Music Trade Review

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PIANO FACTORY and
PIANO SERVICING
DR. W M . BRAID WHITE
Technical Editor
The Need for a More
Intensive Organization
of Tuning Profession
DR. W M . BRAID WHITE
F any reader supposes that during re-
cent months I have devoted an unduly
large amount of time to considering the
problems of the tuner and of his pros-
pects, this is only because I recognize
very clearly how vital these problems are,
not only to the men immediately concerned
but to the future of all music in this country.
\/Vs things stand, it begins to appear that the
art of tuning and of repairing musical instru-
ments may actually in due course cease to
attract any new blood and may be in actual
danger of dying through sheer inanition.
Such a state of affairs would constitute noth-
ing less, in my opinion, than a catastrophe.
The art of music depends for its practical
expression far more than is usually supposed
upon the practical ministrations of the tuner
craftsman. Without him there would be no
piano tuning done. Pianos would remain
out of tune and out of mechanical adjust-
ment until they ceased to be playable. Some
few musicians might thereupon, and in de-
spair, undertake to acquire the art for them-
selves. This, of course, would tend to miti-
gate the disaster. Indeed, there would then
be a place for some competent person or
persons to begin teaching the art to musicians,
just as is already being attempted, hesitat-
ingly and without system, in one or more
large colleges of music at the present time.
It is even possible that the whole practical
organization of the tuning art might be com-
pletely changed, so that it should become a
necessary accomplishment of the trained mu-
sician instead of, as it is now, a quasi-artis-
tic craft practiced principally by men who
are not musicians at all.
I do not suggest that this latter possibility
is either to be desired or confidently antici-
I
18
pated. 1 merely say that it is not at all im-
possible. And for that very reason, seeing
in fact that the future of the art as now
practically organized and carried on, may
fairly be described as uncertain, I find mv-
self much interested in some correspondence
which I have been carrying on with Mr.
H. W. Stokes, Jr., who is the honorary gen-
eral secretary of the Pianoforte Tuners' As-
sociation of Great Britain. Mr. Stokes has
been kind enough to write to me some very
interesting letters of information and com-
ment upon the policies which have main-
tained his association for the last twenty years
and which continue to maintain it in what
may fairly be called vigorous life. He has
also sent to me a file of the monthly maga-
zine "The Piano Tuner," which his associa-
tion publishes and which he edits. From
the sources thus furnished I have been able
to learn a good deal about the British asso-
ciation and about the policies which have en-
abled its directors to keep it alive and grow-
ing in these difficult times.
THE BRITISH
of all activities and of all interests. In this
country matters are not so simple. There is
really no American metropolis. New York
is in its large way quite as sectional and
provincial as Chicago is in its nearly as large
and quite different way, and for that matter
as are Des Moines, Atlanta, New Orleans,
Los Angeles or Providence. The United
States are united politically, but they are sepa-
rated in a thousand other ways, socially,
economically and in point of local customs.
The local division in some form becomes, in
fact, almost indispensable to national associa-
tions in the United States; just because there
is no single American center to which the
whole nation looks as to an acknowledged
authority.
Chicago probably approaches
more closely than does any other city to be-
ing centrally American; but Chicago is as
much disliked in the East of the country as,
on the shores of Lake Michigan, New York
is partly envied and partly condemned.
THE STATE AS A UNIT
EXPERIENCE
Mr. Stokes tells me that his fellow directors
have found it advisable to discontinue
branches or divisions. At least, if I under-
stand him rightly, the policy of maintaining
local branches, local divisions, was found to
be less useful in practice than it appeared
to be at first in theory. In a small country
like Great Britain (small, that is to say, on
the physical scale as compared with the enor-
mous expanse of the United States), it is
possible to regulate the activities of a na-
tional association effectively from a single
center, especially when that center is London,
the acknowledged metropolis and the focus
I say all this because I see that the English
policy would not fit in bare outline the re-
quirements of the U. S. A. The local divi-
sions are actually the backbone of the Na-
tional Association of Piano Tuners. But the
weakness in both cases of the policy of devo-
lution is the same. Mr. Stokes merely puts
point to it when he says that his association
found the branches or divisions to be afflicted
always with the disease of internal dissen-
sion and with that centrifugal tendency
which is apparently always present when the
supreme directing heads of a group are far
away and out of touch with local conditions.
Mr. Stokes says that his association has found
it better to maintain individual members in
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THE
MUSIC
TRADE
REVIEW,
June-July, 1932