In the above I have attempted to present a picture in rough outline indicating present trends and predictable futures for music through the improvement of musical instruments. The instrumentalist can point out many features not here mentioned. The musician may yearn for new resources in his musical medium for which he can now lay down specifications. The listeners must be prepared for startling innovations and thrilling new sources of pleasure in music. It will take generations to finish the theoretical picture I have here sketched in bold outline—but let us look forward to a progressive unveiling and revelation of possibilities. But take no alarm—the horse, if not the buggy, will survive.
THOUGHT REVIEW
General Principles
(1) We are entering upon a new era for musical instruments. (2) Present instruments will be improved, new instruments will be innovated, new ensembles will be achieved. (3) Conforming to this progress, present music will be adapted and new types of composition will appear. (4) In this changing order musical tastes will undergo significant changes. (5) The composer may now specify new conceptions of desired features, and the technicians will provide them. (6) Instrument makers will be able to produce or reproduce any musical sound in nature or art.
Consider These Questions
(1) If the violin strings are mounted on a perfect resonator with different shape from the present violin, will that be a violin? (2) If the piano can be built so as to eliminate all accessory noises, will pianists like it? (3) If the playing of new instruments will be made easier and better, will that tend to increase the number of students in music? (4) If all the good characteristics of present musical instruments can be reproduced in a much smaller number of instruments, will that be welcomed by the musical public? (5) If we are to have quarter-tone music, which is now possible, why will this demand new music aside from the size of the interval? (6) If an electronic organ could be built to do all that the best pipe organ now does, if the visible part were reduced to the appearance of a little writing desk, and if speakers were concealed in the walls throughout the building, how would the worshipper in church react to that situation? (7) Children now build their radios from purchased or home-made parts. It will be still easier for them to build a variety of musical instruments. Will they do it and with what effect?
Discuss These Situations
(1) At the Riverside Laboratory, Colonel Fabian built an organ with the pipes distributed throughout the three stories of a large building. The effect was as if the whole building were one grand organ. No matter how many sources there were for the same note, the tone of that note would always be heard as coming from a single source, the location of which depended upon the relative distances and intensities of the various sources. The result was "magical". Discuss the possibility and the significance of using this principle of installation in a house or in a cathedral. (2) It is possible to build a comparatively simple instrument which can yield pure tones throughout the musical register. Consider what role such an instrument might carry in an orchestra.
CHAPTER VIII
PRAISE AND BLAME IN MUSIC
Music is unique among esthetic appeals in that it demands immediate response in the form of praise or blame. The orator demands immediate response; but his appeal is to reasoning, not to feeling. The painter, sculptor, and poet demand esthetic response, but this response is delayed and does not keep the artist on the tip of his nerves to receive it. The musical appeal is all the more emotional because it is not only an appeal for personal recognition but for the aggrandizement of the noble art. The musician at all ages and all stages of advancement can perform for his own pleasure in isolation, but even here the demand for praise or blame on the spur of the moment is emphatic and essential.