The Pianolist Part 1

The Pianolist.

by Gustav Kobbe.

I. THE t.i.tLE AND PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK

My book, "How to Appreciate Music," in the chapter devoted to the pianoforte, contains a paragraph relating to the Pianola and its influence in popularizing music and stimulating musical taste. I confess that before I started that paragraph I was puzzled to know what term to use in designating the instrument I had in mind.

"Mechanical piano-player" is a designation which not only does not appeal to me, but, furthermore, fails to do justice to the instrument, which, although mechanical in its working, is far from being mechanical in its effects.

The result?--I took a cross cut and arrived straight at the word Pianola as being the name of the most widely known piano-player, and happily derived from the name of the most widely known instrument, the pianoforte or, as it is more popularly termed, the piano. For this reason the term Pianola was used in the paragraph referred to and now is employed in this book; and, for the same reason, this book is called "The Pianolist." It is believed to be the t.i.tle least requiring explanation, if, indeed, it requires any explanation at all. Right here, however, I must add that the company which manufactures the Pianola objects to the use of the word as a generic term.

So much for the t.i.tle. Now for the purpose of this book.

Soon after the publication of "How to Appreciate Music" I discovered that the paragraph concerning this new musical instrument had made a hit. It was widely quoted as evidence of the "up-to-dateness" of the book and I began to receive letters from pianola owners who were pleased that the merits of the instrument should have been recognized in a serious book on music. Among these was a letter from a Mr. Harry Mason, of Detroit, suggesting that I should write a book for the use of those who owned piano-players. Mr. Mason and myself never have met.

He knows me merely as an author of a book on music. All I know of him is that he is one of the editors of a druggists' trade paper in Detroit. Yet from him has come the suggestion which has led me to write this book, although, to judge from his letter, he had not been deeply interested in music until he began to use a "player" and, through it, was led to ask for a book which would tell him, in untechnical language, something about an art that was beginning to have eloquence and meaning for him. To me this is highly significant, for there must be thousands of others like him all over the country, to whom, in the same way, the great awakening just is coming through the pianola--at first a means of amus.e.m.e.nt, then an educator with the element of amus.e.m.e.nt, but of a higher order, left in!

Shortly after I received Mr. Mason's letter an incident added greatly to the force of his suggestion. I always have been very fond of Schubert's "Rosamunde" impromptu. The first person I heard play it publicly was Annette Essipoff, a Russian pianist and one of the very few great women pianists of the world. Frequently I have heard it since then, but never so charmingly interpreted excepting--But that is the most interesting part of the story.

One night I was at my desk in my study, when, suddenly, I heard the strains of this impromptu, which is an air with variations, from the direction of the drawing room. It was sweet and tender, graceful and expressive, according to the character of the variations; and, when the last variation began with a crispness and delicacy that made me wonder what great virtuoso was at my pianoforte without my knowing it, I hurried to the drawing room and, entering it--found my fourteen year old daughter seated at a pianola. The instrument had arrived only a short time before from the house of a friend who had gone South for the winter. My daughter never had had a music lesson, never had heard Schubert's "Rosamunde" impromptu. Yet she had, without any effort, been the first to take me back to Essipoff's playing of Schubert's charming work! It would have been ludicrous had it not meant so much.

In fact it was ludicrous because, a few days before, when the instrument had just been delivered and set up, I had been deceived in much the same manner by her playing of a composition by Grieg.

But to return to the Schubert impromptu. Essipoff, my young daughter, the a.s.sociate editor of a druggist' paper in Detroit, and myself; the first a great virtuoso, the second a schoolgirl, the third a writer on a trade paper, the fourth a music critic--what a leveller of distinctions, what a universal musical provider the pianola is! Ten years ago the virtuoso and the music critic would have been the only ones concerned. The schoolgirl and the trade paper editor wouldn't have been "in it." Now, the schoolgirl was playing like a virtuoso and the writer on drugs and druggists was giving hints to the music critic. A great leveller, placing the musical elect and those who formerly would have had to remain outside the pale, on a common footing! This may not always appeal to the musical elect, but think what it means to the great ma.s.s of those who are genuinely musical but have lacked the opportunity for musical study or to those whose taste for music never has been brought out.

To paraphrase a few sentences from my "How to Appreciate Music" that have been much quoted:--

"'Are you musical?'

"'No,' nine persons out of ten will reply; 'I neither play nor sing.'

"'Your answer shows a complete misunderstanding of the case. Because you neither play nor sing, it by no means follows that you are unmusical. If you love music and appreciate it, you may be more musical than many pianists and singers; or latent within you and only awaiting the touchstone of music there may be a deeper love and appreciation of the art than can be attributed to many virtuosos. For most of a virtuoso's love and appreciation is apt to be centered upon himself. And when you say, 'I cannot play,' you are mistaken. You are thinking of the pianoforte. You may not be able to play that. But you or any one else can play the pianola, and that instantly places at your command all the technical resources of which even the greatest virtuosos can boast."

One purpose of this book thus is to bring home to people an appreciation of what this modern instrument is, whether it is regarded as a toy with which the business man amuses himself with two-steps and ragtime after business hours, or as a serious musical instrument.

Another purpose, and a large one, is to furnish pianolists with a guide to the music which they play, or might play if their attention were directed to it and to some of its characteristics, and to point out the importance of the instrument in developing a love of good music.

I also have in writing this book a purpose which I may describe as personal. I believe I was the first American to publish an a.n.a.lysis of the Wagner music dramas that seemed to be what the public wanted, and the first to contribute to a magazine of general circulation an article on Richard Strauss. It is a matter of pride with me always to be found on the firing line--even if it is the privilege of those who watch the battle from a safe distance to dictate the despatches and take the credit for the result to themselves. And so, I wish to be the first to write a book on the pianola, an instrument of such importance to the progress and popular spread of music that, at the present time, we can have but a faint glimmering of the great part it is destined to play.

II. THE CHARM OF PLAYING A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT YOURSELF

How I wish I could play like that! What is more common than this exclamation from people who are listening to a great virtuoso or even only to a fairly clever amateur? They realize that, no matter how much they may enjoy a performance, there is much greater fascination in being the performer. Not a musical person but would play if he could.

Why, however, that "if"? It no longer exists. It has been eliminated.

The charm, the fascination of playing a musical instrument yourself can be yours, and the only "if" to it is--if you have intelligence enough to appreciate what that means.

What formerly was an insuperable obstacle, the lack of technical facility--the real inability to play--absolutely has been done away with. There is no excuse for anybody's not playing who wants to. The pianola furnishes the technique, the dexterity, the finger facility, or whatever you may choose to call it. So far as this is concerned the instrument itself makes you a virtuoso--places you on a par with a Liszt, Paderewski or Rosenthal. It does so mechanically, yet without the sharpness and insistent preciseness of a machine. Its action is pneumatic and the effect of the compressed air is to impart to its "touch"--the manner in which its "fingers" strike the keys--an elasticity which at least is comparable with the touch of human fingers. As a friend of mine, a lawyer, who has owned three pianolas and who actually has been made musical through them, expresses it:--"When you've got a mechanical device as good or nearly as good as a virtuoso, you've got something of enormous importance to the whole world." And so you have.

I find a great feature of the so-called mechanical piano-player lies in what it allows you to do yourself. It provides you with technique, but, to use a colloquial phrase, "you can still call your soul your own." The technique, the subst.i.tute for that finger facility which only years of practice will give, is the pianola's; but the interpretation is _yours_! The instrument provides the devices for accelerating or r.e.t.a.r.ding the time and for making the tone loud or soft, but when to whip up the time or to slow down, when to use the sustaining or the soft lever or when to swell through a crescendo from pianissimo to fortissimo--all that is left to your own taste, judgment and discretion. There is, indeed, among the improvements introduced in the pianola a contrivance, of which more hereafter, by which complete directions are given for the interpretation of the roll of music that is being played. These directions, however, are not compulsory. They are, in each instance, based on high authority and are of great value even to persons who are thoroughly familiar with the music, but they need not be followed if the player does not want to follow them. He is likely in the beginning to accept the directions, the so-called metrostyle marking, as he would the instruction of a high cla.s.s teacher, while, later on, he may incline to regard the metrostyle as indicating the general spirit in which the piece should be interpreted, but vary it in detail as his mood or fancy dictates. The metrostyle may, in fact, be called the pianolist's "coach," giving him the kind of hints and directions which even the greatest players and singers value. Something, however, of the pianolist himself, something of his own thought and feeling goes into every interpretation. That this is so is proved by the fact that no two pianolists interpret the same composition alike. There are differences, more or less marked, just as there are when the same piece is played by two pianists. In the broader outlines, in general spirit, the interpretations may be the same, but they will be distinguished by subtle shadings that indicate temperamental differences. The perspective of a landscape varies when viewed from different windows; so does life when observed from different points of view; so does the interpretation of a composition when played by different people on the pianola.

Were the instrument purely a mechanical device to wind up and set going, the artistic results of which it is capable never would have been obtained, and, I may add, this book never would have been written. The fact that artistic expression instead of machine-like precision has been its aim is what has caused its possibilities as a musical instrument to appeal to me. It cannot be sufficiently urged that in this country, as in every other, there is an immense amount of latent musical taste awaiting only the touchstone of hearing music or, better still, the fascination of personally producing music, to a.s.sert itself. Before the invention of the piano-player hearing music was the only touchstone; through the piano-player there is added the fascination of being yourself a partic.i.p.ator in producing the music you hear. When Theodore Thomas said "Nothing so awakens interest in music as helping to make it," he hit the nail on the head. "After playing all this music I want to go to concerts next winter. I'd like to hear how the 'Fifth Symphony' sounds on the orchestra," said my little girl after the pianola had been in the house only a week. "All this music?" Yes indeed. More than she could have become familiar with in six months' concert-going and instruction. And we always had said that she wasn't musical!

This fascination of personally producing music is such a great factor in the spread of musical taste that it is well worth looking into further. There always is more pleasure in doing something than in watching some one else do it. Take the average amateurs who get together for music. They enjoy what they play a thousand-fold more than if they were listening to the greatest virtuosos playing the same program. Why? Because always there is more satisfaction in doing the thing itself than merely in contemplating the result of what some one else is doing. And so, with music, "to experience the full fascination the divine art can exercise on us mortals, we must take an active part in the making of it." Through the pianola the opportunity of taking an active part in the making of it is open to everybody. Remember what my friend said. It is worth repeating. "When you've got a mechanical device as good, or nearly as good as a virtuoso, you've got something of enormous importance to the whole world." Mechanical, remember, only in a certain sense. Were it wholly mechanical it never could be "as good, or nearly as good, as a virtuoso."

Now let us see how this personal affiliation of pianola and pianolist, of instrument and player, has been worked out, so that the player is not a mere human treadmill pumping air into a cabinet on castors, but--whether he be a lawyer, merchant, financier, dressmaker, milliner, or society leader; one of the Four Hundred or one of the eighty million--a musical artist with an unlimited repertory.

The pianoforte is the most universal musical instrument of the civilized world. I once turned the old question, "What is home without a mother," into "What is home without a pianoforte?" Practically no household that makes claim to refinement is without one. Only too often, however, even in such homes, it is merely an article of drawing room furniture, because no member of the household can play it. There it stands waiting for the chance visitor who can strike the keys and make the strings vibrate with music.

Imagine that you are a member or let us say the head of that household. You can't play a note and yet you are "fond of music." This "fondness for music" manifests itself in different degree in different people and somewhat according to their opportunities. You may be a hardworking business man and when you come home from business, you want diversion, amus.e.m.e.nt. For some one to suggest a cla.s.sical concert to you would make you feel like being asked to begin the day's work all over again without a night's rest in between. As for Wagner, that would be worse than straightening out an intricate account after a day spent in poring over a ledger. No. Music without any tune to it may be all right for some people, but comic opera is "good enough" for you. You like that c.o.o.n song you heard the other night. How you would enjoy playing it on the pianoforte if you only knew how! But you don't, so you have to pay a speculator three dollars for a seat if you want to hear it again.

Suppose the days of miracles weren't past and, by some miracle, you suddenly found yourself in command of the technique of the pianoforte--able to play whatever you wanted to. You'd buy that c.o.o.n song and some other pieces of light music, and then you'd hurry home to your pianoforte and play them off as fast as you could, while the family stood around and listened and marvelled.

That is precisely the miracle the pianola performs for you. It gives you, from the moment it enters your house, control over the keyboard of the pianoforte that so long has stood mute in your home. All you have to do is to put in the perforated music roll, work the pedals--and the music begins. Supposing it is that c.o.o.n song from the comic opera you liked so much. The first time you play it, you may be so interested in the instrument's accurate reproduction of the tune that you don't stop to think of the expression. The chances are, however, that your delight over what you have accomplished will lead you to play the song right over again. Now you begin to realize that there was something more than mere accuracy in the delivery of the melody when you heard it at the theatre. There was interpretation, that something which the individual artist puts into everything he does. You will recall that while the piece was taken pretty fast as a whole, some phrases were taken faster, others more slowly. You have been told that by moving a little lever to the right or left, you can produce these effects. You try it. When you come to a phrase that should be taken a little faster, you move the lever slightly to the right--and the pianoforte responds. It is the same when you move the lever to the left for the slower phrases--the pianoforte responds and the phrase is r.e.t.a.r.ded. Two other levers control the volume of sound so that you can play any part of the piece louder or softer if you want to. It is not at all unlikely that you may vary these details to suit yourself, instead of simply being guided by your recollection of what you heard at the theatre. In a word you yourself become on the spot an interpreter of music, put something of yourself into what you play. The instrument instead of being merely a machine that grinds out music is a machine only in so far as it takes the place of technique, of finger facility. The expression, the real interpretation, that which gives one the fascination of playing, is your own.

That's your first experience with the instrument. Pretty soon you are apt to have another experience that is even more valuable. You stocked up pretty well with the music of the day, the current Broadway comic opera and musical comedy successes. Gradually, however, that pet c.o.o.n song of yours will begin to pall on you a little. The very jingle to the tune that made it catch your fancy so quickly causes you to tire of it, and so it goes with the other pieces whose rhythm is so marked and continued with such great precision and whose tunefulness was so obvious that they made an instantaneous impression upon your musically untrained sense of hearing. You are beginning to find out what any one who is trained in any art is bound to discover sooner or later. The things most easily understood are not apt to give the most lasting pleasure. Some one suggests to you that you try one of the lighter cla.s.sical pieces. You don't like that word "cla.s.sical," it suggest heaviness, lack of tunefulness, the kind of thing that "may be all right for some people," but never, you think, would suit you. At last, however, you yield. You inquire for something of the kind and are advised to try Mendelssohn's "Spring Song." Much to your surprise you don't find it heavy at all. In fact you recall once having heard it played between the acts in a theatre and having thought it rather pretty. Its rhythm isn't as persistently emphatic as that of ragtime, nor does its melody stand out in such sharp relief, but instead of wearying you on repet.i.tion, you like it better every time you play it.

Encouraged by this experience you next purchase the same composer's "Spinning Song." This may not appeal to you so much at first. It seems to run along very rapidly without any very clearly defined melody.

Still, it is by the same composer as the "Spring Song," so it may be worth trying over again. It is more familiar now, and you begin to a.s.sociate the rapid, whirring phrases with its t.i.tle--with the idea of "spinning." How clear it suddenly becomes. You even conjure up in your mind the picture of some young woman in quaint garb seated at a spinning wheel in an old-fas.h.i.+oned room--and you find yourself experiencing all the pleasure that comes from a.s.sociation of ideas, the keenest enjoyment that art affords. You are making rapid progress now, so rapid that it is as impossible as unnecessary to follow you step by step. The main point is that you are becoming truly musical and at the same time enjoying it. What might be "all right for some people" has become all right for you too. You have been repaid a thousand-fold for the little effort it cost you to discover through the gradual development of a taste that had lain dormant, the kind of music that "lasts." The same thing is true of your whole family. It has become musical, and in an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time. The pianola has done it, and done the same thing in thousands of other cases.

Now take the case of some one whose musical taste, to begin with, is more advanced. Supposing that, instead of having had your musical horizon bounded by c.o.o.n songs and comic operas, you were an attendant at orchestral concerts, song and pianoforte recitals and grand opera.

You are a genuine music lover, genuinely musical, but you can't play.

You long to reproduce and express at home the music you have heard elsewhere. If only, after hearing Paderewski play your favorite Chopin nocturne, which, as with so many other music lovers, is the exquisite one in G major, Opus 37, No. 2, you could go to your own pianoforte and play it! You think it is one of the most beautiful compositions in the whole repertory, and of all pianists whom you have heard, Paderewski, in your opinion, plays it better than any other. There are pieces that sound more difficult and you have been told that it doesn't call for advanced technique as much as it does for soul. That is what your favorite virtuoso seems to you to put into it--soul, his own soul, interpreting himself, unconsciously expressing his own thoughts and feelings, through those of the composer. That is what you are convinced you could do, if only you knew how to play; for you are musical, very musical, almost, in fact, to your finger tips. But these, alas, never have been trained to command the keyboard. You are getting along well in business, making money and all that; and yet you look upon your life as half a failure because, although you have the temperament artistic, you are unable to gratify fully your pa.s.sion for music. You can listen, but you can't play. You can hear Paderewski interpret your favorite nocturne, but you can't go home to your own pianoforte and let your fingers conjure up memories of it on the keyboard. You have a beautiful pianoforte in your house--for the use of others. You'd be willing to mortgage half your income for life, if you could learn to play it yourself. But it's too late for that now.

So you think.

But one day you drop in at a friend's house and from the drawing room come strains of your favorite Chopin nocturne. Something about it reminds you of the way Paderewski plays it. Who can it be? You know that your friend doesn't play the pianoforte. But, as you stand in the doorway, hesitating whether to go in or not, it is he who looks out at you from behind the instrument and nods to you to come in. You drop into a chair and listen and wonder. The nocturne comes to an end, your friend rises, greets your wondering look with a smile, and meets your amazed query with one word: "Pianola!"

"It sounded like Paderewski," you stammer in a dazed sort of way.

"Why shouldn't it? Practically, I have been taught how to play it by that great artist." He takes out the roll and brings it over for you to look at. On it you see, reproduced in facsimile this autographed certification:

"The line on this roll indicates the tempo according to my interpretation.

"I.J. Paderewski."

The roll, as the expression goes, has been "metrostyled" by the virtuoso himself.

"I didn't know you had one of these instruments. Why haven't you told me?--How long have you had it?"

"About a week," he answers.

"And you can make it sound like that?"

"Of course I can. Nothing easier. Just stand behind me and watch."

He replaces the music roll and, as he pedals and it unrolls, he shows you how easy it is with the metrostyle to follow the red line marked by Paderewski to indicate how he plays the piece.

"According to my idea," continues your friend, "he plays some parts of the second melody a little too slowly--makes it too sentimental, instead of poetically expressive. You may observe that I don't always follow the line. That's one of the great things about the instrument.