Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
13
The Grip Held by "Popular" Music Upon the American Public and What It
Means to Manufacturers and Sellers of Player-Pianos and Music R o l l s -
Developing the Taste of the Public Above the Desire for Elemental Rhythm
An American composer informed us the other
day that he had been deliberately discouraged
by a publisher of music rolls from submitting
works of his own for publication in roll form,
on the ground that the American people care
for nothing but "popular" music and that it does
not pay even to publish the works of the rec-
ognized classic masters of the nineteenth cen-
tury, so that it is doubly absurd to arrange art
music by a new composer. One cannot help
wondering how much truth there may be in
this statement. On the one hand we find that
the greatest of roll publishers steadily, though
somewhat deliberately, add to their stock of
classic music each month and show no signs
of departing from this policy. On the other
hand we have the undoubted evidence provided
by the people themselves with whom we come
in contact, as well as by the figures of music
roll sales, which show that perhaps four-fifths
of all the music sold is properly to be classified
as "popular" and that of the remainder nearly
all is comprised in a small list of celebrated
numbers, such as the overtures to Tannhauser
and William Tell, the second Hungarian Rhap-
sody of Liszt, Beethoven's Moonlight sonata
and a few others. In short we have excellent
reasons for assuming, however reluctantly, that
the player-piano is doing comparatively little to
help the American people get rid of their craze
for the ephemeral music of the moment.
Now, we of the player trade are interested in
discovering, if we can, why it is that the player-
piano should be so largely associated with the
common class of music. For, as is pointed out
elsewhere in this section, the player-piano busi-
ness is suffering from a peculiar disease. It has
been sold on the assumption that no one need
consider whether it has any relation to musical
culture or musical knowledge. The result of
thus dissociating the player-piano" from any
such consideration has been virtually to de-
stroy any appeal the player-piano may ever
have had among musically intelligent people
and, in a vain attempt to find any easy way of
marketing it, to confine its popularity almost
altogether to people whose ideas never have
risen and never will rise above the hits of the
day. The statement is significant, for it is be-
ing perceived at this very time in more than
one great city, that the result of leveling down
the player to the level of a fictitious "plain
people" has simply been that all the better
people are giving it the go-by, and are in fact
taking the position that a player-piano is not ex-
actly the sort of thing for nice people to have,
being a brassy mechanical grinder-out of cheap
music with saloon suggestions around it.
The Problem of the Popular Music
Now, let us look at this question from the
purely musical point of view. Why do people
go crazy over ragtime music? The fact is that
the whole fascination of all this sort of music
depends upon the rhythm. And when we come
to analyze it we find that the rhythmic element
is about all there is to it. Once take away the
peculiar syncopated ryhthm and you destroy all
that there is of fascination in the music. One
only has to try the experiment to be con-
vinced.
Now the exaltation of rhythm above all the
other elements in musical structure is a sign
that one does not understand or appreciate the
best in music. The only way that the savage
has of expressing his feelings artistically is by
rhythmic pounding of a drum or a sort of
rhythmic roaring in chorus, without any pre-
tence at definite melody. Music which mainly
depends on rhythm, naturally therefore, is much
less dependent upon any beauty of melody or
harmony and its appeal must be to that part
of our nature which js not frankly responsive
to rhythm; namely, to the animal.
Popular music in its modern sense is, for the
most part, a somewhat different thing from that
which went by the same name thirty years ago.
The popular music of that period was not ex-
actly artistic, but it had a straight out and
out melody and an honest rhythm. The songs
of the Civil War period were often noble in
sentiment and were never ignoble in melody.
Yet they were certainly popular. The old-time
minstrel melodies were clean, cheery and tune-
ful. They depended neither on smut nor on a
twisted unnatural rhythm.
To-day we have drilled our ears into a con-
dition where we clamor only for the forced
and unnatural diet from which we should once
have turned with disgust. Just as a man who
turns at first with loathing from a drug may
later come to find that he no longer can make
life .tolerable without it, so we have cultivated
a morbid taste till we are satisfied with nothing
else.
Well, some one may ask, what about it? What
difference does it make what the people like so
long as they like it? The answer is simple. Rag-
time as a rhythm is interesting and often fas-
cinating. It certainly expresses contemporary
American life as nothing else does. But we
cannot build the musical future of a nation on
one syncopated rhythm. If we try to do this
we shall simply strangle music in the process.
Old-Time Favorites Still Popular
There is another side to the question. One
of the largest Western piano manufacturers has
for years had a most reliable stand-by in his
advertising, in the shape of a little book of
sheet music, entitled "Old-Time Melodies," con-
sisting of some three dozen national airs, Irish,
Scotch, English, German and native folk songs
and so on. The demand for these, which are
freely distributed as advertising souvenirs by
every dealer who carries this particular line of
pianos, is greater to-day by far than ever be-
fore. These simple, oft-times noble, songs and
airs are eagerly played and sung in American
homes everywhere, even to-day, when we are
told that not a roll of music which is not in
rag-time can be sold by a piano dealer. The
advertising department of this house is kept
busy supplying the wants of dealers who find
they can never apparently supply the demand.
Again it cannot have escaped notice that the
better motion picture theatres are installing pipe
organs, which quite often are instruments of
considerable power and musical value. It is
only necessary to listen to the music given by
such instruments to realize that even now there
is beginning a reaction against the eternal syn-
copation of every rhythm and that, whether
they realize it or not, people are becoming pos-
itively glad to hear straight music again.
We are plainly of the opinion that the popu-
larity of the so-called popular music rests on
accidental and extraneous conditions, that it
constitutes but a passing phase in the history
of American life, and that it is bound to pass
away. The fact that 10,000,000 Americans to-
day think only of rag-time, when they think of
music, means absolutely nothing, because a mis-
take or a phase of bad taste is not improved,
but rather intensified, by being widespread. The
people will get over rag-time as they got over
their belief in eternal punishment with real fire,
as they got over the belief in slavery as a divine
institution. Other times, other manners. The
American people will get over rag-time.
About at this point some one should now rise
and denounce us solemnly as an academic high-
brow who would cruelly brush away the simple
pleasures of the plain people and forever blot
out the idyllic scenes of American life, where
under the silvery moon of the dear Southland,
the strains of "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee"
and other old plantation folk songs, are crooned
by the old negroes who sit outside their tene-
ment houses resting from their day's labors in
the automobile factory; or something like that.
Happily, we are accustomed to all this and it
leaves us unmoved. For just as Lincoln said that
because he favored negro emancipation, he did
not thereby mean that he wished his family to
marry negroes, so also we do not wish to abol-
ish an interesting and clever rhythm, simply be-
cause we are sick of the detestable lengths to
which the idea has been carried. We don't ob-
ject to rag-time but to the rag-time industry.
Much of American popular music of to-day is
unhealthy. As for the player-piano, the sooner
it is dissociated from its present partnership the
better, for no one benefits by present condi-
tions. When the trade wakes up to facts it will
begin to encourage a love for better music; and
the player-piano will wake up too, technically,
musically and commercially.
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