Gustav Kobbé

“ To play them is like looking at a dance through a fairy lens; they seem like improvizations of a musician during a dance and to reflect the thoughts and feelings that arise as he looks on, playing the waltz rhythm with the left hand, while the melody and the ornamental note groups indicate his fancy—love, a jealous plaint, joy, ecstasy and the tender whisperings of enamored couples as they glide past. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But I had forgotten one important point which is, that on the pianola nothing is difficult, that with this modern instrument the question of difficulty entirely disappears, and that the most hair-raising, breath-catching exploits of virtuosity are as easy for the pianolist as the most commonplace five-finger exercises are for the pianist. In other words, the pianolist can approach music from a wholly new standpoint. For him music exists simply as music. ”

“ Such is the race of which Liszt recites the epic in the "Hungarian Rhapsodies." They portray the life, the scenes, the mood of the Gypsy camp, vividly, brilliantly, yet with an undercurrent of tragedy—the tragedy of homeless wanderers. Because they represent life, because they are true to life, because they depict life with a wonderful union of realism and beauty, they will, in spite of critical detraction, live as long as the Bach fugues, the Beethoven sonatas or the Wagner music dramas. ”

“ The unfortunate student of music, shackled by instruction that aims mainly at teaching him how to play an instrument and ignores the higher side of art, plods through the classical repertory until he gets an idea that music consists of nothing but symphonies and sonatas, which is as absurd as it would be to say that poetry consists of nothing but sonnets, whereas a couple of dozen good sonnets are enough for the literature of any language. ”

“ 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 coon 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. ”

“ Each time let the pianolist try to get more meaning, more expression out of it than he did before. He will find, if he does this, that, when he takes up another composition, the expression, the art of interpretation, will come to him more naturally and more quickly, until, from an ignorant beginner, he soon will have developed into a musical [164] artist who can give himself and hundreds of others the most exalted pleasure—that of listening to music, not to mere playing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The introduction with all these interesting preliminaries over, the waltz itself opens with a melody full of sentiment and almost personal in its persistent suggestion of wooing. At the same time it has a graceful swing that carries it along like an undercurrent, with rising and falling inflections, and, like the Nevin waltz, with much dainty ornamentation, as if the couple were conversing in low tones while dancing. Then there is a brilliant episode when individuals seem lost sight of in the general vividness [65] of the scene with its gaily colored costumes and flash of jewels. ”

“ No virtuoso can play as delicately and lightly and, at the same time, as distinctly as can the pianolist those rapid pianissimo runs and those exquisite traceries and ornamentations which are found in modern music; all of which does not mean that the pianolist never should play loudly and brilliantly, but that he should not allow himself to be carried away by the possibilities of the instrument in these directions. ”

“ At Chopin's own funeral it was played scored for orchestra. In my opinion it is not only "the best funeral march ever written for the pianoforte," but the most intrinsically beautiful and sad funeral march ever composed. Its opening suggests the solemn tolling of great bells, the heavy march rhythm gives the effect of the slow procession of mourners; and the dirgelike music, soft and muffled at first, grows in power like the measured, inflexible rhythm of fate. Then it seems as if the mourners had arrived at the open grave, for the music voices a weeping melody, pure and tender [135] and sweet ”

“ For observe, that while a music teacher often selects a piece for his pupil, not so much because it is beautiful but because it follows up and supplements the technical exercise which the pupil has been practicing, the pianolist's point of view in choosing his repertory is not obscured by any consideration of this kind. Scratch a Russian and you find a Tartar; scratch musical instruction of the average kind and you find technique. The pianolist's [49] progress is determined by music's appeal to his soul; the average music pupil's by what he can accomplish with his fingers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ True it is that serious musicians are apt to wear a somewhat supercilious expression at mention of her music and to pronounce it clever rather than deep, yet it is equally true that it takes its place among the best salon pieces of the day and gains value if only from the fact that this bright French woman has skillfully refrained from attempting flights for which her graceful wings are not strong enough. Most of her music is characterized by a fascinating archness and coquetry and requires quick and sudden changes in time for its proper interpretation. ”

“ They imitate the curious æolian harp effects of the most characteristic instrument of the Gypsy orchestra, the cembalon, a large, shallow box with strings about as numerous as those of the pianoforte, and played with two little mallets, with which the player produces the weird arpeggios or rapid, broken chords and the improvised runs characteristic of Hungarian Gypsy music; and they also prepare the player and listener for the rapid movement into which the slow melody passes over, finally to dash into the very frenzy of emotional and physical excitement. ”

“ The pianola roll is a reproduction of an arrangement for four hands, that is, for two players at one piano, yet only one player is required to produce the full effect of a pianoforte duet arranged from an orchestral composition.
Moskowszki is a prolific composer, and it is well worth the pianolist's while to thoroughly explore the catalogue of his works. Much modern music merely echoes what has gone before and may be summed up as watered Chopin. ”

“ 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 classical pieces. You don't like that word "classical," 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." ”

“ 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 [18] 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?" ”

“ That's one of the great things about the instrument. You can profit by the directions just as much as you want to, but you can disregard them whenever you have a mind to. It may seem presumptuous to differ, even in a small detail, from a great virtuoso like Paderewski, but every virtuoso has his idiosyncrasies and we, who, after all, have been listening to music all our lives and have heard all the great pianists from Rubinstein to 'Paddy' himself and all the women pianists from Essipoff to Bloomfield-Zeisler, are entitled to some ideas of our own. ”

“ Of the Chopin waltzes in general, it should first be said that they are not dance-tunes but expressions, alternately brilliant, charming and sad, of the intimacy of the ballroom, and that they possess an innate grace which no other composer has been able to impart to the form. They [125] have been characterized as salon music of the noblest kind and were well described by Schumann when he said that if they were played for dances, half the ladies present should be countesses—which exactly hits off the distinguished quality of these valses. ”

“ There is a large class of people to whom the "piano-player" is or should be a great boon. I mean those who play the pianoforte, but not well enough to play publicly or professionally. To this class belong the thousands of music teachers and the amateurs. The majority of them may be more truly musical than many of the virtuoso pianists, but they are lacking in technique. For the technical standard is growing higher every year. Comparatively few music [35] teachers have much opportunity of hearing music, the result being that they find it difficult to keep up with the times. ”

“ He observed a rhythm and modulation totally different from those we are accustomed to, and seemed to allow his voice to go at random, like the smoke of the vessel carried away and swayed by the breeze. It was a reverie rather than a song, a kind of careless floating of the voice, with which the mind had little to do, but which kept time [131] with the swaying of the ship and the faint lapping of the dark water, and resembled a vague improvization restrained, nevertheless, by sweet and monotonous forms. ”

“ A sonata is a composition in several movements, usually four, and follows a clearly outlined, in fact, an almost rigid form, not to say formula. It attained its highest development during the classical period and left its impress upon all the larger compositions of that time, for a symphony is nothing more than a sonata composed for orchestra, instead of for the pianoforte, and trios, quartets, and other pieces of chamber music of the classical period are sonatas for the corresponding combination of instruments. ”

“ The fact that artistic expression instead of machine-like precision has been its aim is what [15] 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 assert itself. ”

“ In looking over the catalogue of music for the mechanical piano-player I find that this immensely difficult study by Liszt, so difficult that Von Bülow classes [42] it with the Chopin study, "the highest pinnacle of the pianist's Parnassus," is listed with the "popular" pieces. Thus a composition which taxes the resources of the greatest virtuosos to the utmost and which few if any amateurs can play at all, presents no difficulties whatsoever to the pianolist and actually becomes "popular." ”

“ Peer watches his mother's life slowly ebb away and seeks to divert her mind from death by grotesque tales, even throwing himself astride a chair and persuading her through subjective suggestion, that he is the forerider of a beautiful chariot in which she is seated, so that the poor woman, who all her life long has felt the pinch of penury, dies with a vision of wealth and glory before her eyes created for her by the son, worry over whom has hastened her death. ”

“ The slow melody in the first part of the rhapsodies (a different melody in each rhapsody of course) is the "lassan," a sad song giving utterance to the pathos of the race. The dance music that follows, so full of playful humor, grace, caprice, coquetry and dashing contrast, is the "frischka"; while the delirium, almost demoniac in its fury, with which the rhapsody rushes to its intoxicating finale, and compared with which the Italian tarantella and even the Dervish dance of the East are tame, is the "czardas." ”

“ Some geniuses express themselves on a larger, but not necessarily on a greater scale, than others. In poetry, for example, Poe's "Raven" is not to be ranked below Milton's "Paradise Lost" [118] because shorter; nor in music need a Chopin ballad be placed below a Beethoven symphony because not so extended as the latter. Every genius, however, must expect to be condemned until Time silences criticism of his work. ”

“ The repertoire of even the best amateur is apt to be a small one. He gains his general knowledge of music from what he hears.
With me, in time, as with so many amateurs, pianoforte playing had to yield first place to my regular work. I took up writing and that became paramount. I began to lose my pianoforte technique, and I should not like to say how many years it is since I lost the ability to play Liszt's arrangement of the Spinning Song from the "The Flying Dutchman," the "Butterfly" etude of Chopin and other works that I had had at my fingers' ends. ”

“ 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 [17] part in the making of it is open to everybody. ”

“ It is not overstating the case to say that the pianola is the first practical means ever devised in history through which people in general, whether they have had previous instruction in music or not, can become familiar with the world's best musical compositions. Not only can they familiarize themselves with the past, they are able to keep up with the present. For example, many of Richard Strauss's works, including selections from "Salome," are to be found on the rolls prepared for this modern instrument. ”

“ Marches and dances of a popular kind and the seemingly inevitable coon-song may be regarded as the infant's food of the musical novice. For a person whose love of music still is latent, may not "arrive" at once at the "Second Rhapsody" or the "Tannhäuser" overture. The friend to whom I have dedicated this book began with the lightest kind of music, the kind he now regards as "trash." For from knowing nothing at all about music, he has become, through the piano-player, an ardent lover of all that is good in the art. Nevin's "Narcissus" happened to be included in his first set of rolls. ”