I. A POPULAR SONG IN THE MAKING
A very large room—an entire floor, usually—is divided into a reception room, where vaudeville and cabaret performers are waiting their turns to rehearse, and half-a-dozen little rooms, each containing a piano. As the walls of these rooms are never very thick, and often are mere partitions running only two-thirds of the way to the ceiling, the discord of conflicting songs is sometimes appalling. Every once in a while some performer comes to the manager of the department and insists on being rehearsed by the writers of the latest song-hit themselves. And as often as not the performer is informed that the writers are out. In reality, perhaps, they are working on a new song in a back room. Being especially privileged, let us go into that back room and watch them at work.
All there is in the room is a piano and a few chairs. One of the chairs has a broad arm, or there may be a tiny table or a desk. With this slender equipment two persons are working as though the salvation of the world depended on their efforts. One of them is at the piano and the other is frowning over a piece of paper covered with pencil marks.
Perhaps the composer had the original idea—a theme for a melody. Perhaps the lyric writer had one line—an idea for a song. It does not matter at all which had the idea originally, both are obsessed by it now.
"Play the chorus over, will you?" growls the writer. Obediently the composer pounds away, with the soft pedal on, and the writer sings his words so that the composer can hear them. There comes a line that doesn't fit. "No good!" they say together.
"Can't you change that bar?" inquires the writer.
"I'll try," says the composer. "Gimme the sheet."
They prop it up on the piano and sing it together.
"Shut up!" says the composer. And the writer keeps still until the other has pounded the offending bar to fit.
Or perhaps the writer gets a new line that fits the music. "How's this?" he cries with the intonation Columbus must have used when he discovered the new world.