the waltzes and two-steps to which you dance,
but also the most complex symphonic forms, are
all derived from precisely the same roots and
spring from the same stems, the whole idea of
music takes on an entirely different aspect.
And this fact is easily demonstrable. The musi-
cian will not require that we give him examples
of what is so familiar to him. But for the reader
whose musical learning is limited it might be well
to call attention to some concrete examples. The
Seventh Symphony of Beethoven, for instance, is
one great dance from end to end. The opening
of the first movement is simply a great, gorgeous
development of the formal dances in which our
eighteenth century ancestors delighted. The main
theme of the movement is no more or less than
a merry village dance in 6/8 time, not unlike the
jig, full of laughter and fun, yet graceful and
charming. The second movement is a stately pro-
cession as of a bridal party moving to the altar.
The third movement is a most sprightly concep-
tion—a merry and care-free expression of pleasure
and innocent joy, in a natural dance rhythm. It is
like the play of a group of happy children, with
song and dance woven into it, with shouts of
laughter and shrieks of childish pleasure. The
somewhat solemn middle section or trio only
serves to heighten the merry contrast of what goes
before and after it. And lastly, what shall we
say, what can we say, of the wonderful Finale?
Well did Wagner call it the "Apotheosis of the
Dance." Indeed, it is no less than this; soaring
higher and higher, yet ever joyous, though some-
times with a joy that sems superhuman, as of
the gods feasting on high Olympus.
Yes, the Seventh Symphony is one great dance
from end to end, and every theme used in it
could be taken bodily and used as a dance rhythm.
The same is true of many other symphonies.
Tschaikowsky, indeed, deliberately calls the
Scherzo of his Fifth Symphony a waltz, while
the second movement of his later work, the Pa-
thetic Symphony, is a waltz pure and simple, but
a waltz with the third beat of every alternate
bar left out! A waltz indeed, but a very Russian
waltz. No devotee of the dance can hear it, how-
ever, without at once recognizing it for what it is.
These brief and somewhat sketchy considerations
are set clown here for the sole purpose of calling
attention to the vast importance and significance
of dance music. It is by no means alone as a
means of amusement that we must consider such
forms.
It is worth our while to remember that all
modern composition is developed from these fa-
miliar rhythms and that they themselves do very
decidedly possess elements not only of charm but
also of fundamental authority and importance,
which demand that we should respect them and
treat them accordingly. It is well, then, for us
to realize that, just as the doing of anything at all
should also be the well doing of it, so when we
play dance music we might just as well try to
get out of it all that there is in it. And this, in
the end, is just as much as there is anywhere in
music.
No one with any music in his soul can play a
waltz of that melodic genius Johann Strauss with-
out a feeling of the most intense pleasure. Of
course, if we insist upon just "grinding out" the
measures after the manner of a street piano, we
can hardly expect that the beauties of a Strauss
waltz will become very strikingly apparent to us.
But there is really no need to do this. Certainly,
when playing for people to dance one must main-
tain strict time in each section of the waltz. But
this does not mean that the whole thing, introduc-
tion, separate sections, coda and all, must be played
at one monotonous tempo. Very far from it! In
every Strauss waltz, for instance, you will find
some sections obviously languorous and long-
drawn-out, others sharp, rapid and merry. The
waltz has an element of languor, a slow element,
just as it has a fast element. Every waltzer
knows that, when dancing with a good partner,
the desire just to float through the mazy witchings
of the dance becomes overpowering. The whole
thing is the very reverse of a noisy, monotonous
grinding out of tones.
And the same thing applies to other dances, too,
except, of course, to such as are intended to be
mere prancing. And then, again, remember that
other great masters of the dance have lived. Such
men as Schubert, Liszt and von Weber were only
too glad to write in waltz form, even though some
of their compositions were not strictly intended
for dancing. And who shall deny the marvelous
charm of the Chopin waltzes? True, these won-
derful little miniatures are not by any means to
be played for a dance. But are they not absolute
pictures of the dance? Are they not perfect as
suggestions of the ideas and feelings that arise in
the ballroom? Anybody who has been afraid to
try them, for fear that they might be too "classi-
cal," has missed more than he can ever realize.
Let us respect dance music. Let us play it with
pleasure and joy. Let us treat it with some sort
of sympathy for its true beauty. Let us forget
forever the idea that dance music must neces-
sarily be monotonous. And then we shall all
know a great deal more about music than ever
before, and, for that matter, appreciate all music
more sanely and undcrstandingly.
A HEART TO HEART TALK
What Is the Music Roll?
Some years ago a disagreement, now celebrated
in the annals of the player industry, found its way
into the courts. What the disagreement signified,
or who were the parties to it are now matters of
little concern. The point to which we would draw
attention is that during the trial the question arose
as to exactly what a music roll was. One side
said that it was "music"—a form of sheet music
or score, which differed from the ordinary kind
only in that its notation was in the form of per-
forations rather than of lines, clef markings and
note signs. The other side contended that the
music roll was merely a mechanical controller of
the player mechanism, which could by no means
be considered as a sort of score, since it could only
be used in connection with a particular sort of
musical instrument and could not in any case be
"read." This alleged impossibility of "reading" a
music roll, as a score is read, was the gravamen
of one side's argument, so far as recollection goes.
And hereby hangs the particular tale that we wish
to spin at the present time.
Can a Roll Be Read?
We need not worry ourselves at all about the
conclusions which were reached by the court in the
case mentioned above. But what we do have to
consider is just this very question of whether, so
far as we are concerned, a music roll can be
"read," at least to such an extent as to make it
generally intelligible to us and a direct assistance
in the interpretation of music. And the reason
that this is an important question is that, as a
general thing, there is an almost entire misconcep-
tion of the whole matter throughout the ranks
of the great player-pianist army. We do not at
all care whether the music roll is legally a mere
mechanical controller or a real form of score.
But we do need to worry, and worry considerably,
over whether the music roll is to be treated by
us as the one thing or as the other. For upon
our understanding of the matter and upon the
conclusions we reach will largely depend our en-
tire musical interpretation through the player.