Pianola

“ There is no excuse for [11] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the war put a stop to music, as to many other things. For years the pianola was not played by either of us. We had other things to do. And in our case, curiously enough, absence from the pianola did not make the heart grow fonder. On the contrary, we seemed to lose our taste for music, and when at last we were restored to our pianola, we found that we had grown out of it.
"It's very ugly," announced Celia.
"We can't help our looks," I said in my grandmother's voice.
"A book-case would be much prettier there."
"But not so tuneful."
"A pianola isn't tuneful if you never play it." ”

“ I know people like Paderewski and—I can only think of Paderewski for the moment—I know that sort of person doesn't think much of the pianola artist; but they are quite wrong about it all. The mechanical agility with the fingers is nothing, the soul is everything. Now you can get the soul, the con molto expressione feeling, just as well in the pianola as in the piano. Of course you have to keep a sharp eye on the music. Some people roll it off just like a barrel-organ; but when I see Allegro or Andante or anything of that kind on the score, I'm on it like a bird. ”

“ If you came to see me, you had to hear it. As arranged for the pianola, it was marked to be played throughout at a lightning pace and with the loudest pedal on. So one would play it if one wished to annoy the man in the flat below; but a true musician has, I take it, a higher aim. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [26] had your musical horizon bounded by coon 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. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ They lack the technique to run through the modern repertoire, and the time to hear others in it. It hardly is necessary to point out what the pianola, which gives them complete technical mastery of the keyboard, should be to them.
As regards the amateur I can cite my own case as an example. I had progressed on the pianoforte until I was able to play Liszt's arrangement of the Spinning Song from Wagner's "Flying Dutchman." It is a difficult piece, but there is a great deal of pianoforte music that is more difficult and that was entirely beyond me. ”

“ If the pianola sometimes is called mechanical, the injustice thus done it is due to its superhuman capacity of playing with perfect ease things that are wholly beyond the fingers even of the greatest virtuosos, yet can be rendered fluently and also expressively by the pianolist who has genuine feeling for music.
It is this combination of technique and expression that gives to Liszt's enormously difficult pianoforte transcription of Saint-Saëns' symphonic poem, "Danse Maccabre," which even for orchestra is an extremely [113] difficult piece, its place in the pianolist's repertory. ”

“ Only the player able to go over his works in person can acquire such knowledge, and the number of amateurs possessed of sufficient technique to play Chopin's music is very small. "But to-day," writes Mr. Ashton Johnson in his "Hand-Book to Chopin's Works," "owing to the invention of the pianola and the fact that all Chopin's works, including even the least important of the posthumous compositions, are now available for that instrument, the whole domain of his music is, for the first time, open to all. ”

“ It is better than the playing of any virtuoso not absolutely of the very first rank, and infinitely preferable to the playing of the most gifted amateur, while the performance of the average [38] amateur almost is juvenile compared with it. Moreover there are pieces of which the Liszt "Campanella," the Mendelssohn "Rondo Capriccioso" and the "Rosamunde" impromptu of Schubert, are examples, that, when played on the pianola by a musical person, sound just as well as if they came from under the fingers of the greatest living virtuoso—possibly better. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Another matter connected with the pianolist's repertory opens up a field for speculation into which, fortunately, it is quite possible for the layman to follow the musician and to appreciate the point I wish to make. As many purchasers of pianolas are people who never have received musical instruction, it might be supposed that the most popular selections for the instrument would be either bits of musical slang like twosteps and ragtime, or, at the best, simple pieces in the recognized classical forms. ”

“ 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 participator 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?" ”

“ I'm not worrying about any piano....
PONZA. I broke that piano up and destroyed it. You know that, the moment your daughter died, to keep this second wife of mine from playing on it. For that matter you know that this second woman never plays.
SIGNORA FROLA. Why, of course, dear! Of course! She doesn't know how to play!
PONZA. And one thing more: Your daughter was Lena, wasn't she? Her name was Lena. Now, see here! You just tell these people what my second wife's name is. Speak up! You know very well what her name is! What is it? What is it?
SIGNORA FROLA. Her name is Julia! ”

“ It is due in very great measure to the example of Paganini’s violin-playing that Liszt at this time, with slow, deliberate toil, created modern piano-playing. The world was struck dumb by the enchantment of the Genoese violinist; men did not trust their ears; something uncanny, inexplicable, ran with this demon of music through the halls. ”

“ The legs are large, and elaborately carved, and are set in brass standards. On each corner of the frame is a design in gilt. There is one wooden pedal, and the range of the piano is five and one-half octaves. The name of the maker has been obliterated.
The piano in Illustration 290 is owned by Mrs. Louis M. Priest of Salem, New York. The body is of rosewood inlaid with brass, the lid being of mahogany, like the elaborately carved trestle-shaped supports. It has two drawers for holding music, and one pedal, the standard for which is a carved lyre with a mirror behind its strings. ”

“ Paganini knows it, takes it home with him, guards it as the apple of his eye; from an instrument that for me would never have been more than a resonant wooden box he draws chords that make men weep, and love, and fall into a very ecstasy; he directs in his will that they bury this violin with him in his coffin. Well, Paganini is the lover, the instrument with its strings and tuning-pegs is the woman. The instrument must be beautifully made and come from the workshop of a right skilful maker; more than that, it must fall into the hands of an accomplished player. ”

“ It is beyond a doubt that Berta's piano has the marvellous quality of making its strings sound without the intervention of the human hand. And this being the case, it must be admitted that this marvellous instrument is, in addition, a consummate musician, for it plays with the skill attained only by great artists.
But since Nurse Juana cannot conceive how a piano can play of itself, without a hand moving the keys, she has decided that in this diabolical affair an invisible hand, the ghostly hand of some spirit from the other world, has intervened. ”

“ So, without meaning any disparagement to the splendid masters to whom I owe all my previous musical culture, I cannot help feeling that I have at last got into the hands not of a mere piano virtuoso, however great, but, rather, of a profound musical savant—a man who has been a violinist, as well as a director, and who, without being a player himself, has made such a study of the piano, that probably all pianists except Liszt might learn something from him. ”

“ They give proof of enormous thought and ingenuity applied to the task of producing effects from the piano that have the quality of eeriness, which, in the playing of Paganini, suggested to the superstitious the coöperation of infernal powers.
In the ‘Variations on a Theme of Handel,’ opus 24, the same powerful intellect may be seen at work in more orthodox efforts. The results are often of more scientific than musical interest. The set is extremely long in performance, and the cumbersome fugue at the end is hardly welcome. ”

“ A simple but charming Louis XVI bed in enamel and cane.
A piano is usually a difficulty, for they are so unwieldy and dark that they are quite out of key with the rest of the room. We have become so used to its ugliness, however, that, sad to say, we are not so much shocked by it as we should be, thinking it a necessary evil. If we walk through the show rooms of one of the great piano companies we shall see that this is a mistake, for there are many cases made of light colored woods, and some have a much more graceful outline than the regulation piano. ”

“ They stand unrivaled. Liszt has arranged many of them for the piano in a most masterly manner. He became so inspired on hearing Paganini, that he composed a fantasia on the main theme of his “Rondo Campanella.” In his obituary notice of Paganini, published in Paris, he places him above all virtuosos. As some of Paganini’s pieces required the violin to be tuned higher than the normal pitch, it was necessary that his strings should be thinner than ordinary to endure the increased strain and give a free vibration. ”

“ The grand piano, littered with music, was a long business. When she passed the duster over the shining wood, she half closed her eyelids, as if she felt the caressing contact of satin; then she passed it over the keys, drawing from them a sort of formless, discordant music, in whose endless variations she revelled. Lucia neither played well, nor much; but when she met with a philharmonic friend, she would instal her at the piano, and herself in a Viennese rocking-chair, where she would close her eyes, beat time with her head and listen. ”

“ It may, indeed, be asked whether these last works are sonatas, whether they be not some new form. Yet the steps by which they evolved are clear, and in them all there are manifold traces of their origin. There is no other literature for the pianoforte comparable to them in scope and power. The special quality of their inspiration each must judge for himself, whether it move him, appeal to him, suit his taste in beauty of sound. But to that inspiration no one can deny a grandeur and nobility, a heroic proportion unique in pianoforte music. ”