PLAYING
As in the automobile, for example, the tendency is to make everything automatic and relieve the human control of effort, we are moving fast in the direction of creating automatic devices in musical instruments. It is safe to predict that a variety of instruments for children will be more easily played than at present, and that even for the virtuoso a number of the factors which have been difficult to control will be simplified and mechanized. This will be particularly true in ensemble instruments where a single player may control a large number of instruments or where three or four players, of whom one is the conductor, may render the equivalent of an orchestral performance. Barring the limitations of the instrument it is significant that in such performance the conductor will have vastly superior control of the situation in that he is in direct manual control of all those factors which in the present orchestra he tries to control through the medium of the individuals and masses of players with the baton as a sort of whip. In the new orchestra, he will sit at a panel with levers and buttons through which he will be able to control the interpretation he desires to make.
This conducting may be done with meticulous precision and apparently magical result through remote control, as was illustrated, even with the use of present instruments, when Stokowski sat at his panel in Washington, D. C. and controlled the performance of his orchestra in Philadelphia.