Music Trade Review

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
MUSIC TMDE
1
s£==Z<>L
PLAYER SECTON
NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 24, 1916
i^
The Presentation of Five Hundred Rolls of Standard Music to the Chicago
Public Library Should Eventually Result in the Establishment of Music Roll
Departments in Libraries Generally, with Consequent Benefit to the Player
The Starr Piano Co. has presented ,500 rolls
of standard music to the Chicago Public Li-
brary, to be placed on loan at the new Wood-
lawn branch, which is said to possess one of the
best small library buildings in the country. The
policy represented in this gift has been pursued
by the Starr Piano Co. at intervals durihg the
last four years, and as a result several other
public libraries in various parts of the. Middle
West are the richer by collections of music
rolls, which they loan out to patrons on the
same cards and in the same manner as books.
It is evident that the idea thus translated into
action is both interesting and important, and we
have to ask ourselves whether it is one that
should be imitated by other manufacturers.
It is conceivable that there are two sides to
this question, as there are two sides to some
.Others. We have heard dealers complain that
to preseni free music rolls to city libraries is
like presenting free coal or clothing; calamitous
to the regular dealers in. those commodities.
But this is a very weak and superficial view,
which closer analysis discloses to be wholly
false. If one thing is plainer than another it
is that only the surface of the possible trade
in player-pianos, and no more, has yet been
scratched.
No systematic campaign has yet
been made to reach every music-loving family
in the country. All attempts are spasmodic and
depend upon the commonly held, but quite
wrong notion that selling these instruments is
something that demands secret methods of
salesmanship and cannot be based on the
straight merits of the instrument itself. The
result is beginning to be seen in the now com-
mon realization among dealers that the public
are not buying enough musical instruments, that
some new method of exciting interest in the
player-piano must be devised forthwith.
Awakening Interest in Music
Now to excite a selling campaign into active
life, the first need is to awaken the definite and
live interest of the people. In order to do
this in the case of musical instruments, it is
plainly necessary that everything possible should
be done to create a musical feeling among the
people. As things are, not half enough atten-
tion is given to music in the American home.
One cannot call the popular hits of the day real
music in this sense, for it is perfectly plain on
the face of things that American men and
women of the present generation, who have been
nurtured on this music, are in no wise musical.
Between the automobile which carries them
away from home and the cabaret which kills
any musical desire they may ever have cherished,
the people, ar£ .certainly not becoming more mu-
sical or showing a greater desire to invest in
relatively costly instruments of music.
It is obvious that the public library exerts its
most powerful influence upon the younger peo-
ple and it is precisely on these younger ones
that the beneficial influence of a collection of
standard music rolls for free borrowing will be
greatest and most desirable. Of-course only
those whose parents own player-pianos will be
able to make direct use of the collections, but
children and young people visit much among
each other and the library rolls are always
equally interesting and novel both to the proud
borrowers and to their visiting young friends.
The unspoken but powerful influence of the
library roll must penetrate to every home where
no player-piano yet finds place, helping to
awaken desire and to stimulate it into action.
Surely no one can suppose that influence of
this sort is or can be aught but most bene-
ficial. The influence of free libraries has not
been inimical to book buying, nor has their
practice of loaning out sheet music been inimi-
cal to the sheet- music business. Why, there-
fore, should the practice of loaning out music
rolls, one or two at a time for short periods,
be inimical to the music roll business?
The answer, of course, is that music rolls in
libraries can have no influence except of the
greatest benefit and value. Consider briefly the
points in favor of the idea:
How the Idea Will Help
In the first place we have the important fact
that the player-piano obtains a standing in the
world that it never had before. Every time a
public library puts in a stock of music rolls,
that library is saying to its patrons: "The
player-piano is a legitimate musical instrument,
of which we approve and in which we believe."
In the second place, the influence exerted
in favor of the player-piano by the presence
of rolls from the library scattered weekly all
over a city is enormous. The children and
young people who will probably be the prin-
cipal borrowers will be much more anxious to
get what they can out of a roll when there is
a time limit on it, than they would if father or
mother has just "brought it home." Thus they
will pay more attention to playing and will
take more interest in the player-piano at home.
But there is also the further point that the
friends of these young people will be always
very much taken up over the idea that music
rolls can be borrowed from the library, and if
they have no player-piano at home, will speed-
ily wish for one. Conversations on the sub-
ject will take place at home, and prospects will
be automatically produced there and then.
In the third place, there is the undoubted
fact that to place a library of standard music
rolls at the disposal of every famjily that owns
a player-piano is to do a great dcjal in the way
of creating in the home the much!needed musi-
cal atmosphere. The idea that the player-
piano is not conducive to real mujsical thinking
is as absurd as the companion jdea that our
American men and women will jnot listen to
good music even when they have the chance.
It is not recognized that the people do not
listen to good music only because it is seldom
brought to them.
;
Bringing Good Music to the; People
We are speaking, of course, ab'out the mass
of the people shut up in the interior com-
munities; and not of the pampered inhabitants
of cities like New York, who could have plenty
of good music if they would, and' who, in fact,
have daily spread before them a imusical feast
such as Vienna herself might well envy. The
mass of the people it is that makes; this industry
of ours possible, and the mass of f;he people do
not get good music; because good music is not
brought to them.
And what has the bringing of good music to
the people to do with the player-piano busi-
ness? Simply this: that good music means good
interest in music and musical instruments, in-
terest that translates itself into the purchase
of musical instruments, that stimulates thought
about music and about musical instruments, and
that produces a musical atmosphere.
A musical atmosphere may be hjard to define,
but there is no mistaking its existence in the
community fortunate enough to possess it. The
community that has made music part of its
life, that thinks and talks music a ] bit each day,
in the home, naturally and without (affectation, as
a part of its daily routine, is a musical com-
munity. In just this sense such 'a community
as (is it?) Lindsborg, Kan., is a musical com-
munity, while huge Chicago, despite its opera,
its magnificent symphony orchestra and its
many professional musicians, is not as musical as
it could and should be.
It is the musical community that-is, most val-
uable to the dealer. The player has unjustly
suffered in musical communities through its .as-
sociation with things that are musically un-
worthy; but this association has been largely
artificial; and the movement to place music
rolls in public libraries has the enormous in-
cidental advantage of doing away with this un-
fortunate and improper situation.