The Pianolist: A Guide for Pianola Players

by Gustav Kobbé

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 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?" Practically no household that makes claim to refinement is without one. Only too often, however, even in such homes, it is merely an article of drawing room furniture, because no member of the household can play it. There it stands waiting for the chance visitor who can strike the keys and make the strings vibrate with music.

Imagine that you are a member or let us say the head of that household. You can't play a note and yet you are "fond of music." This "fondness for music" manifests itself in different degree in different people and somewhat according to their opportunities. You may be a hardworking business man and when you come home from business, you want diversion, amusement. For some one to suggest a classical concert to you would make you feel like being asked to begin the day's work all over again without a night's rest in between. As for Wagner, that would be worse than straightening out an intricate account after a day spent in poring over a ledger. No. Music without any tune to it may be all right for some people, but comic opera is "good enough" for you. You like that coon song you heard the other night. How you would enjoy playing it on the pianoforte if you only knew how! But you don't, so you have to pay a speculator three dollars for a seat if you want to hear it again.

Suppose the days of miracles weren't past and, by some miracle, you suddenly found yourself in command of the technique of the pianoforte—able to play whatever you wanted to. You'd buy that coon song and some other pieces of light music, and then you'd hurry home to your pianoforte and play them off as fast as you could, while the family stood around and listened and marvelled.

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. The chances are, however, that your delight over what you have accomplished will lead you to play the song right over again. Now you begin to realize that there was something more than mere accuracy in the delivery of the melody when you heard it at the theatre. There was interpretation, that something which the individual artist puts into everything he does. You will recall that while the piece was taken pretty fast as a whole, some phrases were taken faster, others more slowly. You have been told that by moving a little lever to the right or left, you can produce these effects. You try it. When you come to a phrase that should be taken a little faster, you move the lever slightly to the right—and the pianoforte responds. It is the same when you move the lever to the left for the slower phrases—the pianoforte responds and the phrase is retarded. Two other levers control the volume of sound so that you can play any part of the piece louder or softer if you want to. It is not at all unlikely that you may vary these details to suit yourself, instead of simply being guided by your recollection of what you heard at the theatre. 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.

That's your first experience with the instrument. Pretty soon you are apt to have another experience that is even more valuable. You stocked up pretty well with the music of the day, the current Broadway comic opera and musical comedy successes. Gradually, however, that pet coon song of yours will begin to pall on you a little. The very jingle to the tune that made it catch your fancy so quickly causes you to tire of it, and so it goes with the other pieces whose rhythm is so marked and continued with such great precision and whose tunefulness was so obvious that they made an instantaneous impression upon your musically untrained sense of hearing. 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." Much to your surprise you don't find it heavy at all. In fact you recall once having heard it played between the acts in a theatre and having thought it rather pretty. Its rhythm isn't as persistently emphatic as that of ragtime, nor does its melody stand out in such sharp relief, but instead of wearying you on repetition, you like it better every time you play it.

Encouraged by this experience you next purchase the same composer's "Spinning Song." This may not appeal to you so much at first. It seems to run along very rapidly without any very clearly defined melody. Still, it is by the same composer as the "Spring Song," so it may be worth trying over again. It is more familiar now, and you begin to associate the rapid, whirring phrases with its title—with the idea of "spinning." How clear it suddenly becomes. You even conjure up in your mind the picture of some young woman in quaint garb seated at a spinning wheel in an old-fashioned room—and you find yourself experiencing all the pleasure that comes from association of ideas, the keenest enjoyment that art affords. You are making rapid progress now, so rapid that it is as impossible as unnecessary to follow you step by step. The main point is that you are becoming truly musical and at the same time enjoying it. What might be "all right for some people" has become all right for you too. You have been repaid a thousand-fold for the little effort it cost you to discover through the gradual development of a taste that had lain dormant, the kind of music that "lasts." The same thing is true of your whole family. It has become musical, and in an incredibly short space of time. 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 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. 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. That is what your favorite virtuoso seems to you to put into it—soul, his own soul, interpreting himself, unconsciously expressing his own thoughts and feelings, through those of the composer. That is what you are convinced you could do, if only you knew how to play; for you are musical, very musical, almost, in fact, to your finger tips. But these, alas, never have been trained to command the keyboard. You are getting along well in business, making money and all that; and yet you look upon your life as half a failure because, although you have the temperament artistic, you are unable to gratify fully your passion for music. You can listen, but you can't play. You can hear Paderewski interpret your favorite nocturne, but you can't go home to your own pianoforte and let your fingers conjure up memories of it on the keyboard. You have a beautiful pianoforte in your house—for the use of others. You'd be willing to mortgage half your income for life, if you could learn to play it yourself. But it's too late for that now. So you think.

But one day you drop in at a friend's house and from the drawing room come strains of your favorite Chopin nocturne. Something about it reminds you of the way Paderewski plays it. Who can it be? You know that your friend doesn't play the pianoforte. But, as you stand in the doorway, hesitating whether to go in or not, it is he who looks out at you from behind the instrument and nods to you to come in. You drop into a chair and listen and wonder. The nocturne comes to an end, your friend rises, greets your wondering look with a smile, and meets your amazed query with one word: "Pianola!"

"It sounded like Paderewski," you stammer in a dazed sort of way.