Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
Noticeable Tendency To Feature Automatic Reproducing Player, to Neglect
of Ordinary Player-Piano, Calculated to Injure the Trade in General,
and More Important Still the Constructive Instinct in Musical Appreciation
It is a fortunate and significant fact that the
advertising of the player-piano, during the last
few years, has' been so rapidly approaching a
condition of safety and sanity. Those who re-
member the hectic nonsense which used to be
spouted about children playing like masters,
and all that sort of thing, may turn with relief,
though not with enthusiasm, to the relatively
sober aad even colorless productions of to-day's
publicity agencies. Yet we have not advanced
as far as we might have advanced. We have
largely ceased from talking wild nonsense, but
at the same time we are not evolving any pub-
licity method based on soundly constructive
ideas. Perhaps this has been merely because
we have not yet had time to cross the "No
Man's Land" that lies between the definitely,
positively Bad, and the definitely, positively
Good. But, even so, the facts are distinctly
worthy of immediate consideration.
: In looking over a quantity of player-piano
advertising, botli wholesale and retail, however,
one is struck with certain important facts. In
regard to retail publicity—that is to say, to
the advertising done in newspapers, magazines,
street cars and through similar agencies, to the
prospective purchaser direct, one observes at
once that virtually all the effort is being put into
the promotion of the automatic or semi-auto-
matic reproducing player-piano, leaving the or-
dinary player-piano very much out in the cold.
A great deal of really clever and sales-making
copy is being prepared and published to sing
the praises of the reproducing player in all its
aspects, and there is no doubt that results are
being gained; but it seems to us that a grave
mistake will be made if the ordinary player-
piano is allowed to escape further attention on
the part of the advertising experts, and is to be
given no more specialized expert attention than
now goes to the ordinary straight piano. The
point is worth a little elaborating, we think.
It will have to be admitted that the history
of the talking machine shows the American
people to be more interested in listening to
music than in making it. A phenomenon is
manifested here, which has never before been
apparent, so far as we know, in the history of
the world. For the first time in history we
have a musical condition where all the interest
is in the listening and none in the making, all
in the passive and none in the active. Similar
situations have indeed existed among other peo-
ples, and with regard to other arts and sciences.
Thus, the later Roman and the Byzantine Em-
pires displayed a progressive lack of interest in
creative literature or creative art. The poets
became poetasters, the orators grammarians.
To copy, to comment on, to chatter about, the
art and literature of the past; these were the
more than sufficient activities of a people long
since rendered incapable of creating for them-
selves.
lint the present time is the first in history,
one has reason to believe, when a people has
been so completely satisfied with a purely pas-
sive interest in music. Nothing short of this
can explain the extraordinary success of the
talking machine
For, wonderful and useful as
that machine undoubtedly is, the fact remains
that it only reproduces; it does not create. Now
the player-piano does, in a very real sense, cre-
ate.
That is, to say, the ordinary, personally-
controlled, player-piano, does, in a very real
sense, give an active participation in the mak-
ing of music to the person who uses—in fact,
who plays—it. The reproducing player-piano
does not give such participation; but remains
a parallel to the talking-machine; a reproducer,
a representor, of music.
Now the fact that the advertising talent of the
industry is at present stressing the promotion
of the reproducing player gives point to the
assertion that the American people are not in-
terested in making music as much as they are
interested in listening to it. Arguments might
be multiplied in support of this, and facts might
be accumulated to back it up, easily and in
large quantities. But the facts are really pat-
ent to all and need scarcely any further elab-
oration.
Of course, in the circumstances, it would fol-
low that, speaking from a narrow point of view,
the duty of the advertising man is done when
he has found a potential market and converted
it into an actual one. But in the present case,
there is another side to the matter that only
appears on further consideration.
The point to be considered is, in fact, that the
pursuit of music, which, of course, is the rea-
son for the existence of all musical instru-
ments, and therefore for the manufacturing of
player-pianos and for the appearance of this
newspaper, has necessarily two sides. The pas-
sive side is only one, and on the whole the
smaller one. If the only interest taken in music
by a people is a passive interest, the final re-
sult must be the decline of musical instrument
buying and even the ultimate decline of re-
producing instruments. For the only way in
which a passive interest can be maintained, i^,
paradoxically enough, by maintaining along with
it an active interest. In short, unless a great
many people wish to study and play music, it
will soon happen that nobody will care about
hearing it.
Now the player-piano does directly stimulate
to active interest in music. Every intelligent
man or woman who comes to interpret for him-
self or herself great work of music through the
medium of the player-piano, becomes, in greater
or less degree, actively interested in music;
interested in more than mere listening.
.Such an active interest must be kept up, for
the reason that the capacity to enjoy music
goes hand-in-glove with the capacity to make
it. Unless one can, to some extent, interpret
music for oneself, one cannot really enjoy it.
Moreover, the kind of enjoyment that is merely
passive is not a real growth, but an unsub-
stantial shadow that holds its place only till it
is eliminated by the coming of some stronger
passion. There is nothing in music to cause
a mere listener to stick to it; and indeed it is
the universal verdict that the use of the talking
machine and of other reproducing instruments
declines after possession with considerable ra-
pidity and the buying of records or record-rolls
concomitantly falls off.
These considerations may seem abstract and
vague, but they are neither. Nothing is more
striking than the indifference of the general
public to personal interest in music. This in-
difference is not going to be cured by putting
all our attention, and all our advertising talent
on the promotion of something which in itself
pre-supposes and rests upon the possession of
a capacity of enjoyment, which cannot be per-
manent unless fed by real enthusiasm in music-
making. The American home is not musical;
our task is to make it really so, not to feed
it with the stupefying belief that its members
can find all need of aesthetic enjoyment by the
mere pressing of a button. There is too much
button-pressing in this life already. We are a
button-pressing people; and button-pressing peo-
ples end by developing a yellow streak.
But to stick still closer to the point at issue,
our advertising experts should ask themselves
whether they can afford, in the face of such
arguments as we have set forth above, to aban-
don serious advertising of the straight player-
piano. Can the trade afford to have the idea
become public property that the ordinary player-
piano is merely an inferior mechanical ancestor
of the superior reproducing instrument, merely
a very bad method for getting what may be
had much better? It is plain that the present
tendency of all our advertising is towards let-
ting the ordinary player-piano be taken as a
matter of course; which simply means that it
will be taken as something of precious little
interest to anyone.
In all the rush and racket of contending
claims, of new instruments and marvelous im-
provements, it is time to warn our publicity
men to have a care. Even now there is time
to change for the better. But when we find the
newspapers, the musicians, the public alike
talking about the latest reproducing instru-
ments as if they, the perfected mechanical re-
creators of music, are the necessary successors
and supersessors of the imperfect mechanical
player-piano of yesterday, it is time to call a
halt.
For, if this vicious idea spreads, the
straight player-piano will be killed; and that
would be simply a disaster.
Let us have a revival of the constructive, the
simple, the creative straight player-piano adver-
tising of a few years ago. We cannot afford
to kill the constructive instinct in American mu-
sical appreciation; we cannot afford to eliminate
the entire notion of making music from the
consciousness of the people. As things are,
there is little enough real interest in music.
Let us not deliberately kill what little there is.
PRAISE FOR THEJ)ANQUARD SCHOOL
Prominent Philadelphia Tuner Writes of the
Advantages Offered by This School
The success that piano tuners have had at
the Danquard Player Action School, New York,
has brought forth many enthusiastic endorse-
ments of the course of instruction, and prac-
tically every mail received contains several let-
ters in which tuners express their appreciation
of the knowledge they gained at the school.
One of the most recent was received from Wil-
liam Currlin, a well-known tuner of Philadel-
phia, who states:
"It is a pleasure to take this opportunity of
thanking you and the Danquard Player School
for the privilege of enjoying your excellent
course.
It has been of great value to me,
giving knowledge and confidence in my work.
Since I took the course I have carefully studied
the matter of suggestions for the school, but
so complete and explicit is your work that any
tuner who is willing to study and apply him-
self cannot help carrying away with him a store
of knowledge which will more than pay for
the time and expenses of his stay. The lec-
tures, the work at the tables, and the instruc-
tions on the models are privileges which cannot
be obtained in any other way, but through the
Danquard School. I wish to compliment you
personally for your earnest and sincere inter-
est you display at all times in the school, and
to thank you for the kindness and courtesy you
extended to me while with you."