For a long time, the mechanical player has been looked on as a step-child, to be made fun of and scorned. Today, the great critics and best musicians recognize its value which is not as a substitute for a piano but as an instrument in itself. Sir Henry J. Wood of England says: “I realize the value ... of the pianola ... for a good many of the people in our audiences ... are acquiring by its means a closer acquaintance with the great musical masterpieces.”
He says in another place, “It’s a foolish and a shortsighted policy to despise any means by which we may add to the sum total of musical appreciation.”
And Edwin Evans, English critic and writer, says: “The player piano relieves the musician of the technical difficulties of the keyboard.... It does not relieve him from the duty of thinking musicianly, on the contrary, ... it makes it a point of honor with him to give ... fuller employment to his brain and sensibility.... There are dozens of scores nowadays which it is an impossibility to read at the piano and very trying to read on paper. Here the player piano is a boon and a blessing for it unravels every mystery and solves every problem.”
Besides this, it can be played so skilfully by some that even musicians can be fooled as to whether human or mechanical fingers are playing. Gustave Kobbé said, in his Pianolist, something like this: “There are only about five professionals who can play the piano better than an accomplished pianolist.”
To prove its artistic worth further, Percy Grainger, Alfredo Casella and Igor Stravinsky and other great moderns are writing music especially for the player piano because they can use the whole eighty-eight notes with full orchestral effects, without stopping to think of the meagre ten fingers of man! So we see in the future the possibility of this becoming one of the creative instruments.
Other “Canned” Music
Then we have the phonographs and radio. These cannot be considered instruments in the same way as the player piano and reproducing piano, but are invaluable means of musical education and are doing, with the player piano, a marvelous work in introducing people to the great music of the world. Of course, it depends upon the way all these music carriers are used, for if you have poor music on them, it will mean nothing to you, but if you hear the “wear evers” on them, you will have a touch of heaven in your life, forever.
Pianists Come to View
As an outcome of the work of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart, the piano appeared because of the need of a more powerful instrument than the harpsichord and clavichord. At this time there were two particular schools of piano playing,—the Viennese, light and delicate in tone, and the English school, producing a more solid and more brilliant tone.
The principal pianists of the Viennese school were Johann Hummel, who, as a boy of seven, was a pupil of Mozart, Franz Duschek, Mozart and Pleyel. Later Beethoven himself appeared, the profound pianist in this group, but also an advocate of Clementi’s methods.