Often, however, the evolution seems to progress by sheer accident. This is the way the accident is likely to happen. Jones is buying records for the family phonograph. One may judge of his particular stage of musical evolution by his purchases, which are: "Meet me in St. Louis, Louis," "Dance of the Honey Bells," "Hello Central, Give me Heaven," "Fashion Plate March," and "I Know that I'll be Happy when I Die." He also notices in the catalogue a piece called "Tannhäuser March," and, after some hesitation, buys this as well, because the name sounds so much like his favorite brand of beer that he suspects it to be music of a convivial nature—a medley of drinking-songs, perhaps.
But that evening in the parlor it does not seem much like beer. When the Mephisto Military Band strikes it up—far from seeming in the least alcoholic, it exhilarates nobody. So Jones inters it in the darkest corner of the music-cabinet. And the family devote themselves to the cake-walks and comic medleys, the fandangoes and tangos, the xylophone solos, the shakedowns and break-downs and the rags and tatters of their collection until they have thoroughly exhausted the delights thereof. Then, having had time to forget somewhat the flatness of "Tannhäuser," and for want of anything better to do, they take out the despised record, dust it, and insert it into the machine. But this time, curiously enough, the thing does not sound quite so flat. After repeated playings, it even begins to rival the "Fashion Plate March" in its appeal. And it keeps on growing in grace until within a year the "Fashion Plate March" is as obsolete as fashion plates have a habit of growing within a year, while "Tannhäuser" has won the distinction of being the best-wearing record in the cabinet.
Then it begins to occur to the Jones family that there must be two kinds of musical food: candy and staples. Candy, like the "Fashion Plate March," tastes wonderfully sweet to the unsophisticated palate as it goes down; but it is easy to take too much. And the cheaper the candy, the swifter the consequent revulsion of feeling. As for the staples, there is nothing very piquant about their flavor; but if they are of first quality, and if one keeps his appetite healthy, one seems to enjoy them more and more and to thrive on them three times a day.
Accordingly, Jones is commissioned, when next he visits the music-store, to get a few more records like "Tannhäuser." On this occasion, he may even be rash enough to experiment with a Schubert march, or a Weber overture, or one of the more popular movements of a Beethoven sonata. And so the train of evolution will rush onward, bearing the Joneses with it until fashion-plate marches are things of the misty, backward horizon, and the family has, by little and little, come to know and love the whole blessed field of classical music. And they have found that the word "classical" is not a synonym for dry-rot, but that it simply means the music that wears best.
However the glorious mistake may occur, it is being made by someone every hour. By such hooks and crooks as these, good music is finding its way into more and more homes. Although its true "classical" nature is detected at the first trial, it is not thrown away, because it cost good money. It is put away and bides its time; and some day the surprising fact that it has wearing qualities is bound to be discovered. To those who believe in the law of musical evolution, and who realize that mechanical music has reached the wide world, and is even beginning to penetrate into the public library, the possibility of these happy accidents means a sure and swift general development in the appreciation of the best music.
Those who know that man's musical taste tends to grow better and not worse, know also that any music is better than no music. A mechanical instrument which goes is better than a new concert grand piano that remains shut.
"Canned music may not be the highest form of art," the enthusiast will say with a needless air of half apology, half defiance, "but I enjoy it no end." And then he will go on to tell how the parlor melodeon had gathered dust for years until it was given in part exchange for a piano-player. And now the thing is the joy of the family, and the home is filled with color and effervescence, and every one's head is filled with at least a rudiment of living, growing musical culture.
The fact is, the piano-player is turning thousands of supposedly humdrum, prosaic people into musical enthusiasts, to their own immense surprise. Many of these people are actually taking lessons in the subtle art of manipulating the machine. They are spending more money than they can afford on vast collections of rolls. They are going more and more to every important concert for hints on interpretation. Better still, the most musical among them are being piqued, by the combined merits and defects of the machine, into learning to play an unmechanical instrument for the joy of feeling less mechanism interposed between themselves and "the real thing."
Machinery has already done as much for the true spirit of music as the "safe and sane" movement has done for the true spirit of the Fourth of July. Both have shifted the emphasis from brute noise and fireworks to more spiritual considerations. The piano-player has done a great deal to cheapen the glamour of mere technical display on the part of the virtuosi and to redeem us from the thralldom of the school of Liszt. Our admiration for musical gymnastics and tight-rope balancing is now leaking away so fast through the perforations of the paper rolls that the kind of display-piece known as the concerto is going out of fashion. The only sort of concerto destined to keep our favor is, I imagine, that of the Schumann or Brahms type, which depends for its effect not at all on display, but on sound musicianship alone. The virtuoso is destined soon to leave the circus business and bid a long farewell to his late colleagues, the sword-swallower, the trapeze artist, the strong man, the fat lady, the contortionist, and the gentleman who conducts the shell-and-pea game. For presently the only thing that will be able to entice people to concerts will be the soul of music. Its body will be a perfectly commonplace affair.
Many a good musician fears, I know, that machine-made music will not stop with annihilating vulgar display, but will do to death all professional music as well. This fear is groundless. Mechanical instruments will no more drive the good pianist or violinist or 'cellist out of his profession than the public library, as many once feared, will drive the bookseller out of business. For the library, after persuading people to read, has taught them how much pleasure may be had from owning a book, with the privilege of marking it and scribbling one's own ideas on the margins, and not having to rush it back to headquarters at inopportune moments and pay to a stern young woman a fine of eight cents. Likewise people are eventually led to realize that the joy of passively absorbing the product of phonograph or electric piano contrasts with the higher joy of listening creatively to music which the hearer helps to make, in the same way that borrowing a book of Browning contrasts with owning a book of Browning. I believe that, just as the libraries are yearly educating hosts of book-buyers, so mechanical music is coöperating with evolution to swell the noble army of those who support concerts and give private musicales.