THE 
 PIANOLIST 
 
 BY 
 
 GUSTAV 
 KOBBE 
 
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 THE PIANOLIST
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 A GUIDE FOR PIANOLA PLAYERS 
 
 GUSTAV KOBBE 
 
 AUTHOR OF "HOW TO APPRECIATE MUSIC," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 
 
 1907
 
 COPYRIGHT 1907, BY 
 
 MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 
 NEW YORK 
 
 Published November, 1907
 
 TO MY FRIEND 
 JOSEPH HUTCHISON STEVENSON
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. THE TITLE AND PURPOSE OF THIS 
 
 BOOK i 
 
 II. THE CHARM OF PLAYING A MUSI- 
 CAL INSTRUMENT YOURSELF. . . 10 
 
 III. FIRST STEPS OF THE MUSICAL 
 
 NOVICE 39 
 
 IV. THE THRILL OF THE GREAT MAS- 
 
 TERS 83 
 
 V. AN " OPEN SESAME " TO CHOPIN. . 117 
 
 VI. NOTES ON SOME OTHER MASTERS. 141 
 VII. EDUCATIONAL FACTORS 150 
 
 VIII. A FEW " DON'TS " FOR PIANOLISTS 159 
 
 vn
 
 I. THE TITLE AND PURPOSE OF 
 THIS BOOK 
 
 MY book, " How to Appreciate Music," 
 in the chapter devoted to the piano- 
 forte, contains a paragraph relating to the 
 Pianola and its influence in popularizing 
 music and stimulating musical taste. I con- 
 fess that before I started that paragraph I 
 was puzzled to know what term to use in 
 designating the instrument I had in mind. 
 " Mechanical piano-player " is a designa- 
 tion which not only does not appeal to me, 
 but, furthermore, fails to do justice to the 
 instrument, which, although mechanical in 
 its working, is far from being mechanical 
 in its effects. 
 
 The result? I took a cross cut and ar- 
 rived straight at the word Pianola as being 
 the name of the most widely known piano-
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 player, and happily derived from the name 
 of the most widely known instrument, the 
 pianoforte or, as it is more popularly termed, 
 the piano. For this reason the term Pianola 
 was used in the paragraph referred to and 
 now is employed in this book; and, for the 
 same reason, this book is called " The Pian- 
 olist." It is believed to be the title least re- 
 quiring explanation, if, indeed, it requires 
 any explanation at all. Right here, how- 
 ever, I must add that the company which 
 manufactures the Pianola objects to the use 
 of the word as a generic term. 
 
 So much for the title. Now for the pur- 
 pose of this book. 
 
 Soon after the publication of " How to 
 Appreciate Music " I discovered that the 
 paragraph concerning this new musical in- 
 strument had made a hit. It was widely 
 quoted as evidence of the " up-to-dateness " 
 of the book and I began to receive letters 
 2
 
 TITLE AND PURPOSE 
 
 from pianola owners who were pleased that 
 the merits of the instrument should have 
 been recognized in a serious book on music. 
 Among these was a letter from a Mr. Harry 
 Mason, of Detroit, suggesting that I should 
 write a book for the use of those who owned 
 piano-players. Mr. Mason and myself never 
 have met. He knows me merely as an au- 
 thor of a book on music. All I know of 
 him is that he is one of the editors of a drug- 
 gists' trade paper in Detroit. Yet from him 
 has come the suggestion which has led me to 
 write this book, although, to judge from his 
 letter, he had not been deeply interested in 
 music until he began to use a " player " and, 
 through it, was led to ask for a book which 
 would tell him, in untechnical language, 
 something about an art that was beginning 
 to have eloquence and meaning for him. 
 To me this is highly significant, for there 
 must be thousands of others like him all 
 
 3
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 over the country, to whom, in the same way, 
 the great awakening just is coming through 
 the pianola at first a means of amusement, 
 then an educator with the element of amuse- 
 ment, but of a higher order, left in! 
 
 Shortly after I received Mr. Mason's let- 
 ter an incident added greatly to the force 
 of his suggestion. I always have been very 
 fond of Schubert's " Rosamunde " im- 
 promptu. The first person I heard play 
 it publicly was Annette Essipoff, a Russian 
 pianist and one of the very few great women 
 pianists of the world. Frequently I have 
 heard it since then, but never so charmingly 
 interpreted excepting But that is the most 
 interesting part of the story. 
 
 One night I was at my desk in my study, 
 when, suddenly, I heard the strains of this 
 impromptu, which is an air with variations, 
 from the direction of the drawing room. It 
 was sweet and tender, graceful and expres- 
 
 4
 
 TITLE AND PURPOSE 
 
 sive, according to the character of the varia- 
 tions; and, when the last variation began 
 with a crispness and delicacy that made me 
 wonder what great virtuoso was at my piano- 
 forte without my knowing it, I hurried to 
 the drawing room and, entering it found 
 my fourteen year old daughter seated at a 
 pianola. The instrument had arrived only 
 a short time before from the house of a 
 friend who had gone South for the winter. 
 My daughter never had had a music lesson, 
 never had heard Schubert's " Rosamunde " 
 impromptu. Yet she had, without any ef- 
 fort, been the first to take me back to Essi- 
 poffs playing of Schubert's charming work! 
 It would have been ludicrous had it not 
 meant so much. In fact it was ludicrous 
 because, a few days before, when the instru- 
 ment had just been delivered and set up, I 
 had been deceived in much the same man- 
 ner by her playing of a composition by 
 Grieg. 
 
 5
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 But to return to the Schubert impromptu. 
 EssipofT, my young daughter, the associate 
 editor of a druggist' paper in Detroit, and 
 myself; the first a great virtuoso, the second 
 a schoolgirl, the third a writer on a trade 
 paper, the fourth a music critic what a 
 leveller of distinctions, what a universal mus- 
 ical provider the pianola is! Ten years ago 
 the virtuoso and the music critic would have 
 been the only ones concerned. The school- 
 girl and the trade paper editor wouldn't 
 have been " in it." Now, the schoolgirl was 
 playing like a virtuoso and the writer on 
 drugs and druggists was giving hints to the 
 music critic. A great leveller, placing the 
 musical elect and those who formerly would 
 have had to remain outside the pale, on a 
 common footing! This may not always ap- 
 peal to the musical elect, but think what it 
 means to the great mass of those who are 
 genuinely musical but have lacked the op- 
 6
 
 TITLE AND PURPOSE 
 
 portunity for musical study or to those whose 
 taste for music never has been brought out. 
 
 To paraphrase a few sentences from my 
 " How to Appreciate Music " that have been 
 much quoted: 
 
 "'Are you musical?' 
 
 " ' No,' nine persons out of ten will reply; 
 1 I neither play nor sing.' 
 
 " * Your answer shows a complete mis- 
 understanding of the case. Because you 
 neither play nor sing, it by no means follows 
 that you are unmusical. If you love music 
 and appreciate it, you may be more musical 
 than many pianists and singers; or latent 
 within you and only awaiting the touchstone 
 of music there may be a deeper love and ap- 
 preciation of the art than can be attributed 
 to many virtuosos. For most of a virtuoso's 
 love and appreciation is apt to be centered 
 upon himself. And when you say, ' I can- 
 not play,' you are mistaken. You are think- 
 
 7
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 ing of the pianoforte. You may not be able 
 to play that. But you or any one else can 
 play the pianola, and that instantly places 
 at your command all the technical resources 
 of which even the greatest virtuosos can 
 boast." 
 
 One purpose of this book thus is to bring 
 home to people an appreciation of what this 
 modern instrument is, whether it is regarded 
 as a toy with which the business man amuses 
 himself with two-steps and ragtime after 
 business hours, or as a serious musical instru- 
 ment. 
 
 Another purpose, and a large one, is to 
 furnish pianolists with a guide to the music 
 which they play, or might play if their at- 
 tention were directed to it and to some of its 
 characteristics, and to point out the impor- 
 tance of the instrument in developing a love 
 of good music. 
 
 I also have in writing this book a purpose 
 8
 
 TITLE AND PURPOSE 
 
 which I may describe as personal. I believe 
 I was the first American to publish an anal- 
 ysis of the Wagner music dramas that seemed 
 to be what the public wanted, and the first 
 to contribute to a magazine of general circu- 
 lation an article on Richard Strauss. It is 
 a matter of pride with me always to be found 
 on the firing line even if it is the privilege 
 of those who watch the battle from a safe 
 distance to dictate" the despatches and take 
 the credit for the result to themselves. And 
 so, I wish to be the first to write a book on 
 the pianola, an instrument of such impor- 
 tance to the progress and popular spread of 
 music that, at the present time, we can have 
 but a faint glimmering of the great part it 
 is destined to play.
 
 II. THE CHARM OF PLAYING 
 A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT YOUR- 
 SELF 
 
 T TOW I wish I could play like that! 
 * * What is more common than this 
 exclamation from people who are listen- 
 ing to a great virtuoso or even only to a 
 fairly clever amateur? They realize that, 
 no matter how much they may enjoy a per- 
 formance, there is much greater fascination 
 in being the performer. Not a musical per- 
 son but would play if he could. Why, how- 
 ever, that "if"? It no longer exists. It 
 has been eliminated. The charm, the fasci- 
 nation of playing a musical instrument your- 
 self can be yours, and the only " if " to it 
 is if you have intelligence enough to appre- 
 ciate what that means. 
 
 What formerly was an insuperable ob- 
 stacle, the lack of technical facility the real 
 inability to play absolutely has been done 
 away with. There is no excuse for any- 
 10
 
 PLAYING Music YOURSELF 
 
 body's not playing who wants to. The 
 pianola furnishes the technique, the dexterity, 
 the finger facility, or whatever you may 
 choose to call it. So far as this is concerned 
 the instrument itself makes you a virtuoso 
 places you on a par with a Liszt, Paderewski 
 or Rosenthal. It does so mechanically, yet 
 without the sharpness and insistent precise- 
 ness of a machine. Its action is pneumatic 
 and the effect of the compressed air is to 
 impart to its " touch " the manner in which 
 its " fingers " strike the keys an elasticity 
 which at least is comparable with the touch 
 of human fingers. As a friend of mine, 
 a lawyer, who has owned three pianolas and 
 who actually has been made musical through 
 them, expresses it: "When you've got a 
 mechanical device as good or nearly as good 
 as a virtuoso, you've got something of enorm- 
 ous importance to the whole world." And 
 so you have. 
 
 ii
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 I find a great feature of the so-called me- 
 chanical piano-player lies in what it allows 
 you to do yourself. It provides you with 
 technique, but, to use a colloquial phrase, 
 " you can still call your soul your own." 
 The technique, the substitute for that finger 
 facility which only years of practice will 
 give, is the pianola's; but the interpretation 
 is yours! The instrument provides the de- 
 vices for accelerating or retarding the time 
 and for making the tone loud or soft, 
 but when to whip up the time or to slow 
 down, when to use the sustaining or the soft 
 lever or when to swell through a crescendo 
 from pianissimo to fortissimo all that is left 
 to your own taste, judgment and discretion. 
 There is, indeed, among the improvements 
 introduced in the pianola a contrivance, of 
 which more hereafter, by which complete 
 directions are given for the interpretation of 
 the roll of music that is being played. These 
 
 12
 
 PLAYING Music YOURSELF 
 
 directions, however, are not compulsory. 
 They are, in each instance, based on high 
 authority and are of great value even to 
 persons who are thoroughly familiar with 
 the music, but they need not be followed if 
 the player does not want to follow them. 
 He is likely in the beginning to accept the 
 directions, the so-called metrostyle mark- 
 ing, as he would the instruction of a high 
 class teacher, while, later on, he may incline 
 to regard the metrostyle as indicating the 
 general spirit in which the piece should be 
 interpreted, but vary it in detail as his 
 mood or fancy dictates. The metrostyle may, 
 in fact, be called the pianolist's " coach," 
 giving him the kind of hints and directions 
 which even the greatest players and singers 
 value. Something, however, of the pianolist 
 himself, something of his own thought and 
 feeling goes into every interpretation. That 
 this is so is proved by the fact that no two 
 
 13
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 pianolists interpret the same composition 
 alike. There are differences, more or less 
 marked, just as there are when the same 
 piece is played by two pianists. In the 
 broader outlines, in general spirit, the inter- 
 pretations may be the same, but they will be 
 distinguished by subtle shadings that indi- 
 cate temperamental differences. The per- 
 spective of a landscape varies when viewed 
 from different windows; so does life when 
 observed from different points of view; so 
 does the interpretation of a composition 
 when played by different people on the 
 pianola. 
 
 Were the instrument purely a mechanical 
 device to wind up and set going, the artistic 
 results of which it is capable never would 
 have been obtained, and, I may add, this 
 book never would have been written. The 
 fact that artistic expression instead of ma- 
 chine-like precision has been its aim is what
 
 PLAYING Music YOURSELF 
 
 has caused its possibilities as a musical in- 
 strument to appeal to me. It cannot be 
 sufficiently urged that in this country, as in 
 every other, there is an immense amount of 
 latent musical taste awaiting only the touch- 
 stone of hearing music or, better still, the 
 fascination of personally producing music, 
 to assert itself. Before the invention of the 
 piano-player hearing music was the only 
 touchstone; through the piano-player there 
 is added the fascination of being yourself a 
 participator in prpducing the music you 
 hear. When Theodore Thomas said " Noth- 
 ing so awakens interest in music as helping 
 to make it," he hit the nail on the head. 
 "After playing all this music I want to go 
 to concerts next winter. I'd like to hear 
 how the ' Fifth Symphony ' sounds on the 
 orchestra," said my little girl after the pia- 
 nola had been in the house only a week. 
 "All this music? " Yes indeed. More than 
 
 15
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 she could have become familiar with in six 
 months' concert-going and instruction. And 
 we always had said that she wasn't musical! 
 This fascination of personally producing 
 music is such a great factor in the spread of 
 musical taste that it is well worth looking 
 into further. There always is more plea- 
 sure in doing something than in watching 
 some one else do it. Take the average ama- 
 teurs who get together for music. They en- 
 joy what they play a thousand-fold more 
 than if they were listening to the greatest 
 virtuosos playing the same program. Why? 
 Because always there is more satisfaction in 
 doing the thing itself than merely in contem- 
 plating the result of what some one else is 
 doing. And so, with music, " to experience 
 the full fascination the divine art can ex- 
 ercise on us mortals, we must take an active 
 part in the making of it." Through the 
 pianola the opportunity of taking an active 
 16
 
 PLAYING Music YOURSELF 
 
 part in the making of it is open to every- 
 body. Remember what my friend said. It 
 is worth repeating. " When you've got a 
 mechanical device as good, or nearly as 
 good as a virtuoso, you've got something of 
 enormous importance to the whole world." 
 Mechanical, remember, only in a certain 
 sense. Were it wholly mechanical it never 
 could be " as good, or nearly as good, as a 
 virtuoso." 
 
 Now let us see how this personal affilia- 
 tion 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 mus- 
 
 17
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 ical 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 
 18
 
 PLAYING Music YOURSELF 
 
 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 specu- 
 lator 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 
 
 19
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 you'd hurry home to your pianoforte and 
 play them off as fast as you could, while the 
 family stood around and listened and mar- 
 velled. 
 
 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 accom- 
 plished will lead you to play the song right 
 over again. Now you begin to realize that 
 there was something more than mere ac- 
 20
 
 PLAYING Music YOURSELF 
 
 curacy in the delivery of the melody when 
 you heard it at the theatre. There was in- 
 terpretation, that something which the indi- 
 vidual 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, other 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 recol- 
 
 21
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 lection 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 instru- 
 ment 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 interpre- 
 tation, that which gives one the fascination 
 of playing, is your own. 
 
 That's your first experience with the in- 
 strument. Pretty soon you are apt to have 
 another experience that is even more valu- 
 able. 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 
 22
 
 PLAYING Music YOURSELF 
 
 rhythm is so marked and continued with 
 such great precision and whose tunefulness 
 was so obvious that they made an instan- 
 taneous impression upon your musically un- 
 trained 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, how- 
 ever, you yield. You inquire for something 
 of the kind and are advised to try Mendels- 
 sohn's " Spring Song." Much to your sur- 
 prise 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 
 3 23
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 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 repeti- 
 tion, 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, whir- 
 ring phrases with its title with the idea of 
 " spinning." How clear it suddenly be- 
 comes. 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 ex- 
 24
 
 PLAYING Music YOURSELF 
 
 periencing 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 ad- 
 vanced. Supposing that, instead .of having 
 
 25
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 had your musical horizon bounded by coon 
 songs and comic operas, you were an at- 
 tendant at orchestral concerts, song and 
 pianoforte recitals and grand opera. You 
 are a genuine music lover, genuinely mus- 
 ical, but you can't play. You long to re- 
 produce and express at home the music you 
 have heard elsewhere. If only, after hear- 
 ing 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 vir- 
 26
 
 PLAYING Music YOURSELF 
 
 tuoso 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 key- 
 board. 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 in- 
 terpret 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 piano- 
 forte in your house for the use of others. 
 
 27
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 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 door- 
 way, 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 won- 
 der. 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 stam- 
 mer in a dazed sort of way. 
 28
 
 PLAYING Music YOURSELF 
 
 " Why shouldn't it? Practically, I have 
 been taught how to play it by that great 
 artist." He takes out the roll and brings 
 it over for you to look at. On it you see, 
 reproduced in facsimile this autographed 
 certification : 
 
 " The line on this roll indicates the tempo 
 according to my interpretation. 
 
 " I. J. Paderewski." 
 
 The roll, as the expression goes, has been 
 " metrostyled " by the virtuoso himself. 
 
 " I didn't know you had one of these 
 instruments. Why haven't you told me? 
 How long have you had it? " 
 
 " About a week," he answers. 
 
 " And you can make it sound like that? " 
 
 " Of course I can. Nothing easier. Just 
 stand behind me and watch." 
 
 He replaces the music roll and, as he 
 pedals and it unrolls, he shows you how 
 easy it is with the metrostyle to follow the 
 
 29
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 red line marked by Paderewski to indicate 
 how he plays the piece. 
 
 " According to my idea," continues your 
 friend, " he plays some parts of the second 
 melody a little too slowly makes it too 
 sentimental, instead of poetically expressive. 
 You may observe that I don't always follow 
 the line. That's one of the great things 
 about the instrument. You can profit by 
 the directions just as much as you want to, 
 but you can disregard them whenever you 
 have a mind to. It may seem presumptuous 
 to differ, even in a small detail, * from a 
 great virtuoso like Paderewski, but every 
 virtuoso has his idiosyncrasies and we, who, 
 after all, have been listening to music all 
 our lives and have heard all the great pian- 
 ists from Rubinstein to l Paddy ' himself and 
 all the women pianists from Essipoff to 
 Bloomfield-Zeisler, are entitled to some ideas 
 of our own. As I just said, one of the great 
 30
 
 PLAYING Music YOURSELF 
 
 things about the instrument is that it allows 
 us this latitude. I call it a cinch! 
 
 " Now here's something else. We know 
 Richard Strauss' big tone poems, the biggest 
 things in music since Wagner. But did 
 you know that he's written some charming 
 little pieces for pianoforte? Just listen to 
 this. It's a * Traumerei ' or * Revery,' a 
 delicious little dreamy improvisation. He 
 1 metrostyled ' it himself and, as I've never 
 heard anyone play it, I'm only too glad to 
 have his directions. They give you the 
 general hang of the thing ' right off the 
 reel,' so to speak. But later on, when I 
 become more familiar with it, if I want to 
 vary the interpretation according to my 
 own mood of the moment, I can. It's a great 
 thing, though, to find out how famous living 
 composers, like Richard Strauss, Grieg here 
 are a couple of rolls from his * Peer Gynt ' 
 suite metrostyled by himself Saint Saens, 
 
 31
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 Elgar, or even composers of first rate lighter 
 music, like Moszkowski and Chaminade, 
 conceive that they want to have their works 
 interpreted; or how great virtuosos, like 
 Paderewski, Rosenthal and other pianists, 
 play them; or gifted instructors in music, 
 like Carl Reinecke, would have them per- 
 formed. It's like taking lessons in inter- 
 pretation from these people. 
 
 " There's another matter that will interest 
 you. Take pieces like Rubinstein's * Melody 
 in F ' or the best known selection from his 
 1 Kammenoi, Ostrow,' where the melody lies, 
 in the former in between the accompaniment, 
 in the latter below it you recall, of course, 
 how the accompanying figure hovers above 
 it. In pieces like these it is important 
 that the melodic line should be clearly dis- 
 tinguished, otherwise it will be smothered. 
 Fortunately an attachment to the instrument, 
 the themodist, enables you to bring out 
 32
 
 PLAYING Music YOURSELF 
 
 the melody and, at the same time does not 
 prevent your retarding or accelerating the 
 general movement of the piece or of varying 
 the volume of sound as much as you like. 
 
 " While I've had the instrument only a 
 little while, I've been struck with some- 
 thing else. I find that you can accomplish 
 a good deal through what I may call * foot- 
 technique,' varying the degree of strength 
 with which you use the pedals that pump 
 in the air. By this means you can play 
 louder or softer at will and by a sharp 
 pressure emphasize individual chords and 
 phrases. This, I find, makes the interpre- 
 tation seem more personal than when I 
 use the sustaining and soft levers alone. Al- 
 together I'm beginning to look upon myself 
 as a virtuoso, and the best thing you can 
 do, old man, is to take my advice and be- 
 come one too." 
 
 Fortunately you are musical enough and 
 
 33
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 intelligent enough to appreciate the philos- 
 ophy and significance of the instrument 
 that it supplies what you haven't got, the 
 technique, but that you give it the expression, 
 the soul ; that although it is not a pianoforte, 
 but an atachment to that instrument, never- 
 theless, in playing it, you express something 
 of yourself, something of your inner being, 
 something of your higher artistic nature 
 through it. 
 
 There is a large class of people to whom 
 the " piano-player " is or should be a great 
 boon. I mean those who play the piano- 
 forte, but not well enough to play publicly 
 or professionally. To this class belong the 
 thousands of music teachers and the ama- 
 teurs. The majority of them may be more 
 truly musical than many of the virtuoso 
 pianists, but they are lacking in technique. 
 For the technical standard is growing higher 
 every year. Comparatively few music teach- 
 
 34
 
 PLAYING Music YOURSELF 
 
 ers have much opportunity of hearing music, 
 the result being that they find it difficult to 
 keep up with the times. They become old- 
 fashioned, and in these progressive days to 
 become old-fashioned means to be forced 
 to " drop out." They lack the technique 
 to run through the modern repertoire, and 
 the time to hear others in it. It hardly is 
 necessary to point out what the pianola, 
 which gives them complete technical mas- 
 tery of the keyboard, should be to them. 
 
 As regards the amateur I can cite my own 
 case as an example. I had progressed on 
 the pianoforte until I was able to play Liszt's 
 arrangement of the Spinning Song from 
 Wagner's " Flying Dutchman." It is a 
 difficult piece, but there is a great deal of 
 pianoforte music that is more difficult and 
 that was entirely beyond me. Moreover 
 the fact that I was able to play this composi- 
 tion after much assiduous practice, did not 
 
 35
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 mean that I could play equally difficult .or 
 even considerably less difficult music with 
 ease by sight. The repertoire of even the 
 best amateur is apt to be a small one. He 
 gains his general knowledge of music from 
 what he hears. 
 
 With me, in time, as with so many ama- 
 teurs, pianoforte playing had to yield first 
 place to my regular work. I took up 
 writing and that became paramount. I be- 
 gan to lose my pianoforte technique, and 
 I should not like to say how many years it 
 is since I lost the ability to play Liszt's ar- 
 rangement of the Spinning Song from the 
 "The Flying Dutchman," the "Butterfly" 
 etude of Chopin and other works that I 
 had had at my fingers' ends. Often, when 
 I went to pianoforte recitals and heard these 
 compositions played, I grieved over what 
 I had lost through sacrificing the piano- 
 forte to the pen. 
 
 36
 
 PLAYING Music YOURSELF 
 
 I grieve no longer. I have acquired a 
 perfect technique, the technique of a great 
 virtuoso through the pianola. It is a key 
 that has unlocked for me the whole reper- 
 tory of music. With it I can play the most 
 difficult work ever written as easily as I 
 can a five-finger exercise. It gives me the 
 technique, but all that is summed up in the 
 one word " expression," I am at liberty to 
 put into the music myself. 
 
 In the whole world there are perhaps two, 
 at the most three pianoforte virtuosos who 
 really deserve to be called great. To listen 
 to them is the acme of musical delight. But 
 right next to this comes the performance of 
 any musical person, whether a child or 
 grown up, on the pianola. It is better than 
 the playing of any virtuoso not absolutely 
 of the very first rank, and infinitely prefer- 
 able to the playing of the most gifted ama- 
 teur, while the performance of the average 
 
 37
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 amateur almost is juvenile compared with 
 it. Moreover there are pieces of which 
 the Liszt " Campanella," the Mendelssohn 
 " Rondo Capriccioso " and the " Rosa- 
 munde " impromptu of Schubert, are ex- 
 amples, that, when played on the pianola 
 by a musical person, sound just as well as 
 if they came from under the fingers of the 
 greatest living virtuoso possibly better. 
 
 These are not dreams, they are facts; and 
 discoverable in due time by everyone who 
 is made musical through the instrument of 
 which I am writing; and, in an incredibly 
 short time by any one, already musical, who 
 takes it up. Moreover they are facts readily 
 susceptible of explanation, and here it is: 
 All technical difficulties being eliminated 
 by the pianola, the player is free to give 
 his whole attention to interpretation, to that 
 subtle something which we call " expres- 
 sion," and which constitutes the supreme 
 quality of a musical performance. 
 
 38
 
 III. FIRST STEPS OF THE MUS- 
 ICAL NOVICE 
 
 1 CONFESS that when I first thought of 
 writing this book my intention was to 
 plan it somewhat on the same lines as the 
 usual " How to Listen to Music " book, but 
 to make it somewhat simpler. As the cata- 
 logue of pianola music includes everything 
 from Bach to Richard Strauss it seemed to 
 me that it would be easy to give the reader 
 a course in musical development, beginning 
 with the simpler pieces of Bach, like the 
 bourrees and gavottes; then taking up the 
 sonatas of Mozart and Beethoven; the com- 
 positions of the romantic school from Schu- 
 bert to Chopin ; and ending with the modern 
 school of Wagner, Liszt and Richard 
 Strauss in other words giving a survey of 
 the whole evolution of music. 
 
 This would coincide with the ordinary 
 course of musical instruction, which nat- 
 urally ranges from what are considered the 
 
 39
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 easier and simpler pieces to the more diffi- 
 cult ones, early music being less compli- 
 cated and making less demand upon the 
 player's technique than music of the present 
 day. But I had forgotten one important 
 point which is, that on the pianola nothing 
 is difficult, that with this modern instrument 
 the question of difficulty entirely disappears, 
 and that the most hair-raising, breath-catch- 
 ing exploits of virtuosity are as easy for the 
 pianolist as the most commonplace five- 
 finger exercises are for the pianist. In 
 other words, the pianolist can approach 
 music from a wholly new standpoint. For 
 him music exists simply as music. Its his- 
 tory, its evolution, which latter after all is 
 a matter purely technical, need not concern 
 him at all. 
 
 I was brought to this view by a rather 
 startling discovery. I think it will seem 
 equally startling to any one who has stud- 
 40
 
 FIRST STEPS OF NOVICE 
 
 ied music in the usual way the laborious 
 technical development involved in acquiring 
 the mastery of a musical instrument, gen- 
 erally the pianoforte. In discussing Chop- 
 in's " Etude " in A flat, Op. 10, No. 10, 
 one of the greatest virtuosos of his day, 
 Hans van Biilow, said that " he who can 
 play this study in a really finished manner 
 may congratulate himself on having climbed 
 to the highest pinnacle of the pianist's 
 Parnassus, as it is perhaps the most diffi- 
 cult piece of the entire set. The whole 
 repertory of piano music does not contain 
 a study of perpetual movement so full of 
 genius and fancy as this particular one is 
 universally acknowledged to be, excepting 
 perhaps Liszt's ' Feux Follets ' (Will-o'-the 
 wisps)." In looking over the catalogue of 
 music for the mechanical piano-player I 
 find that this immensely difficult study by 
 Liszt, so difficult that Von Biilow classes
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 it with the Chopin study, " the highest pin- 
 nacle of the pianist's Parnassus," is listed 
 with the " popular " pieces. Thus a com- 
 position which taxes the resources of the 
 greatest virtuosos to the utmost and which 
 few if any amateurs can play at all, presents 
 no difficulties whatsoever to the pianolist 
 and actually becomes " popular." The same 
 thing is true of the Liszt " Bell Rondo " 
 (La Campanella). This delicate, dainty 
 yet immensely difficult work, which most 
 amateurs know only from hearing it played 
 in pianoforte recitals because they them- 
 selves can do no more than stumble through 
 it, is, like the " Feux Follets," a popular 
 piece in the repertory of the pianolist. Such 
 an astounding result is possible only upon 
 the pianola which absolutely eliminates all 
 technical difficulties and leaves the player 
 free to select his music without regard to 
 such difficulties. 
 42
 
 FIRST STEPS OF NOVICE 
 
 Another matter connected with the pia- 
 nolist's repertory opens up a field for specu- 
 lation into which, fortunately, it is quite 
 possible for the layman to follow the musi- 
 cian and to appreciate the point I wish to 
 make. As many purchasers of pianolas are 
 people who never have received musical 
 instruction, it might be supposed that the 
 most popular selections for the instrument 
 would be either bits of musical slang like 
 twosteps and ragtime, or, at the best, simple 
 pieces in the recognized classical forms. 
 But the result of the spread of musical taste 
 through this new instrument is wholly dif- 
 ferent and wholly novel from the stand- 
 point of conventional musical experience. 
 The public, the great musical public created 
 by an instrument which does away with all 
 considerations of technique and leaves the 
 player free to select what he wants to play, 
 no matter how difficult it may be when 
 
 43
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 played on the pianoforte, sweeps aside all 
 conventions which learned commentators, 
 critics and writers on the history and evo- 
 lution of music have sought to establish and 
 in fact have succeeded in establishing for 
 those who have been obliged to study music 
 in the ordinary way, and boldly selects as 
 first choice from the vast array of composi- 
 tions Liszt's " Rhapsodic Hongroise " No. 
 2, with the " Tannhauser " overture of Wag- 
 ner a close second. In other words the 
 musical public when left to itself and not 
 led or led astray by pedants begins at 
 the right end of musical evolution which is 
 the end, the supreme efflorescence, and not 
 the beginning. Conceding that the evolu- 
 tion of the human race began with the 
 monkey and ends with ourselves, it may be 
 said, metaphorically, that the musical public, 
 when left to itself, declines to monkey with 
 the monkey, but at once proceeds to pluck 
 44
 
 FIRST STEPS OF NOVICE 
 
 the full flower of evolution, the human. 
 For if any musical compositions are hu- 
 man documents that term is applicable to 
 the " Second Rhapsody " and to the " Tann- 
 hauser " overture. Each tells a vivid story 
 and tells it according to the canons of art, 
 life and truth. The unfortunate student 
 of music, shackled by instruction that aims 
 mainly at teaching him how to play an in- 
 strument and ignores the higher side of art, 
 plods through the classical repertory until 
 he gets an idea that music consists of noth- 
 ing but symphonies and sonatas, which is 
 as absurd as it would be to say that poetry 
 consists of nothing but sonnets, whereas a 
 couple of dozen good sonnets are enough 
 for the literature of any language. 
 
 Indeed, while instruction in the other arts 
 steadily is being modernized and steadily 
 aims to familiarize the student with their 
 higher aspects, little progress has been made 
 
 45
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 in the teaching of music. It still is in a 
 state comparable only with that which ex- 
 isted in the teaching of languages when in- 
 struction in these was given according to 
 the system of Ollendorf, with its series of 
 foolish questions and answers: 
 
 " Is this the sword of the grandfather? " 
 " No, it is the false curl of the grand- 
 mother." 
 
 A five finger exercise, or an old-fashioned 
 technical study with its dry little theme in 
 the treble and its foolish little answer in 
 the base, always suggests to me something 
 along the lines of the Ollendorfian phrase- 
 ology: 
 
 "Is this musical phrase beautiful?" 
 " No, but it is great for limbering up the 
 little finger." 
 
 Often since giving thought to the new in- 
 strument which wholly eliminates the ques- 
 tion of technique from pianoforte playing,
 
 FIRST STEPS OF NOVICE 
 
 I have wondered if the importance attached 
 to " limbering up the little finger " has not 
 given us a wrong musical perspective; 
 whether compositions musically of little 
 value have not assumed enormous impor- 
 tance in the curriculum and been retained 
 there, because they developed ringer facility 
 in certain directions. For example to a 
 pianist the " School of Velocity " by Czerny 
 and the " Gradus ad Parnassum " by de- 
 menti, two series of famous technical studies, 
 mean everything. To the pianolist they 
 mean nothing need mean nothing. As 
 for the " School of Velocity " he can by 
 simply moving the tempo lever to the right 
 make the pianola play so fast that, if old 
 Czerny still were alive, he would lose his 
 breath listening to it. As for the " Gradus 
 ad Parnassum," the difficulties which de- 
 menti piled up in the pianist's path, the 
 pianolist overleaps as lightly and casually 
 
 47
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 as if wholly unaware of their existence. He 
 may never have heard of these technical 
 works yet, if he has natural musical instinct 
 or has developed it through the piano- 
 player, he will be as correct in his judgment 
 of what to play and how to play it, as if 
 he had devoted his whole life to an ardu- 
 ous study of pianoforte technique. The 
 pianolist's experience with music is wholly 
 musical, while the pianist's is largely tech- 
 nical. For observe, that while a music 
 teacher often selects a piece for his pupil, 
 not so much because it is beautiful but be- 
 cause it follows up and supplements the 
 technical exercise which the pupil has been 
 practicing, the pianolist's point of view in 
 choosing his repertory is not obscured by 
 any consideration of this kind. Scratch a 
 Russian and you find a Tartar; scratch 
 musical instruction of the average kind and 
 you find technique. The pianolist's prog-
 
 FIRST STEPS OF NOVICE 
 
 ress is determined by music's appeal to his 
 soul; the average music pupil's by what he 
 can accomplish with his ringers. In this 
 way, as I already have suggested, certain 
 pieces have acquired an importance far out 
 of proportion to their musical value, and 
 have retained their position not only in the 
 curriculum but, unfortunately, even in the 
 concert repertory. 
 
 There is a lot of this dry wood in music 
 and the unfortunate student is compelled to 
 chop it until, when he sees a real tree, he 
 thinks it is all wrong because it has green 
 leaves instead of withered ones and strong, 
 sappy branches instead of little twigs that 
 snap off at the least touch. This is the 
 reason that modern music, although it is the 
 most natural music ever written, has to be 
 " explained " because students prejudiced 
 by pedantic instruction have become so ac- 
 customed to the artificial that they cannot 
 
 49
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 appreciate what is natural; just as experts 
 in primitive art fail to appreciate the beauty 
 of the later schools of painting. 
 
 To me it is positively exhilarating that 
 the great mass of those people who have 
 become devotees of the mechanical piano- 
 player do not stop to ask what is the rela- 
 tion of this or that composition to the de- 
 velopment of music or its place in musical 
 evolution ; but, taking music simply as music, 
 confidently place pieces like the " Second 
 Rhapsody " or the " Tannhauser " overture 
 on the pianola and are thrilled by the artis- 
 tic realism of these compositions. Uncon- 
 sciously they are supporting the contention 
 of those advanced thinkers in music who 
 place the expression of life and truth above 
 artificial form. Suppose a paint brush 
 were invented which would give complete 
 mastery of the technique of painting to the 
 person in whose hand it was placed. Would 
 50
 
 FIRST STEPS OF NOVICE 
 
 that person go to work copying the old 
 masters? No. He would paint the sea, 
 the low meadow land, the foot hills, the 
 mountains, the waving grain, the forest, the 
 man he admired, the woman he loved. And 
 so it is that the player who has the technical 
 mastery of the pianoforte placed, so to 
 speak, at his disposal, is led by instinct 
 toward the most modern expression of mus- 
 ical thought and genius. 
 
 In his book, " The Temple of Art," Ernest 
 Newlandsmith has a chapter on musical 
 education in which he points out that after 
 all a pianist's fingers and muscles are simply 
 mechanical contrivances for striking the 
 keys, and that to gain complete control or 
 mastery of this mechanical process requires 
 incessant drudgery and labor, such mastery 
 being attained only by very few people. 
 " The average pianist never gains the power 
 of even striking the notes in really difficult
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 music; yet for an artist to infuse the exact 
 expression of his feeling into a work, he 
 must not only be able to do this, but must 
 also be able to vary this striking of notes 
 by the most minute and subtle degrees of 
 intensity, and that without experiencing any 
 difficulty whatever, so that his entire atten- 
 tion may be devoted to his feeling." All 
 this the pianolist gains without any of that 
 drudgery so apt to obscure correct musical 
 perspective, so that, to quote again from 
 Mr. Newlandsmith, " it is a matter of won- 
 der that any one can be found to speak 
 against mechanical piano-players, when they 
 remember that they are only mechanical to 
 the extent that a pianist has to be. They 
 are not intended to play of themselves, like 
 a musical box, but are controlled by the per- 
 former's feeling."
 
 FIRST STEPS OF NOVICE 
 
 The first steps in music are apt to be " two- 
 steps." Marches and dances of a popular 
 kind and the seemingly inevitable coon-song 
 may be regarded as the infant's food of the 
 musical novice. For a person whose love 
 of music still is latent, may not " arrive " 
 at once at the " Second Rhapsody " or the 
 " Tannhauser " overture. The friend to 
 whom I have dedicated this book began 
 with the lightest kind of music, the kind he 
 now regards as " trash." For from know- 
 ing nothing at all about music, he has be- 
 come, through the piano-player, an ardent 
 lover of all that is good in the art. Nevin's 
 " Narcissus " happened to be included in his 
 first set of rolls. He tried it over, but 
 thought it dull. After a while, however, 
 when the other rolls began to pall on him, 
 he played it again and found in it something 
 that he missed in the others. This was the 
 first step toward better things, and step by 
 
 53
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 step thereafter he gained in musical taste 
 until now his judgment is unerring. 
 
 Nevin whose death six years ago and at 
 a comparatively early age, was a distinct 
 loss to music, was one of the small number 
 of composers who have written music of 
 the lighter kind which yet is thoroughly 
 good, music that is pleasing without being 
 trivial, melodious without a suggestion of 
 the commonplace, and thoroughly sound in 
 workmanship. This American composer 
 was exceptionally apt at reproducing in 
 music a mood or fancy and at painting in 
 tone the charms of a romantic locality. Pos- 
 sibly no gentler rise from what is known as 
 the " light classic " to the classic can be 
 provided than through him. Therefore I 
 begin with him, although he is a thoroughly 
 modern composer, my aim being gradually 
 to lead the pianolist from enjoyment of 
 lighter works, of the kind, however, which 
 
 54
 
 FIRST STEPS OF NOVICE 
 
 possess genuine musical merit, to an appre- 
 ciation of the greater masterpieces. Some- 
 times I have selected only one work by a 
 composer and, except in the case of Chopin, 
 never more than a few examples from any 
 composer. But the works which I cite and 
 describe in more or less detail, should suffice 
 to stimulate the pianolist to explore more 
 fully the range of the composers I mention, 
 and of others. I give merely a taste; the 
 catalogue of music rolls supplies the full 
 menu. 
 
 To some this arrangement may seem hap- 
 hazard. Nevertheless it has system and 
 purpose. The usual method followed in 
 books that aim to be musical guides would 
 have been much easier. Mine I believe 
 best adapted to the needs of the average 
 pianolist, who, it may be assumed, at the 
 time he purchases his instrument, knows 
 little or nothing about music of the higher 
 5 55
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 kind; whose taste, in fact, still is to be de- 
 veloped. 
 
 I cannot imagine any one so obtuse to 
 musical impressions as not to find Nevin's 
 " Valse Caprice," Op. 6, No. i, thoroughly 
 delightful. It is the first of a set of several 
 pieces comprised in his sixth work, this 
 fact being expressed by the designation Opus 
 6, No. i. The piece is full of pretty senti- 
 ment and I always like to imagine that it 
 describes an episode during a dance. It 
 has charming melodies. Ornamental figura- 
 tions in the accompaniment, now above, now 
 below, give the effect of whispered ques- 
 tions and answers during the dance. The 
 questions put by the man are pressing and 
 ardent, the answers from the girl playful 
 and parrying. Sometimes they even ripple 
 with chaff. Yet, toward the end of the 
 dainty little composition, they become tinged 
 with sentiment, as if she were afraid she 
 
 56
 
 might have gone a little too far and might 
 " spoil things " and thought it just as well 
 to let him know in time that, after all, she 
 was not turning a wholly deaf ear to his 
 pleading. 
 
 This piece I would follow with Nevin's 
 " Intermezzo," Op. 7, No. 3. Although it 
 belongs to an entirely different work I en- 
 joy playing it immediately after the waltz 
 and imagining that it relates to the same 
 young couple that he has led her out into 
 the conservatory or on to a terrace overlook- 
 ing a moonlight garden and under these ro- 
 mantic circumstances, is urging his suit 
 more persistently than before. She, how- 
 ever, is a little too fond of flirting to let her 
 real sentiments be known at once. But 
 when, as if giving up the riddle in her 
 dancing eyes and seemingly mocking smile, 
 he appears about to lead her back into the 
 ballroom, there is, at least so I like to read 
 
 57
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 the music, a pretty little laugh, as much as 
 to say, " Can't you read my real feelings 
 under my mask of banter," a tender glance 
 indicated by a retard on a charmingly ex- 
 pressive little turn of the melody and she 
 is in his arms. 
 
 Now I would repeat the waltz, to indi- 
 cate that, carried away by their happiness, 
 they have gone back into the ballroom and 
 thrown themselves heart and soul into the 
 dance. And there you have a little Nevin 
 suite telling a pretty story. 
 
 To me one of this composer's most fanciful 
 tone paintings is, " In my Neighbor's Gar- 
 den," Op. 21, No. 2. This is one of a series 
 of pieces the complete title of which is 
 " May in Tuscany," and which he com- 
 posed during a sojourn in Florence. You 
 can hear a bird sing all through this piece, 
 and that the composer so intended it, became 
 clear to me when I found that its original
 
 FIRST STEPS OF NOVICE 
 
 title was " Rusignuolo," Italian for night- 
 ingale. 
 
 Make haste to mount, thou wistful moon, 
 Make haste to wake the nightingale: 
 Let silence set the world in tune 
 To harken to that wordless tale 
 Which warbles from the nightingale. 
 
 Those lines from Christina Rosetti's 
 " Bird Raptures," seem to me perfectly re- 
 flected in Nevin's composition, and equally 
 so are these lines from the same poet's " Twi- 
 light Calm": 
 
 Hark! that's the nightingale, 
 
 Telling the self -same tale 
 
 Her song told when this ancient earth was young: 
 So echoes answered when her song was sung 
 
 In the first wooded vale. 
 
 Or this from Byron's " Parisina " : 
 
 It is the hour when from the boughs 
 The nightingale's high note is heard; 
 
 It is the hour when lovers' vows 
 Seem sweet in every whisper'd word. 
 
 59
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 Nevin's " Barcarolle " is another beautiful 
 composition, which conveys the listener to 
 Venice with its picturesque canals and an- 
 cient palaces. It is a night scene, and re- 
 minds me of Wagner's description of the 
 singing of the gondoliers at night in one of 
 his letters from Venice: "Ah, music on the 
 canal. A gondola with gaily colored lights, 
 singers and players. More and more gon- 
 dolas join it. The flotilla, barely moving, 
 gently gliding, floats the whole width of 
 the canal. At last, almost imperceptibly, 
 it makes the turn of the bend and vanishes. 
 For a long while I hear the tones beautified 
 by the night. Finally the last sound, dying 
 away, seems to dissolve itself into the moon- 
 light, which beams softly on, like a visible 
 realm of music." 
 
 There is an entire Venetian suite by Nevin 
 which he composed during a stay in the 
 Italian city. One day he gave his gondolier 
 60
 
 FIRST STEPS OF NOVICE 
 
 a day off, and the boatman took his sweet- 
 heart, who lived on the mainland and never 
 had been in Venice, through the waterways. 
 It was this which suggested to Nevin the 
 composition of the suite, which he entitled 
 "A Day in Venice." The best known num- 
 ber from it is the " Venetian Love Song." 
 Moskowszki is another good composer of 
 light music, and like Nevin, what he writes 
 is thoroughly original. His " Serenata " 
 Op. 15, No. i, is one of the prettiest of 
 modern pieces, and a perfect example of 
 what a serenade should be a graceful 
 melody over an accompaniment of guitarlike 
 chords. There is an intervening part with 
 much ornamentation, which has the effect of 
 improvising, a delicious little run leading 
 back to the first melody which now should 
 be played very softly and with slight re- 
 tardations, as if the serenader were depart- 
 ing and the music dying away. " From 
 
 61
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 Foreign Parts," Moskowszki's Op. 23, is 
 one of the best known modern compositions. 
 It consists of several numbers each repre- 
 senting a country and composed in true 
 national style and with as much success as 
 if, were such a thing possible, the composer 
 were a native of each of these countries and 
 were thoroughly imbued with its spirit. Of 
 these separate numbers I am inclined espe- 
 cially to recommend to the pianolist " Ger- 
 many," with its beautiful, broad, sustained 
 melody, thoroughly German in contour and 
 expression, and among the most beautiful 
 melodies composed in modern times; and 
 " Spain," one of the most brilliant little rolls 
 for the piano-player gay, spirited and full 
 of snap and go, the movement never flagging 
 from beginning to end. Moskowszki has 
 shown himself most happy in catching the 
 spirit of Spanish music. He has a book of 
 Spanish dances and two Spanish albums 
 62
 
 FIRST STEPS OF NOVICE 
 
 full of music of most varying mood, yet 
 every mood characteristic of Spain and its 
 people, now gay, now languorous, now dash- 
 ing, now subdued, now softly whispering, 
 now full of verve and passion, like the 
 " Bolero," the fifth of the " Spanish Dances," 
 Op. 12, with its sharply accentuated rhythm 
 and dashing melody, which toward the end 
 fairly swirls with excitement. 
 
 A " Moment Musical," Op. 7, No. 2, was 
 the composition which gave Moskowszki 
 his first taste of international fame, but in 
 spite of much that is genuinely beautiful, 
 especially in its opening melody, I think the 
 work suffers from undue length. By all 
 means, however, the pianolist should not 
 neglect this composition. Were I asked, 
 however, to select the work which seems to 
 me to bring out in the most favorable relief 
 Moskowszki's traits as a composer it would 
 be his "Waltz," Op. 34, No. i. It has an 
 
 63
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 introduction beginning with a phrase in the 
 bass like a man asking the honor of a dance 
 with an attractive girl, followed by a little 
 upward run, the gleam of the smile with 
 which she gives assent. Then there are 
 short, crisp, bright phrases, as though she 
 enjoyed the knowledge that every one is 
 looking at her as he leads her out and whis- 
 pers compliments. 
 
 The introduction with all these interest- 
 ing preliminaries over, the waltz itself opens 
 with a melody full of sentiment and almost 
 personal in its persistent suggestion of woo- 
 ing. At the same time it has a graceful 
 swing that carries it along like an under- 
 current, with rising and falling inflections, 
 and, like the Nevin waltz, with much dainty 
 ornamentation, as if the couple were con- 
 versing in low tones while dancing. Then 
 there is a brilliant episode when individuals 
 seem lost sight of in the general vividness
 
 FIRST STEPS OF NOVICE 
 
 of the scene with its gaily colored costumes 
 and flash of jewels. There are alternating 
 sentimental passages until, toward the end, 
 the first melody bursts into a fortissimo a 
 great rising inflection, insistent and impas- 
 sioned then a final pitch of excitement as 
 all seem to throw themselves into the whirl 
 and the waltz reaches a brilliant end. While 
 Nevin in the waltz which I selected from 
 among his works, appears to tell the story 
 of two people, Moskowszki here places be- 
 fore our eyes a vivid ballroom scene with 
 one particularly handsome couple as the 
 center of attraction, without, however, let- 
 ting us wholly into their secret. The waltz, 
 though long, is of never-flagging interest. 
 
 This composer's opus 34 is an orchestral 
 suite (" Premiere Suite d' Orchestre ") of 
 which the second number is an " Allegretto 
 giojoso," a playful, sportive, chic and grace- 
 ful movement, with a tender melody in the 
 
 65
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 middle part, at first heard alone, then with 
 a sparkling accompaniment. This piece 
 having originally been scored for orchestra, 
 it is quite possible to detect orchestral instru- 
 ments like flutes and clarionets in some of 
 the brilliant runs. The pianola roll is a 
 reproduction of an arrangement for four 
 hands, that is, for two players at one piano, 
 yet only one player is required to produce 
 the full effect of a pianoforte duet arranged 
 from an orchestral composition. 
 
 Moskowszki is a prolific composer, and 
 it is well worth the pianolist's while to thor- 
 oughly explore the catalogue of his works. 
 Much modern music merely echoes what 
 has gone before and may be summed up as 
 watered Chopin. Therefore, even if Mos- 
 kowszki's compositions are in the lighter 
 forms, their originality and melodiousness 
 make them worthy of ranking high among 
 modern salon pieces. 
 66
 
 FIRST STEPS OF NOVICE 
 
 One of the prettiest and deservedly pop- 
 ular little works in the modern repertory is 
 the Paderewski " Minuet," Op. 14, No. i. 
 Modern minuets are echoes of the classical 
 period. Compositions of this kind are to 
 be found in the sonatas and symphonies of 
 Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven and even 
 further back in the suites of Bach. Accord- 
 ingly the Paderewski " Minuet," in keeping 
 with the form, is simple and clear-cut and 
 gracefully melodious. At the same time, 
 however, it is modern in the brilliant orna- 
 mentation introduced in the middle part of 
 the composition which in a minuet is called 
 the trio. 
 
 The minuet was a stately dance. The 
 word is derived from the French menu 
 meaning small and referring to the short 
 steps taken in the dance. Originally the 
 music to it was brief, but as a complement, 
 a second minuet was added which, in time,
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 became the trio, so-called, because it was 
 written in three part harmony. This was 
 followed by a repetition of the first minuet. 
 While the designation trio has been retained 
 to this day, the three part harmony no 
 longer is considered obligatory. The minuet 
 is one of the very few of the older dance 
 forms which have not become obsolete. 
 
 It was a square dance, the steps consisting 
 of a coupee (a salute to one's partner, while 
 resting on one foot and swinging the other 
 backward and forward) a high step and a 
 balance. In the Paderewski minuet the 
 stately, ceremonious character of this dance 
 is preserved together with its old fashioned, 
 na'ive grace and charm. It is quite possible 
 while playing it to see the dancers at a 
 French court ball or in the ballroom of some 
 chateau, the women, beauties of their day, in 
 high pompadour with puffs and curls pow- 
 dered white, with petites mouches, little moon 
 68
 
 FIRST STEPS OF NOVICE 
 
 and star-shaped beauty spots, on their faces; 
 square cut bodices, lace stomachers, paniers 
 over brocaded skirts with lace panels; feet 
 encased in high heel satin slippers with 
 jewelled buckles; and gracefully managing 
 their ostrich feather fans as they curtsy to 
 their partners; the latter wearing wigs also 
 powdered white, long coats of brocade, 
 elaborately embroidered waistcoats with lace 
 jabots, satin knee breeches, silk stockings 
 and a garter with jewelled buckle on the 
 right leg, and helping themselves to snuff 
 out of gold or silver boxes during brief 
 pauses in the dance. Such is the picture 
 that can be conjured up in imagination 
 while playing the Paderewski minuet. 
 
 Quite different yet equally effective in its 
 way is his " Cracovienne Fantastic," Op. 14, 
 No. 6. The cracovienne is a Polish dance 
 for a large and brilliant company and just 
 as Paderewski recalled in his minuet the
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 stately assemblage of days long past, so in 
 his cracovienne he gives us a brilliant pic- 
 ture of a ballroom scene in his native Poland 
 when that country was still in its glory 
 and not partitioned among three nations of 
 Europe. The reiteration of its characteristic 
 rhythm gives it peculiar fascination. It is 
 clearly and distinctly melodious, with bright, 
 flashing runs giving it brilliancy. 
 
 Again different in style from any of the 
 preceding are the works of Cecile Cham- 
 inade. Not only is this composer a woman, 
 she is a French woman and, like a French 
 woman, essentially clever and chic. She 
 may be a trifle more superficial than the 
 composers I have mentioned, but her music 
 is clean-cut, clear as a crystal, and, like 
 everything about a refined woman, the 
 quintessence of neatness. It is quite as if 
 Mme. Chaminade's maid laid out her mus- 
 ical thoughts as well as her dresses, being 
 70
 
 FIRST STEPS OF NOVICE 
 
 sure to have every frill and furbelow in its 
 place, whether it be the robe d' interieur 
 which she is to wear at breakfast, her robe 
 de ville for calling, or her robe de soiree. 
 True it is that serious musicians are apt to 
 wear a somewhat supercilious expression at 
 mention of her music and to pronounce it 
 clever rather than deep, yet it is equally 
 true that it takes its place among the best 
 salon pieces of the day and gains value if 
 only from the fact that this bright French 
 woman has skillfully refrained from attempt- 
 ing flights for which her graceful wings are 
 not strong enough. Most of her music is 
 characterized by a fascinating archness and 
 coquetry and requires quick and sudden 
 changes in time for its proper interpretation. 
 While rarely attempting the larger musical 
 forms, she has been an industrious student 
 of the best music, so that all her compositions 
 are what is called " well made," correct ac- 
 6 71
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 cording to the rules of musical science, yet 
 in melodic and harmonic inspiration char- 
 acterized by originality and musical inven- 
 tiveness. She writes with judgment, refine- 
 ment and taste, avoiding on the one hand the 
 pitfall of pretentiousness, and, on the other, 
 the monotony of platitude found in the 
 works of those who compose in the larger 
 forms but lack the originality to fill them 
 with new and interesting matter. It is a 
 great thing to know your limitations, yet to 
 be able to do vivid and original work within 
 them. 
 
 Brief as is Chaminade's " Serenade," Op. 
 29, its melody is charming, it is ably har- 
 monized and it appeals to the heart. There 
 is not a commonplace bar in it. It is one 
 of those delicate bits of inspiration which 
 survive other and seemingly grander works, 
 the grandeur of which, however, is in course 
 of time, discovered to be mere hollow pre- 
 72
 
 FIRST STEPS OF NOVICE 
 
 tentiousness. It is a capital example of the 
 manner in which this composer writes in the 
 small genre delicate, refined and sensitive. 
 She has been highly successful in composi- 
 tions in dance form, managing these with- 
 out a suggestion of the trivial. Thus her 
 "Air de Ballet," Op. 30, No. i, is full of 
 brilliancy and nervous energy without ever 
 degenerating into vulgar noisiness. Another 
 "Air de Ballet" by her from the ballet 
 " Callirhoe," to which her widely known 
 " Scarf Dance " also belongs, is crisp, bright 
 and dainty. " Callirhoe " is a ballet-sym- 
 phonique for stage performance and its pro- 
 duction showed her to be so well grounded 
 in her art that it does not suffer even under 
 the pressure of rapid composition, or of be- 
 ing obliged to work " on time." The com- 
 mission for this ballet was offered to Godard, 
 a well-known French composer. He was, 
 however, occupied with an opera and de- 
 
 73
 
 clined the work, at the same time recom- 
 mending that the commission be offered to 
 Chaminade. It was accepted by her and 
 within six weeks from the day when she 
 began work upon it, it was completed even 
 to the scoring for orchestra. 
 
 While the pianolist hardly can go amiss 
 in choosing from among the list of Cham- 
 inade's compositions I may mention as 
 especially characteristic her " Arabesque," 
 " Humoresque," La Lisonjera (Flatterer) 
 " Pierrette," " Scaramouche " (Mountebank) 
 and " Spinning Wheel." 
 
 Chaminade's compositions are so popular 
 in this country yet so little is known about 
 her personally, that I have secured a few per- 
 sonal data concerning her from my friend, 
 Mr. Percy Mitchell, who is attached to the 
 staff of an American paper in Paris. Mme. 
 Carbonel-Chaminade has a shock of dark, 
 curly, short-cropped hair which gives her a 
 74
 
 FIRST STEPS OF NOVICE 
 
 boyish aspect, a touch of masculinity fur- 
 ther emphasized by a tailor-made costume 
 with stiff, white, turned-down collar and 
 loosely tied scarf. Beyond this aspect, how- 
 ever, there is nothing mannish about her. 
 She cares neither for sport nor exercise in 
 general; her principal occupation is musical 
 composition, her chief relaxation practicing 
 the pianoforte two hours a day; and she 
 reads an immense amount of poetry from 
 which she carefully selects the words for her 
 songs. Society she abhors, but she attends 
 scrupulously to her large correspondence. 
 Very many of these letters come from 
 America, and in a practical spirit truly 
 American seek information regarding the 
 interpretation of her works. " How should 
 your l Serenade ' be phrased? I am learn- 
 ing the l Scarf Dance.' By this same mail 
 I am sending you a copy of it. Would you 
 kindly mark the phrasing in it and return 
 
 75
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 it to me? " In connection with questions 
 of this kind it is interesting to note that 
 practically all of Chaminade's compositions 
 have been metrostyled for the pianola by the 
 composer herself. The pianolist at least 
 will not find it necessary to trouble her with 
 questions like the above. 
 
 Probably no composer has had one set 
 method of work. It is apt to vary accord- 
 ing to surroundings. So with Chaminade. 
 She may write while seated at her piano- 
 forte, testing her thoughts on the keyboard 
 and even working them out in detail before 
 putting them on paper. Or she may sit at 
 her table, a vast velvet-covered affair taking 
 up nearly half of her studio. Sometimes an 
 idea that has haunted her for weeks may 
 take definite shape while she is speeding on 
 a train to fulfill a concert engagement and 
 she will jot it down in spite of the roar 
 and vibration of railway travel. As the
 
 FIRST STEPS OF NOVICE 
 
 train rushes on the composition may be com- 
 pletely worked out in the composer's mind 
 before the journey's end, and so retentive 
 is Chaminade's memory that, when she re- 
 turns to her villa in Vesinet, near the forest 
 of St. Germain not far from Paris, she can 
 seat herself at her table and copy the work 
 from that mental vision of it which she had 
 on the train. 
 
 Some years ago during a semi-professional 
 tour which she made through Roumania, 
 Servia and Greece, she was invited to play 
 for the students of the Athens conservatory. 
 When she stepped on the stage she saw row 
 after row of young people armed with the 
 printed music of what she was about to 
 play and prepared in a cold-blooded, busi- 
 ness-like way to open the music of the first 
 number on the program and to follow the 
 concert note for note from the printed scores 
 from beginning to end. Imagine the effect 
 
 77
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 upon her nerves produced by the rustling 
 of one hundred pages all being turned at 
 the same instant at intervals during the 
 concert; and even now she laughingly con- 
 fesses that she was nearly overcome with 
 stage fright and prays she may never have 
 to endure again such an ordeal as the music 
 students of Athens unwittingly prepared for 
 her. 
 
 With the exception of Nevin, the com- 
 posers whose works I have mentioned are 
 living and actively engaged in composition. 
 The piece to which I now desire to call the 
 pianolist's attention belongs to the dawn of 
 the romantic period in music. It was com- 
 posed by Weber who died in 1826, is en- 
 titled " Invitation to the Dance," was written 
 a few months after his happy marriage with 
 the opera singer Caroline Brandt, and is 
 dedicated to " My Caroline." Because 
 Weber was one of the first composers who 
 
 78
 
 FIRST STEPS OF NOVICE 
 
 rank as great to give distinctly descriptive 
 titles to compositions, and because of certain 
 other characteristics in his works, he is 
 regarded as the founder of the romantic 
 school of music music which is not simply 
 sufficient unto itself but has a secondary 
 meaning that adds immeasurably to its inter- 
 ests; music which seeks to suggest a definite 
 mood and even to throw a realistic picture 
 of some scene in nature or some human ex- 
 perience upon a background of harmony and 
 instrumental coloring; and which cares less 
 for the artifices of form than for the expres- 
 sion of the true and the beautiful from the 
 standpoint of modern art. 
 
 The " Invitation to the Dance " derives 
 further interest from the fact that it was 
 the first composition to lift the waltz, which 
 up to that time had been employed simply 
 as an accompaniment for dancing, to the 
 level of other legitimate and recognized 
 
 79
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 artistic musical forms. The composition 
 opens with an introduction in slow time, 
 the first phrase unmistakably being the voice 
 of the man conveying to the lady an invita- 
 tion to dance. You hear her playful ob- 
 jection undoubtedly she wants to be asked 
 a second time the repetition of his invita- 
 tion, her assent, the short dialogue as the 
 two step out on the floor; brief, but resonant 
 preluding chords; then the free, elastic 
 rhythm of the waltz followed by its gay, 
 dashing melody. There is an exuberance 
 of runs and ornamentations until the first 
 feeling of elation lapses into a second 
 dreamy, languorous waltz melody, as if the 
 dancers were floating on the scented atmos- 
 phere of the ballroom. In portions of this 
 there is a sentimental colloquy between the 
 couple whom we met in the introduction, the 
 two voices being clearly differentiated. The 
 little duet between them adds to the beauty 
 80
 
 FIRST STEPS OF NOVICE 
 
 and interest of this portion of the work, the 
 melody of which simply is exquisite. Then 
 everything whirls and sparkles again and, 
 when the dance has ceased, there is a briefer 
 recapitulation of the introduction, the lady 
 is led back to her seat, and the episode comes 
 to an end. 
 
 The pianolist may now place Liszt's 
 "Campanella" (Bell rondo) on the instru- 
 ment. Originally this was composed by the 
 famous violinist Paganini. Liszt trans- 
 cribed it for the pianoforte and so success- 
 fully that now it is better known in his 
 version than in its original form. It is a 
 piece which can be described only by one 
 word delicious. Its title is immediately 
 understood by the unmistakable silvery 
 tinkle of a bell in the high treble, constantly 
 recurring, but always with added instead of 
 diminishing, beauty. On the pianoforte it 
 demands virtuosity of the highest rank, yet 
 
 81
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 for the pianolist it is as easy to play as is 
 the simplest pianoforte piece intended for 
 a beginner. 
 
 And so, having begun this chapter with 
 Nevin, one of the lighter composers of pro- 
 nounced merit, the pianolist already finds 
 himself playing a work by Weber and an- 
 other by Liszt, two of the most famous 
 figures in musical history. Even if, as I 
 trust will be the case, he becomes so inter- 
 ested in the works I have cited in this 
 chapter, as to try much other music by the 
 same composers, he will, in an almost in- 
 credibly short space of time, be ready for 
 the thrill of the great masters which shows 
 that, after all, the sequence I am following 
 in this book is not as haphazard as some may 
 think. 
 
 82
 
 IV. THE THRILL OF THE GREAT 
 MASTERS 
 
 TN his choice of music the pianolist need 
 * not pause to consider the slow evolution 
 of the art from the simple to the more 
 complex, since for him nothing is complex. 
 Thus he is free to disregard all traditions, 
 even such an absurd one, for example, as 
 that which insists that a sonata or symphony 
 should be played as a whole, that, if a work 
 in this form consists of three or four move- 
 ments, none of these should be " lifted " out 
 of the whole and played as a separate com- 
 position. 
 
 The pianolist calmly looks upon these 
 movements as so many different pieces and 
 chooses between them. Thus among the 
 hundred classical compositions most in de- 
 mand by pianolists, the slow movement of 
 Beethoven's " Fifth Symphony " ranks seven- 
 teenth, while the first is as far down on the 
 list as thirty-seventh, and the roll with the 
 
 83
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 last two movements as sixty-fifth. That in 
 future the consensus of opinion of thousands 
 of music lovers who are unhampered by 
 pedantic tradition, will have immense in- 
 fluence in determining the standard of com- 
 posers and of their several works, and will 
 have immense effect in hastening the intro- 
 duction and appreciation of works by new 
 composers, in spite of opposition from the 
 ultra-conservative element, goes without say- 
 ing, and will be one of the most important 
 factors in the revolution this new musical 
 instrument is destined to effect. 
 
 All this readily can be appreciated when 
 the attitude of this great musical public 
 toward Liszt's " Hungarian Rhapsodies " is 
 taken into account. For years the critical 
 camp has been divided on Liszt, some con- 
 sidering him a composer whose unequalled 
 greatness as a player of the pianoforte led 
 him to write music that was superficially
 
 THRILL OF GREAT MASTERS 
 
 brilliant but barren of genuine musical in- 
 spiration. Others, like Henry T. Finck and 
 that band of advanced commentators on 
 music among whom I am proud to number 
 myself, unhesitatingly rank him with the 
 greatest composers. This phase of musical 
 life, this warring of factions, the pianolist 
 happily ignores entirely, and following his 
 unbiased intuition, places Liszt's second 
 " Hungarian Rhapsody " at the head of the 
 repertory, closely follows it with the twelfth 
 and fourteenth, and, all told, includes nine 
 of these fifteen compositions in the top list 
 of one hundred pieces of serious music 
 which have proved most popular with pia- 
 nola players. The pianolist is not aware 
 of the fact, but that most inexorable of all 
 critics, time, most emphatically justifies his 
 choice. 
 
 Liszt brought out these rhapsodies fifty- 
 three years ago. They are not compositions
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 which suddenly are offering themselves as 
 candidates for popular favor. For more 
 than half a century has passed over these 
 master works, which still are as fresh and 
 modern as if they had been struck off but 
 yesterday in the white heat of inspiration. 
 Their roots go back even further than fifty- 
 three years. As long ago as 1838 Liszt 
 published them as short transcriptions of 
 Hungarian tunes. Then he worked them 
 over and, in 1846, issued them in somewhat 
 more elaborate form as " Melodies Hong- 
 roises." Still further elaborated they be- 
 came in 1854 the " Rhapsodies Hongroises " 
 as we know them. 
 
 These rhapsodies reflect the weird roman- 
 ticism of that most mysterious and fascinat- 
 ing of races, the Gypsies, as successfully as 
 Chopin's music reflects the crushed aspira- 
 tions of his unhappy country, Poland. Al- 
 though they are called Hungarian, they are 
 86
 
 THRILL OF GREAT MASTERS 
 
 neither derived from nor founded upon 
 national Hungarian music, but are purely 
 of Gypsy origin. The Hungarians, how- 
 ever, have adopted the Gypsies as their 
 national musicians, and it is by reason of 
 this adoption, or, in order to express through 
 the title this mutual assimilation, that Liszt 
 has called these rhapsodies " Hungarian." 
 With a Gypsy parentage so authentic that 
 he speaks of the melodies on which they 
 are based, as " the songs without words " 
 of the Gypsies, his rhapsodies form the 
 only channel through which the intense 
 inner life and mystic idealism of this strange 
 race has found expression. They are the 
 long suppressed cry of souls struggling for 
 self utterance and they constitute nothing 
 less than an epic, the " Iliad," of that strange 
 race which centuries ago cast itself upon 
 the continent of Europe like a wave coming, 
 none knew from where or whither bound. 
 
 7 8 7
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 This race, as Liszt describes it in his book 
 on Gypsy music, brought no memories, be- 
 trayed no hope; possessed no country, re- 
 ligion, history. Divided into tribes, hordes 
 and bands, wandering hither and thither, 
 following each the route dictated by chance, 
 they still preserve under the most distant 
 meridian, the same infallible rallying signs, 
 the same physiognomy, the same language, 
 the same traditions. The ages pass. The 
 world progresses. Countries make war or 
 peace, change masters and manners, but this 
 people that shares the joys, the sorrows, the 
 prosperity and the misfortunes of none other; 
 that laughs at the ambitions, the tears, the 
 combats of civilization; still obstinately 
 clings to its hunger and its liberty, its tents 
 and its tatters, and still exercises, as it has 
 exercised for centuries, an indescribable and 
 indestructible fascination upon poetic minds, 
 passing it on as a mysterious legacy from 
 age to age.
 
 THRILL OF GREAT MASTERS 
 
 Such is the race of which Liszt recites the 
 epic in the " Hungarian Rhapsodies." They 
 portray the life, the scenes, the mood of the 
 Gypsy camp, vividly, brilliantly, yet with an 
 undercurrent of tragedy the tragedy of 
 homeless wanderers. Because they repre- 
 sent life, because they are true to life, be- 
 cause they depict life with a wonderful 
 union of realism and beauty, they will, in 
 spite of critical detraction, live as long as 
 the Bach fugues, the Beethoven sonatas or 
 the Wagner music dramas. 
 
 An elaborate musical analysis of these 
 wonderful works would be futile. They 
 are too racial, and in parts too pictorial to 
 be dissected in narrative style. What I have 
 said of the race from which they derive 
 their characteristics should serve as a gen- 
 eral explanation of their purport. The sec- 
 ond, twelfth and fourteenth rhapsodies are 
 admirable examples of the series. In gen-
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 eral these " Hungarian Rhapsodies " open 
 with a few brief bars suggestive of tragic 
 recitative, which leads into a broad yet 
 strongly marked and searching rhythm, upon 
 which is built a slow, stately yet mournful 
 melody, broken in upon here and there by 
 strange weird runs and rapid passages. 
 These latter serve a double purpose. They 
 imitate the curious aeolian harp effects of 
 the most characteristic instrument of the 
 Gypsy orchestra, the cembalon, a large, 
 shallow box with strings about as numerous 
 as those of the pianoforte, and played with 
 two little mallets, with which the player pro- 
 duces the weird arpeggios or rapid, broken 
 chords and the improvised runs character- 
 istic of Hungarian Gypsy music; and they 
 also prepare the player and listener for the 
 rapid movement into which the slow melody 
 passes over, finally to dash into the very 
 frenzy of emotional and physical excitement. 
 90
 
 THRILL OF GREAT MASTERS 
 
 These three divisions, the slow movement 
 introduced by a recitative, the rapid move- 
 ment following, and the still more rapid one 
 with which the rhapsodies generally end, are 
 based upon three distinct kinds of melodies 
 of the Gypsies, and their startling contrast 
 contributes to the effectiveness of the com- 
 position. The slow melody in the first part of 
 the rhapsodies (a different melody in each 
 rhapsody of course) is the " lassan," a sad 
 song giving utterance to the pathos of the 
 race. The dance music that follows, so full 
 of playful humor, grace, caprice, coquetry 
 and dashing contrast, is the "frischka"; 
 while the delirium, almost demoniac in its 
 fury, with which the rhapsody rushes to its 
 intoxicating finale, and compared with 
 which the Italian tarantella and even the 
 Dervish dance of the East are tame, is the 
 " czardas." In playing these rhapsodies one 
 must try to imagine a Gypsy camp, the
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 flicker of firelight in the deep forest or on 
 the wild plains of Hungary, a sense of 
 loneliness or of vast distance, forms of 
 swarthy men and women suddenly appearing 
 from a shadowy background to be illumined 
 for a moment in the light of the fire, their 
 swaying, whirling forms vanishing the next, 
 back into the vague darkness from which 
 they issued. Of the " Hungarian Rhap- 
 sodies " hostile critics may say what they 
 please; he who plays them understandingly, 
 will feel in them the thrill of a great master. 
 A composition of impassioned, yet mourn- 
 ful beauty is Liszt's " Liebestraum " (Dream 
 of Love) one of a set of three nocturnes, 
 this one being based upon a well known 
 German poem, Freiligrath's, 
 
 O love as long as love thou canst, 
 
 O love as long as love will keep; 
 The day will come, the day will come, 
 When at a grave you stand and weep. 
 92
 
 THRILL OF GREAT MASTERS 
 
 Liszt's "At the Spring " is a charming 
 composition somewhat in the same style as 
 the " Campanella," but instead of describing 
 silver-toned chimes of bells, reproducing the 
 purl of a bosky spring. One hears the clear 
 rippling water and sees its sparkling jets 
 in glints of sunlight, as it dashes against the 
 stones, and its shimmering spray. The 
 work is the forerunner and model of numer- 
 ous similar pieces, all of them, however, 
 lacking its freshness and originality and its 
 high order of musicianship. 
 
 The pianolist who is led by the examples 
 of Liszt's music which I have cited to 
 choose liberally from the numerous compo- 
 sitions by him in the catalogue of music 
 rolls, hardly can go amiss. If, however, 
 he prefers to leave this for some other time, 
 and to turn to another composer, he will 
 find Mendelssohn's " Rondo Capriccioso," 
 Op. 14, a capital roll. This rondo was com- 
 
 93
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 posed in 1826, the same year in which he 
 wrote the overture to Shakespere's " Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream," with its wonder- 
 ful depiction of fairy life. The " Rondo 
 Capriccioso " might be part of the " Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream " music, it is so 
 much in the same character. Nothing could 
 be more crisp and dainty. It seems to depict 
 elves romping through the forest by moon- 
 light. Nor is it without romantic moods, 
 as if love-making were going on even among 
 these light-footed, light-hearted revelers. 
 But when this is said, it still is all touch 
 and go; a breath, a sigh, the iridescence of 
 the moonglade on a woodland lake then 
 off and away: 
 
 Over hill, over dale, 
 
 Through brush, through brier, 
 
 Over park, over vale, 
 
 Through flood, through fire, 
 
 94
 
 THRILL OF GREAT MASTERS 
 
 I do wander everywhere, 
 Swifter than the moon's sphere ; 
 And I serve the fairy queen, 
 To dew her orbs upon the green. 
 
 or 
 
 Light as any wind that blows 
 
 So fleetly did she stir, 
 The flower she touch'd on dipt and rose, 
 
 And turned to look at her. 
 
 This " Rondo Capriccioso " is indeed a 
 fascinating piece, written in its composer's 
 most facile vein. It is one of the finest 
 rolls from among which the pianolist can 
 select. There can be no doubt that Men- 
 delssohn has been losing ground as com- 
 pared with the enormous popularity which 
 he enjoyed in his lifetime. But the pend- 
 ulum has swung too much the other way. 
 Certain of his compositions have been too 
 much neglected. The " Rondo Capriccioso " 
 is one of them. As it actually sounds 
 
 95
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 crisper and daintier on the pianola than on 
 the pianoforte no matter by whom played, 
 it enjoys well merited popularity in the 
 pianolist's repertory and may contribute 
 toward restoring the appreciation of Men- 
 delssohn's music to its proper balance. 
 
 I would be greatly surprised if a beauti- 
 ful work like Schubert's " Rosamunde " im- 
 promptu were not among the most popular 
 pieces of the pianolist's choice. The word 
 impromptu is sufficiently self-explanatory, 
 but it needs to be pointed out that this 
 work of Schubert's differs from the usual 
 impromptu in being an air with variations, 
 the variations, however, giving the impres- 
 sion of free fantasies or improvisations on 
 the original air. There are five variations 
 and the composition ends with a repetition 
 of the air. 
 
 The work is written in the truest Schu- 
 bertian style. I like to fancy that the
 
 THRILL OF GREAT MASTERS 
 
 melody with its serene, lyric beauty is a pic- 
 ture of the fair Rosamunde herself. The 
 first variation, a plaintive melody over an 
 agitated accompaniment, I should be in- 
 clined, still referring to Rosamunde and re- 
 garding each variation as expressing an ex- 
 perience in her life, to entitle " Moods." 
 The second variation is more playful in 
 character but without any loss of romantic 
 charm, and I should say that we might 
 call it an expression of her " Fancies." 
 The third an impassioned meditation, a 
 cry from the heart, Rosamunde's heart, may 
 be called " Love." The fourth variation, 
 which again is frankly playful like the 
 second, is " Hope." The fifth, as brilliant 
 as a cascade on which the sun is shining, 
 is " Joy." It ends suddenly without com- 
 ing to a full stop in the musical sense, and, 
 after a pause, the original air now couched 
 in broad and beautiful chords, begins in the 
 
 97
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 lower register, rises successively to the mid- 
 dle and higher ones, then dies away an 
 exquisite ending. Is this not Rosamunde, 
 the more charming for the romance of 
 which she is the heroine; Rosamunde, look- 
 ing at her engagement ring, musing on the 
 past and trustful of the future? 
 
 Schubert was one of the most famous song 
 composers and Liszt in addition to being 
 an original composer, rendered a great ser- 
 vice to music by transcribing, in most ad- 
 mirable style, many of Schubert's most fam- 
 ous songs for pianoforte. Widely known 
 as they are for voice, they have through 
 these transcriptions become almost as famil- 
 iar for pianoforte. The delicate and dainty 
 " Hark, Hark the Lark " is a favorite work 
 in Paderewski's repertory. So spontaneous 
 was Schubert's inspiration that he wrote the 
 music of this song at a tavern where he 
 chanced to see the poem in a book which
 
 THRILL OF GREAT MASTERS 
 
 he was examining. " If only I had some 
 music paper!" he exclaimed. One of his 
 friends promptly ruled lines on the back of 
 his bill of fare and Schubert, with the varied 
 noises of the tavern going on about him, 
 jotted down the song then and there. 
 
 Another splendid Schubert song that has 
 been made popular on the pianoforte through 
 Listz's transcription is " The Erlking." As 
 it ranks among the greatest songs, and by 
 many people actually is considered the great- 
 est, the illustration it affords of the rapidity 
 with which Schubert worked is most inter- 
 esting. Two friends calling upon him one 
 afternoon, toward the close of the year 1815, 
 found him all aglow reading " The Erlking " 
 aloud to himself. Having read the poem, 
 he walked up and down the room several 
 times, book in hand, then suddenly dropped 
 into a chair, and, without a moment's pause 
 and as fast as his pen could travel over the 
 
 99
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 paper, composed the song. Schubert had 
 no pianoforte, so the three men hurried over 
 to the school where formerly he had been 
 trained for the Imperial choir this was in 
 Vienna and there " The Erlking " was 
 sung the same evening and received with 
 enthusiasm. Afterwards the Court organist 
 played it over himself without the voice, and, 
 some of those present objecting to the dis- 
 sonances which depict the child's terror of 
 the Erlking, the organist struck these chords 
 again and explained how admirably they 
 expressed the situation described in the poem 
 and how well they were worked out mus- 
 ically. Schubert was only thirty-one when 
 he died and was only eighteen when he set 
 this poem of Goethe's to music, yet the 
 whole song is almost Wagnerian in its de- 
 scriptive and dramatic qualities, and its 
 climax thrilling. 
 
 The work of Beethoven's which seems 
 100
 
 THRILL OF GREAT MASTERS 
 
 most to appeal to the pianolist is the " Moon- 
 light" sonata. Possibly the attractive title, 
 which, however, Beethoven probably did 
 not give to it, may have something to do 
 with its selection. But why not attribute 
 its popularity to the fact that the music 
 bears out the title? 
 
 A sonata is a composition in several move- 
 ments, usually four, and follows a clearly 
 outlined, in fact, an almost rigid form, not 
 to say formula. It attained its highest de- 
 velopment during the classical period and 
 left its impress upon all the larger composi- 
 tions of that time, for a symphony is nothing 
 more than a sonata composed for orchestra, 
 instead of for the pianoforte, and trios, quar- 
 tets, and other pieces of chamber music of 
 the classical period are sonatas for the corre- 
 sponding combination of instruments. 
 
 The " Moonlight Sonata," however, is 
 less rigid in form than the average sonata. 
 
 IOT
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 In it, in fact, Beethoven may be said to have 
 broken away from form, for after the word 
 sonata he adds the qualifying phrase " quasi 
 una fantasia," signifying that, although he 
 calls the work a sonata, it has the character- 
 istics of a free fantasy. 
 
 Instead of opening with the usual rapid 
 movement, the work begins with a broad 
 and beautiful slow one, a sustained melody, 
 a poem of profound pathos in musical ac- 
 cents. This is followed by a lighter alle- 
 gretto which Liszt called " a flower 'twixt 
 two abysses," the second " abyss " being the 
 last movement, which is one of Beethoven's 
 most impassioned creations. At the end 
 both of the first movement and of the alle- 
 gretto the usual wait between the divisions 
 of a sonata is omitted, Beethoven giving the 
 direction " attacca subito il sequente," liter- 
 ally meaning " attack suddenly the follow- 
 ing," indicating an inner relationship be- 
 102
 
 THRILL OF GREAT MASTERS 
 
 tween the movements so close that there 
 must be only the briefest possible pause be- 
 tween them. 
 
 This sonata is a true drama of life, a story 
 of unrequited passion. It is dedicated to 
 one of the great beauties of Beethoven's time, 
 the Countess Giulietta Guicciardi. Although 
 it is known that the composer subsequently 
 was deeply in love with her cousin, the 
 Countess Therese Brunswick, he is believed 
 to have been in love with Giulietta at the 
 time he wrote the " Moonlight Sonata." The 
 countess was not insensible to his passion. 
 She already was engaged to Count Gallen- 
 berg, but one day, coming excitedly into the 
 presence of her cousin Therese, she threw 
 herself at the latter's feet, " like a stage 
 princess," and exclaimed: " Counsel me, cold, 
 wise one! I long to give Gallenberg the 
 mitten and marry the wonderfully ugly, won- 
 derfully beautiful Beethoven, if only it did 
 8 103
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 not involve lowering myself socially." And 
 so she gave up Beethoven and led a life, 
 none too happy, with her Count. Connect- 
 ing the " Moonlight Sonata " with this epi- 
 sode in Beethoven's life, the first movement 
 of the sonata may appropriately be regarded 
 as a song of love, deeply pathetic because no 
 response is evoked by the longing it expresses. 
 The second movement, the graceful alle- 
 gretto, is the coquetish Giulietta who would 
 not " lower herself socially " by marrying a 
 genius. The third movement is the rejected 
 lover crying out his passion and despair to 
 the night. 
 
 From Beethoven to Grieg, from Vienna 
 to Norway, from the greatest master of the 
 classical period to a composer who still is 
 living and who has been called not in- 
 aptly, " the Chopin of the North," may 
 seem a long step. But the pianolist can 
 travel with seven league boots. Grieg's 
 104
 
 THRILL OF GREAT MASTERS 
 
 most widely known compositions are four 
 of the pieces of incidental music which he 
 wrote to Ibsen's drama " Peer Gynt." Peer 
 Gynt is the Faust of Norwegian literature. 
 Without attempting here to follow up this 
 parallel, it may be said that he is a curious 
 combination of ne'er-do-well, dreamer and 
 philosopher, with a pronounced streak of 
 impishness running through his character 
 and giving a touch of the extravagant and 
 grotesque to many of his actions and to 
 some of them even a suggestion of the weird 
 and supernatural. 
 
 " Peer Gynt " has its roots in Norwegian 
 folklore and was written by Ibsen in Italy 
 when he was about thirty-seven years old, 
 and it precedes the problem plays by which 
 he is best known, although Peer's character 
 is in itself a complex problem. Grieg in 
 his incidental music, adroitly avoids the 
 difficult task of interpreting or even hinting 
 
 105
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 at the curiously contradictory nature of the 
 principal role in the play, one of the most 
 interesting psychological studies in modern 
 literature. His music deals with the more 
 superficial aspects of the story and is pic- 
 torial rather than intellectual or profoundly 
 emotional. The principal selections for 
 the piano-player from the " Peer Gynt " 
 music, are contained on two rolls with two 
 selections to each roll. One of them gives 
 the music of "Anitra's Dance " and " In the 
 Hall of the Mountain King"; the other the 
 scenes " Daybreak " and " Death of Aase." 
 Were these selections to be arranged in the 
 order in which they occur in the drama it 
 would be necessary to begin with the " The 
 Hall of the Mountain King" and follow 
 this, in the order mentioned, with " Aase's 
 Death," " Anitra's Dance " and " Daybreak." 
 On the rolls, however, the pieces are not 
 arranged in the order of their occurrence in 
 1 06
 
 THRILL OF GREAT MASTERS 
 
 the play, but in the sequence which is most 
 effective from a musical standpoint just as 
 in this book I have purposely refrained 
 from following any set, historical sequence, 
 but have adopted a purely musical method 
 of guiding the pianolist from music of the 
 lighter kind to that of a more serious char- 
 acter. 
 
 " Anitra's Dance " is an episode of the 
 drama laid in Morocco which Peer has 
 reached in the course of his wanderings. 
 Anitra is a lithe-limbed daughter of the 
 East who entrances Peer with her dancing, 
 and, when he promises to endow her with 
 a soul, promptly informs him that she would 
 rather have the opal from his turban; grad- 
 ually coaxes all his jewels from him; then 
 swiftly throws herself upon his horse and 
 gallops away, showing herself a true ex- 
 emplar of the " eternal feminine," so called, 
 I presume, because it eternally is getting the 
 
 107
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 better of the eternal masculine. Be that as 
 it may, "Anitra's Dance " is the very essence 
 of witchery and grace. In the scene " In 
 the Hall of the Mountain King" the trolls 
 gather for the marriage of Peer to the Troll 
 King's daughter. When Peer, at the last 
 moment, refuses to go through the cere- 
 mony, the trolls dash at him. One bites 
 himself fast to his ear. Others strike him. 
 He falls. They throw themselves upon 
 him in a heap. At this critical moment, 
 when he is writhing beneath them in torture, 
 the sound of distant church bells is heard, 
 the trolls take to flight, the palace of the 
 Mountain King collapses and Peer is stand- 
 ing alone on a mountain. The scene may 
 be construed as one of his supernatural ex- 
 periences, as a nightmare, or as the allegory 
 of a stricken conscience. " Daybreak " 
 which opens the second roll is in Egypt, 
 Peer standing before the statue of Memnon 
 1 08
 
 THRILL OF GREAT MASTERS 
 
 in the first hush of dawn and waiting for 
 the rays of the rising sun to evoke the music 
 which according to tradition many thou- 
 sand years old, is drawn from the statue by 
 the sunrise. In this number Grieg paints 
 the colors of an Oriental daybreak rather 
 than attempts to convey the thrill of an 
 ancient sculpture, on the edge of the great 
 desert, thrilling with song at the first kiss 
 of the rising sun. In the " Death of Aase " 
 Peer watches his mother's life slowly ebb 
 away and seeks to divert her mind from 
 death by grotesque tales, even throwing him- 
 self astride a chair and persuading her 
 through subjective suggestion, that he is the 
 forerider of a beautiful chariot in which she 
 is seated, so that the poor woman, who all 
 her life long has felt the pinch of penury, 
 dies with a vision of wealth and glory be- 
 fore her eyes created for her by the son, 
 worry over whom has hastened her death. 
 
 109
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 In keeping with the lyric trend of his genius, 
 Grieg has ignored the grotesque and ghastly 
 humor of the situation, and has contented 
 himself with portraying its sombre and 
 tragic aspect, his music being in character 
 somewhat like a funeral march. 
 
 The pianolist will find a characteristic 
 Norwegian touch in Grieg's " Bridal Pro- 
 cession Passing By," Op. 19, No. 2, from 
 his " Sketches from Norwegian Life." It 
 begins with a curiously droning rhythm, 
 played softly as though the procession were 
 approaching from a distance. Over this 
 rhythm is introduced a piquant march fig- 
 ure, hopping and skipping along as if the 
 musicians were dancing at the head of the 
 marchers. As the procession approaches 
 and the music becomes louder, one hears in 
 the bass an accentuation of the characteristic 
 rhythm, like the tap of a bass drum. When 
 the march has swelled to a forte, it sinks to 
 no
 
 THRILL OF GREAT MASTERS 
 
 a brief piano, as if the winding path had led 
 the procession away again. Then there is 
 another brief outburst, this time fortissimo, 
 as if the marchers were quite near; and then 
 a pianissimo, as if they had passed behind 
 a hill and almost out of hearing. The music 
 grows loud again, the procession goes by, 
 and there is a delicious effect as the march 
 dies away in the distance, the rhythmic beats 
 with which it opened becoming softer and 
 softer, while the little hopping and skipping 
 march-figure, somewhat curtailed, flutters 
 over it. 
 
 Grieg's " Peer Gynt " suite was composed 
 for orchestra, but was arranged for piano- 
 forte by the composer. Notwithstanding the 
 fact that in its original form the suite is 
 intended to be played by a large body of 
 instruments of different tone coloring and 
 that arrangements for pianoforte of orchestral 
 works usually are so complex that even great 
 
 in
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 pianists find difficulty in rendering them 
 effectively, the " Peer Gynt " selections are 
 among the most attractive in the pianolist's 
 repertory. For, through the instrument on 
 which he plays, he is able to overcome the 
 most complicated chords and the most diffi- 
 cult and complex runs, as easily as if they 
 were music of the simplest kind. If the 
 pianola sometimes is called mechanical, the 
 injustice thus done it is due to its super- 
 human capacity of playing with perfect ease 
 things that are wholly beyond the fingers 
 even of the greatest virtuosos, yet can be 
 rendered fluently and also expressively by 
 the pianolist who has genuine feeling for 
 music. 
 
 It is this combination of technique and 
 expression that gives to Liszt's enormously 
 difficult pianoforte transcription of Saint- 
 Saens' symphonic poem, " Danse Maccabre," 
 which even for orchestra is an extremely 
 112
 
 THRILL OF GREAT MASTERS 
 
 difficult piece, its place in the pianolist's 
 repertory. This is one of the most interest- 
 ing of modern compositions, and most graph- 
 ically descriptive of its subject, which is the 
 " Dance of Death," " maccabre " being de- 
 rived from the Arabic " makabir," which 
 signifies a place of burial. Both in the 
 literature and in the painting of the Middle 
 Ages in Europe and particularly in church 
 decoration, figures the legend that once a 
 year on Hallowe'en the dead arose from 
 their graves for a wild and hideous dance, 
 with King Death himself as master of cere- 
 monies. Saint-Saens' symphonic poem real- 
 istically describes these scenes, and, as if to 
 attribute the inspiration for his music to its 
 precise origin, the composer has placed 
 above his score a poem by Henri Cazalis. 
 Mr. Edward Baxter Perry has made a free 
 transcription of this poem, which, at the 
 same time, serves capitally as a description 
 of the music:
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 On a sounding stone, 
 
 With a blanched thigh-bone, 
 
 The bone of a saint, I fear, 
 
 Death strikes the hour 
 
 Of his wizard power, 
 
 And the specters haste to appear. 
 
 From their tombs they rise 
 
 In sepulchral guise, 
 
 Obeying the summons dread, 
 
 And gathering round 
 
 With obeisance profound, 
 
 They salute the King of the Dead. 
 
 Then he stands in the middle 
 
 And tunes up his fiddle, 
 
 And plays them a gruesome strain. 
 
 And each gibbering wight 
 
 In the moon's pale light 
 
 Must dance to that wild refrain. 
 
 Now the riddle tells, 
 
 As the music swells, 
 
 Of the charnal's ghastly pleasures; 
 
 And they clatter their bones 
 
 As with hideous groans 
 
 They reel to those maddening measures.
 
 THRILL OF GREAT MASTERS 
 
 The churchyard quakes 
 
 And the old abbey shakes 
 
 To the tread of that midnight host, 
 
 And the sod turns black 
 
 On each circling track, 
 
 Where a skeleton whirls with a ghost. 
 
 The night wind moans 
 
 In shuddering tones 
 
 Through the gloom of the cypress tree, 
 
 While the mad rout raves 
 
 Over yawning graves 
 
 And the fiddle bow leaps with glee. 
 
 So the swift hours fly 
 Till the reddening sky 
 Gives warning of daylight near. 
 Then the first cock crow 
 Sends them huddling below 
 To sleep for another year. 
 
 The composition opens weirdly with the 
 hollow strokes of the hour. There is a 
 light, staccato passage suggesting the spectres 
 tiptoeing from their graves to take their 
 
 "5
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 places in the fantastic circle. Then comes 
 one of the most strikingly realistic passages 
 in the composition Death attempting to 
 tune up his fiddle, an effect that is repeated 
 at intervals throughout the composition. 
 After reading the poem, the pianolist will 
 not require a detailed description of the 
 work. He will recognize the details even 
 to the moaning of the night wind and the 
 crowing of the cock, the scurry of the 
 spectres and their final wail, as the grave 
 closes upon them for another year. 
 
 116
 
 V. AN "OPEN SESAME" TO 
 CHOPIN 
 
 THE goal of all pianists is Chopin. As 
 the list of one hundred favorite com- 
 positions for the pianola includes no less 
 than twenty-six works by this composer, he 
 would seem to be the goal of the pianolist 
 as well. 
 
 Chopin now is recognized universally as 
 one of the great composers. But during his 
 lifetime he was much criticised, called mor- 
 bid and effeminate and a composer of small 
 ideas because he wrote almost entirely in 
 the smaller forms. As if size had any- 
 thing to do with the beauty of a work. 
 In every art the best work of each great 
 man should be ranked with the best of all 
 other great men. Some geniuses express 
 themselves on a larger, but not necessarily 
 on a greater scale, than others. In poetry, 
 for example, Poe's " Raven " is not to be 
 ranked below Milton's " Paradise Lost " be- 
 
 117
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 cause shorter; nor in music need a Chopin 
 ballad be placed below a Beethoven sym- 
 phony because not so extended as the latter. 
 Every genius, however, must expect to be 
 condemned until Time silences criticism of 
 his work. For ever since men began to 
 create rare and beautiful things, there have 
 been other men who, having failed therein, 
 have found a bitter consolation in sitting in 
 crabbed and ill-tempered judgment upon 
 their successful betters. 
 
 Another point raised against Chopin was, 
 that practically he confined himself to com- 
 posing for pianoforte. A sufficient answer 
 to this is, that his music made the piano- 
 forte what it is. For he was the first com- 
 poser who appreciated the genius of the 
 instrument, discovered its latent tone colors 
 and developed its resources to their full 
 capacity for artistic beauty and expression. 
 Chopin was the first to make the pianoforte 
 118
 
 " OPEN SESAME " TO CHOPIN 
 
 both shimmer and sing. Rubinstein said 
 that the art of music could go no further 
 than Chopin and called him the pianoforte 
 bard, rhapsodist, mind and soul. " How 
 he wrote for it I do not know, but only an 
 entire passing over of one into the other 
 could call such music into life." George 
 Sand (Mme. Dudevant) the famous French 
 authoress with whom Chopin had a love 
 affair that was one of the tragedies of his 
 life, said that " he made the instrument 
 speak the language of the infinite. He did 
 not need the great material methods of the 
 orchestra to find expression for his genius. 
 Neither saxophone nor ophicleide was neces- 
 sary for him to fill the soul with awe. With- 
 out church organ or human voice he inspired 
 faith and enthusiasm." 
 
 Although Chopin figures on almost every 
 pianoforte recital program the average ama- 
 teur has comparatively slight knowledge of 
 9 119
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 the range of his genius. Only the player 
 able to go over his works in person can ac- 
 quire such knowledge, and the number of 
 amateurs possessed of sufficient technique to 
 play Chopin's music is very small. " But 
 to-day," writes Mr. Ashton Johnson in his 
 " Hand-Book to Chopin's Works," " owing 
 to the invention of the pianola and the fact 
 that all Chopin's works, including even the 
 least important of the posthumous composi- 
 tions, are now available for that instrument, 
 the whole domain of his music is, for the first 
 time, open to all. Those who wish may 
 pass the portal hitherto guarded by the 
 dragon of technique and roam at will in his 
 entrancing music land." 
 
 Chopin was a native of Poland. He was 
 born near Warsaw in 1810. When the 
 Poles lost their country it was as if their 
 grief and the melancholy of their exile found 
 expression through Chopin's music. He 
 120
 
 " OPEN SESAME " TO CHOPIN 
 
 became the musical poet of an exiled race. 
 The most significant years of his life he 
 spent in Paris surrounded by the aristocracy 
 of his own country, who yet had no country, 
 and by the aristocrats of art. Liszt, Heine, 
 Meyerbeer, Bellini and other famous men, 
 as well as famous women, were his personal 
 friends. 
 
 The affair with George Sand left on his 
 music the imprint of sorrow, poignant grief, 
 and a pathos reaching down into the depths 
 of tragedy. Different in character was his 
 idealization of the beautiful Countess Del- 
 phine Potocka. The episode is fully set 
 forth in my " Loves of the Great Com- 
 posers." One of Chopin's favorite musical 
 amusements, when a guest in the house of 
 intimate friends, was to play on the piano- 
 forte " musical portraits " of the company. 
 One evening in the salon of Delphine's 
 mother, he played the portraits of the two 
 
 121
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 daughters of the house. When it came to 
 Delphine he gently drew her light shawl 
 from her shoulders, and then played through 
 it, his fingers, with every tone they pro- 
 duced, coming in touch with the gossamer 
 like fabric, still warmed and hallowed for 
 him from its contact with her. It was Del- 
 phine who soothed his last hours by singing 
 for him as he lay upon his death bed. 
 
 She was one of the very few people to 
 whom he dedicated more than one of his 
 works. Both his second concerto (in F 
 minor, Op. 21) and his most familiar waltz, 
 the Op. 64, No. i, bear her name. Chopin 
 as a pianist, showed decided preference for 
 the slow movement of the concerto, a move- 
 ment which is of almost ideal perfection, 
 " now radiant with light and anon full of 
 tender pathos," to quote from Liszt. It is in- 
 deed, an exquisite idyll, beautifully melodious 
 and replete with delicate ornamentation. Be- 
 122
 
 " OPEN SESAME " TO CHOPIN 
 
 cause of its beauty and its association with 
 Delphine, I would suggest that the pianolist 
 begin with this larghetto. There is another 
 reason for the suggestion. In its ornamenta- 
 tion it illustrates to perfection that character- 
 istic of Chopin's music known as the " tempo 
 rubato." Much of Chopin's music has in 
 addition to inspired melody, an iridescence 
 as if produced by cascades of jewels. These 
 are ornamental notes which yet are not 
 ornamental in the limited meaning of the 
 word; for in spite of all their light and shade 
 and their play of changeable colors, they 
 form part of the great undercurrent of 
 melody. There are various technical defini- 
 tions of tempo rubato, but Liszt described 
 it poetically and yet exactly when he said, 
 " You see that tree? Its leaves move to and 
 fro in the wind and follow the gentlest mo- 
 tion of the air; but its trunk stands there 
 immovable in its form." Or the effect might 
 
 123
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 be compared with the myriad shafts from 
 the facets of a jewel, vibrating brilliance in 
 all directions, while the jewel itself remains 
 immovable, the center of its own rays. 
 These effects readily are discoverable in the 
 larghetto of the Potocka concerto. 
 
 The pianolist should then take up the 
 valses of Chopin beginning with Op. 64, 
 No. i, like the concerto, dedicated to Del- 
 phine. This is the most familiar of all the 
 Chopin waltzes, so familiar that it frequently 
 is referred to in a derogatory way as hack- 
 neyed. Yet, when properly played, it is 
 one of the most effective of his compositions 
 in this genre. Of the Chopin waltzes in 
 general, it should first be said that they are 
 not dance-tunes but expressions, alternately 
 brilliant, charming and sad, of the intimacy 
 of the ballroom, and that they possess an 
 innate grace which no other composer has 
 been able to impart to the form. They 
 124
 
 " OPEN SESAME " TO CHOPIN 
 
 have been characterized as salon music of 
 the noblest kind and were well described by 
 Schumann when he said that if they were 
 played for dances, half the ladies present 
 should be countesses which exactly hits off 
 the distinguished quality of these valses. To 
 play them is like looking at a dance through 
 a fairy lens; they seem like improvizations 
 of a musician during a dance and to reflect 
 the thoughts and feelings that arise as he 
 looks on, playing the waltz rhythm with 
 the left hand, while the melody and the orna- 
 mental note groups indicate his fancy love, 
 a jealous plaint, joy, ecstacy and the tender 
 whisperings of enamored couples as they 
 glide past. 
 
 " Gliding " is the word that has been ap- 
 plied to the smooth brilliance of the Potocka 
 valse. There runs a story regarding this 
 composition that George Sand had a little 
 dog that used to chase its own tail around 
 
 125
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 in a circle, and that one evening, she said to 
 Chopin, " If I had your talent, I would im- 
 provise a valse for that dog," whereupon the 
 composer promptly seated himself at the 
 pianoforte and dashed off this fascinating 
 little improvisation. It is Parisian in its 
 grace and coquetry and ends with a rapid 
 run, the last note of which is like the 
 rhythmic tap of the foot with which a 
 dainty ballet dancer might conclude a lightly 
 executed pas. 
 
 In striking contrast to this is the " Valse," 
 Op. 34, No. 2. This is in a minor key and 
 instead of representing the abandon of the 
 dance, it seems rather to depict a melan- 
 choly lover allowing his eyes to travel 
 slowly around the ballroom in a futile search 
 of his heart's desire. The prevailing tone 
 of the composition rather is that of an elegy 
 the burial of fond hopes. Stephen Heller, 
 pianist and composer, tells of meeting 
 126
 
 " OPEN SESAME " TO CHOPIN 
 
 Chopin in the store of a Paris music pub- 
 lisher. Heller had come in to order all 
 the valses. Thereupon Chopin asked him 
 which he liked best, and when Heller men- 
 tioned this sad one in slow time, Chopin 
 exclaimed, " I am glad you like that one, 
 for it also is my favorite," and he invited 
 Heller to have luncheon with him. 
 
 Perhaps the most brilliant and extended 
 of the valses is Op. 42. In this Chopin im- 
 poses upon the triple waltz time, a melody 
 that is in double time that is, while you 
 count " one, two, three " for the accompani- 
 ment, " one, two " will suffice for the melody 
 above it. The effect of this device has been 
 described as indicative in this waltz of the 
 loving, nestling and tender embracing of 
 the dancing couples. It is followed in the 
 music by sweeping motions free and grace- 
 ful like those of birds. The prolonged trill 
 with which the piece begins, seems to sum- 
 
 127
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 mon the dancers to the ballroom, while the 
 waltz itself, is an intermingling of coquetry, 
 hesitation and avowal, with a closing passage 
 that is like an echo of the evening's events. 
 
 These three waltzes, if played in the order 
 in which I have mentioned them, make a 
 capital valse suite, and another could be 
 made by taking in the following order, the 
 dashing " Posthumous Waltz " in E minor, 
 the C minor, Op. 64, No. 2, with its veiled, 
 sad beauty; and the brilliant Op. 34, No. i. 
 
 In his " Nocturnes " those sombre poems 
 of night, Chopin seems weaving his own 
 shroud. But if, like Robert Louis Steven- 
 son, Chopin loved the darkness and its mel- 
 ancholy murmuring, and if there was a touch 
 of morbidness in his nature, yet, like Steven- 
 son, he had in him a strain of chivalry. 
 Mr. Huneker, therefore, in his book on 
 Chopin, is quite right when he says of the 
 nocturnes that if they were played with 
 128
 
 " OPEN SESAME " TO CHOPIN 
 
 more vigor, a quickening of the time pulse 
 and a less languishing touch, they would be 
 rescued from a surplus of lush sentiment. 
 
 Undoubtedly, the most popular of the noc- 
 turnes is the one in E flat, Op. 9, No. 2. 
 In fact it is so popular that when any one is 
 asked to play " Chopin's Nocturne," this one 
 is meant. Because it is popular, it is sneered 
 at by some critics, but it possesses a lyric 
 beauty quite its own and " sometimes sur- 
 prises even the weary teacher with a waft 
 of unexpected freshness, like the fleeting 
 odor from an old and much used school 
 book in which violets have been pressed." 
 A sustained love song, it ends with a cadence 
 that should be played with a rippling 
 delicacy suggestive of moonlight on a lake 
 in the garden of an old chateau. 
 
 There are nocturnes of Chopin's composed 
 on a larger scale than the Opus 37, No. 2, 
 but to my taste there is none more beautiful. 
 
 129
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 It bears a striking resemblance to a passage 
 in George Sand's diary describing a voyage 
 with Chopin to the island of Majorca. 
 " The night was warm and dark, illumined 
 only by an extraordinary phosphorescence 
 in the wake of the ship; everybody was 
 asleep oh board except the steersman, who, 
 in order to keep himself awake, sang all 
 night, but in a voice so soft and so subdued 
 that one might have thought he feared to 
 arouse the men of the watch. We did not 
 weary of listening to him, for his singing 
 was of the strangest kind. He observed a 
 rhythm and modulation totally different 
 from those we are accustomed to, arid 
 seemed to allow his voice to go at random, 
 like the smoke of the vessel carried away 
 and swayed by the breeze. It was a 
 reverie rather than a song, a kind of care- 
 less floating of the voice, with which the 
 mind had little to do, but which kept time 
 130
 
 " OPEN SESAME " TO CHOPIN 
 
 with the swaying of the ship and the faint 
 lapping of the dark water, and resembled a 
 vague improvization restrained, neverthe- 
 less, by sweet and monotonous forms." 
 
 How suggestive this is of the nocturne! 
 The undulating accompaniment, the scintil- 
 lation of the treble, suggests the gliding, 
 gently rocking motion of the vessel and the 
 phosphorescence in its wake; while the sec- 
 ond theme of the nocturne would, even 
 without any suggestion from the passage in 
 George Sand's diary, be taken for a bar- 
 carolle, a reverie sung at night, now rising, 
 now dying away, but with the pulse of a 
 musical poet throbbing through every note 
 the most beautiful melody, I think, Chopin 
 ever wrote. 
 
 And speaking of this melody as an im- 
 provization, reminds me of those other im- 
 provizations by Chopin, the " Impromptus," 
 in which he has displayed his genius as
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 convincingly as in any of his other works. 
 They are fresh and untrammeled in their 
 development, and as full of sunlight as the 
 nocturnes are of darkness. The .one in A 
 flat major was dedicated to the Countess 
 de Loban as a wedding present, and was a 
 farewell to her as a pupil. Brilliant, joyous 
 and iridescent in its opening and closing sec- 
 tions, that in the middle voices vague and 
 tender regret. The composition sometimes 
 is spoken of as the " Trilby " impromptu. 
 It is the one Du Maurier made Trilby sing 
 under the hypnotic influence of Svengali. 
 
 Had Chopin's directions for the destruc- 
 tion of certain of his manuscripts after his 
 death been carried out, the world would be 
 the poorer by the loss of his " Fantaisie Im- 
 promptu," published as Op. 66. It is diffi- 
 cult to understand why he should have 
 wanted this work destroyed, since it produces 
 a sinuous, interwoven, flowing effect, inter- 
 132
 
 "OPEN SESAME" TO CHOPIN 
 
 rupted by a middle melody of much senti- 
 ment and beauty. It has been very well 
 described by Mr. Perry in a brief poem en- 
 titled "The Fantaisie Impromptu": 
 
 The sigh of June through the swaying trees, 
 The scent of the rose, new blown, on the breeze, 
 The sound of waves on a distant strand, 
 The shadows falling on sea and land; 
 
 All these are found 
 
 In this stream of sound, 
 This murmuring, mystical, minor strain. 
 
 And stars that glimmer in misty skies, 
 Like tears that shimmer in sorrowing eyes, 
 And the throb of a heart that beats in tune 
 With tender regrets of a happier June, 
 
 When life was new 
 
 And love was true, 
 And the soul was a stranger to sorrow and pain. 
 
 A reading of this poem conveys to the 
 player the correct mood in which to inter- 
 pret the impromptu. 
 
 133
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 By way of contrast I follow these careless 
 raptures careless only in their effect of 
 spontaneity with the famous " Marche 
 Funebre," the funeral march which forms 
 the third movement of Chopin's sonata in 
 B flat minor, Op. 35. This has been called 
 the best funeral march ever written for the 
 pianoforte. At Chopin's own funeral it was 
 played scored for orchestra. In my opinion 
 it is not only " the best funeral march ever 
 written for the pianoforte," but the most 
 intrinsically beautiful and sad funeral march 
 ever composed. Its opening suggests the 
 solemn tolling of great bells, the heavy 
 march rhythm gives the effect of the slow 
 procession of mourners; and the dirgelike 
 music, soft and muffled at first, grows in 
 power like the measured, inflexible rhythm 
 of fate. Then it seems as if the mourners 
 had arrived at the open grave, for the music 
 voices a weeping melody, pure and tender 
 
 134
 
 " OPEN SESAME " TO CHOPIN 
 
 and sweet; then the march rhythm makes 
 itself heard again and the procession leaves 
 the grave, the music dying away in the dis- 
 tance. This is the funeral march of a na- 
 tion, of Chopin's own beloved Poland. 
 
 Chopin wrote two sets of twelve " Etudes." 
 They gave an entirely new significance to 
 the term. For the Chopin etudes not only 
 are supreme as studies. They are supreme 
 as music as well. Before they were pub- 
 lished the usual musical study was something 
 very dry and set. How different these 
 superb compositions are from studies such 
 as are comprised in Czerny's " School of 
 Velocity," which make you feel like em- 
 ploying the " velocity " you have acquired 
 to run away as quickly as possible from the 
 " school," whereas the Chopin etudes are so 
 full of melody and of the rarest and the 
 most beautiful musical effects, that to play 
 any one of them suffices to whet the appetite 
 
 i 135
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 for the others. The pianolist might well 
 go through the entire two sets of twelve. 
 It would open up a new musical world to 
 him. Here I can only point out three. 
 Opus 10, No. 5, is the " Black Key " etude, 
 so called because all the notes of the right 
 hand are on black keys. This is a brilliant 
 study with a very charming ending. Opus 
 25, No. 9, is the so called " Butterfly Wings " 
 etude, a designation which expresses its gen- 
 eral characteristic of lightness and grace, 
 but fails to make allowance for the accent 
 of passion in the rising and descending pas- 
 sage that occurs about the middle and which 
 should be brought out when it is correctly 
 interpreted which usually it is not. The 
 greatest of all the etudes is the " Revolu- 
 tionary," Op. 10, No. 12. It was written by 
 Chopin in 1831, when he heard the news 
 that Warsaw had been taken by the Russians, 
 and it expresses the tornado of emotion that 
 136
 
 " OPEN SESAME " TO CHOPIN 
 
 swept over him when he realized that Po- 
 land was about to sink beneath the triple 
 onslaught of Russia, Austria and Germany. 
 This composition which, mind you, goes by 
 the simple name of " study," is one of the 
 most tremendous outbursts of wrath in music 
 a storm of the soul without even such 
 lyric episodes as those which form islands 
 of calm in the torrential last movement of 
 Beethoven's " Moonlight Sonata." Well 
 may Mr. Huneker say that the end " rings 
 out like the crack of creation. It is ele- 
 mental." 
 
 This etude, certain of the " Polonaises," 
 the " Scherzos," the " Ballades " and the 
 " Fantaisie " in F minor, reveal a fire, pas- 
 sion and virile power that will surprise those 
 who have formed their estimate of Chopin 
 from the mournful nocturnes and brilliant 
 waltzes. The so-called " Military Polon- 
 aise," Op. 40, No. i, is so replete with the 
 
 137
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 spirit of war that in the middle portion it 
 is easy to hear the roll of drums and the 
 clash of battle. It was of this polonaise 
 Chopin said, " If I had the strength to play 
 it as it should be played I would break all 
 the strings of the pianoforte." 
 
 The most effective of the polonaises, his 
 opus 53, also breathes forth martial ardor 
 and defiance. It begins with a stirring call 
 to arms, followed by the swinging measure 
 of the polonaise proper with a melody that 
 suggests soldiery on prancing steeds and with 
 flashing sabres, defiling in review before 
 battle. This is followed by a " trio " in 
 which a rapid octave figure in the bass, be- 
 ginning softly and growing louder and 
 louder until it reaches a crashing climax, 
 with strains like a bugle call ringing out 
 above it, depicts a cavalry charge coming 
 from the distance, drawing nearer and nearer 
 and sweeping past with a mighty roar. 
 
 138
 
 " OPEN SESAME " TO CHOPIN 
 
 There is a story that while Chopin was com- 
 posing this polonaise, he was so affected 
 when playing over the nearly completed 
 work, that, seized by a peculiar hallucina- 
 tion, he saw the walls of the room open and, 
 approaching from the outer night, a band 
 of medieval Polish knights mounted and in 
 armor, as if they had risen from their ancient 
 graves and ridden on the clouds to appear 
 in response to the summons of his music. 
 The somewhat vague passage which follows 
 the climax of the cavalry charge and leads 
 back to the main subject possibly may be 
 accounted for by this strange experience. 
 
 Unfortunately there is no opportunity here 
 to take up the " Scherzos," so unlike the 
 coquettish, bantering pieces of the same name 
 by other composers, Chopin seemingly rep- 
 resenting tragedy mocking itself, as any one 
 playing the B flat minor " Scherzo," Op. 31, 
 may hear for himself; the "Ballades," so 
 
 139
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 eloquently narrative of love and adventure, 
 the A flat major and the G minor being 
 especially popular in the pianolist's reper- 
 tory; and the " Fantaisie," in F minor, one 
 of the greatest compositions for pianoforte. 
 As for the " Mazurkas " and " Preludes," 
 pieces that are among their composer's hap- 
 piest creations, I can do no more than call 
 the pianolist's attention to their existence 
 and advise him not to neglect them. 
 
 140
 
 VI. NOTES ON SOME OTHER 
 MASTERS 
 
 "[BESIDES those composers, one or more 
 U of whose works I have described in 
 some detail, there are others who at least 
 should be touched on, always bearing in 
 mind, however, that one of the aims of this 
 book is to stimulate the pianolist to explore 
 for himself. Bach, Handel, Haydn and 
 Mozart can be studied most profitably in 
 connection with the courses that are referred 
 to in the chapter on Educational Factors 
 which follows. There too will be found 
 reference to the thorough courses on Wagner, 
 one a general course on that composer, the 
 other a special course on his " Ring of the 
 Nibelung." 
 
 A line of composers that may well inter- 
 est the pianolist has come to the front in 
 Russia. Rubinstein, whose " Melody " in 
 F and " Kammenoi, Ostrow," No. 17, are 
 among the popular selections in the piano- 
 
 141
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 list's repertory was a Russian, who, how- 
 ever, from a musical standpoint, expressed 
 himself in German. To a certain extent 
 the same is true of Tschaikowsky. His 
 music is " universal " rather than national. 
 It has, nevertheless, the Russian tang to a 
 greater degree than Rubinstein's, and Tschai- 
 kowsky is classed correctly as the head of 
 the Russian school and one of the greatest 
 of modern composers. His " Pathetic Sym- 
 phony," which has been metrostyled by 
 Edouard Colonne, a distinguished French 
 orchestral conductor, is a noble work. 
 Among smaller pieces which the pianolist 
 readily will appreciate, are the " Song with- 
 out Words," Op. 2, No. 2; an attractive 
 " Valse a cinq Temps," with its oddly ex- 
 tended rhythm ; the very characteristic " No- 
 vember, in the Troika," Op. 37, No. 1 1 ; an 
 expressive " Barcarolle " and the selections 
 from his " Casse Noisette " (Nutcracker) 
 ballet suite. 
 142
 
 OTHER COMPOSERS 
 
 Next to Tschaikowsky's " Song without 
 Words " the most widely known short piece 
 for pianoforte by a Russian composer is 
 Rachmaninoff's " Prelude," Op. 3, No. 2, 
 a broad and sonorous work with a splendid 
 climax. A little "Waltz," Op. 10, No. 2, 
 is captivating; and a " Serenade," Op. 3, 
 No. 5, has an originality and charm quite 
 its own. A very beautiful " Moment Mus- 
 ical," Op. 1 6, No. 5, does not seem to have 
 been included as yet in the catalogue of 
 music rolls, an honor to which it clearly is 
 entitled. Arensky, Balakirew, Cesar Cui, 
 Glazounow, Karganoff, Liapounow, Rimsky- 
 Korsakow, Sapellnikoff and Taneiew are 
 other interesting figures of the " New-Rus- 
 sian " school of which so much is heard at 
 present. 
 
 Dvorak who was a Bohemian wrote much 
 music distinctly and fascinatingly character- 
 istic of his native land. He was, however, 
 
 H3
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 broad enough in his tastes to recognize, dur- 
 ing his sojourn of three years in America, 
 the beauty of the Negro plantation melodies 
 and to compose upon several of these as 
 themes, his symphony " From the New 
 World," sometimes called more briefly the 
 "American Symphony." This symphony, 
 two works of chamber music, also composed 
 during his residence in America, and his 
 compositions in his native Bohemian musical 
 idiom usually are ranked higher than his 
 more cosmopolitan efforts. His " Hu- 
 moreske," Op. 101, No. 5, the " Slavic 
 Dances " and " On the Holy Mount " are 
 among his compositions unmistakably Bo- 
 hemian in origin. 
 
 While Saint-Saens, having worked more 
 successfully in the larger orchestral forms, 
 is ranked first among contemporary French 
 composers, and Chaminade leads as a com- 
 poser of clever salon music, the pianolist 
 144
 
 OTHER COMPOSERS 
 
 can add some attractive pieces to his reper- 
 tory from the compositions of Delibes and 
 Godard. Delibes is the composer of the 
 opera " Lakme," and the Airs de Ballet from 
 this, as well as the selections from his " Cop- 
 pelia " and " Sylvia " ballets, will be found 
 spontaneous and original. In fact in all 
 instances in which music composed in dance 
 forms has survived, this will be found due 
 to a decided strain of individuality and re- 
 sulting originality in the composer. The 
 Valse Lente from the " Coppelia " ballet is 
 among the hundred most popular pieces in 
 the pianolist's repertory; and well up in 
 the same list is Godard's graceful " Second 
 Mazurka," Op. 54. 
 
 Among the most distinguished modern 
 composers is the American, Edward Alex- 
 ander MacDowell. He is living, but his 
 work is over; for, unfortunately, his mind 
 has given way. His " Scotch Poem " with
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 its graphic musical representation of the sea 
 beating against a rockbound coast and its 
 lyric episode consisting of a trist Scotch 
 ballad, is highly dramatic, while his " Sea 
 Pieces " are among the most poetic of con- 
 temporary compositions for pianoforte. His 
 " Witches' Dance " is highly descriptive, 
 and in whatever direction the pianolist may 
 familiarize himself with the music of Mac- 
 Powell, he will be found a highly original, 
 eloquent and expressive composer, whose 
 fame, already established, is bound to grow 
 with the lapse of time. 
 
 This chapter may fittingly be concluded 
 with a brief reference to two great Ger- 
 man composers, Schumann and Brahms. 
 Although " popular " is not a word ordi- 
 narily associated with Schumann, two of his 
 shorter pieces, "Traumerei" (Revery) and 
 " Warum " (Why) are great favorites. 
 Schumann did much for the development of 
 146
 
 OTHER COMPOSERS 
 
 music that has a distinct meaning and his 
 works frequently bear titles that are sug- 
 gestive of some mood or scene, like "At 
 Evening," "Soaring" (Aufschwung, some- 
 times translated as Excelsior) , " Carnaval," 
 a series of twenty-one pieces descriptive of 
 carnival scenes ; and the " Novelettes." 
 
 Brahms is far more of a melodist than 
 his critics give him credit for, but his clear- 
 ness of expression is interfered with by the 
 relentless scientific accuracy with which he 
 works out his ideas, to which method he is 
 apt to sacrifice only too often the innate 
 beauty of his thoughts. He seems, how- 
 ever, to be slowly gaining ground, but more 
 through his songs than through his instru- 
 mental works excepting those of chamber 
 music. Yet any one who will seriously 
 study Brahms and begin with the shorter 
 pianoforte pieces, Op. 76 and Op. 116-119, 
 will find mines of purest musical gold, 
 
 H7
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 where, perhaps, he least expected to dis- 
 cover them. Entirely different in style from 
 Brahms' other works are his " Hungarian 
 Dances," in which he has taken dance themes 
 of the Hungarian Gypsies and skillfully 
 worked them up into pieces that are melod- 
 iously and rhythmically fascinating and un- 
 reservedly popular. They are much played 
 by pianolists. 
 
 Let me point out again, here, that, how- 
 ever unsystematic the arrangement of this 
 book may seem to the musical pedant, I 
 have followed a certain sequence one of 
 my own devising and which seemed to me 
 best adapted to give the pianolist a bowing 
 acquaintance with some of the great com- 
 posers that would lead him to wish for a 
 closer intimacy with these and others. What 
 I have kept in mind, and very clearly, is 
 the fact that I am dealing with a player 
 for whom all technical difficulties have been 
 148
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 eliminated by the very instrument on which 
 he plays. The complete control it gives 
 him of all technical resources is what makes 
 the old method of analyzing pieces accord- 
 ing to their historical sequence not only un- 
 necesary but futile in a book of this kind. 
 Nevertheless, so perfectly does this instru- 
 ment adapt itself to all music, that any one 
 who desires to trace up the technical evolu- 
 tion of the art from Bach to the present day, 
 will find it the readiest means for accom- 
 plishing his purpose, especially if he uses in 
 conjunction with it the educational courses 
 referred to in the next chapter. 
 
 149
 
 VII. EDUCATIONAL FACTORS. 
 
 TT is not overstating the case to say that 
 - the pianola is the first practical means 
 ever devised in history through which 
 people in general, whether they have had 
 previous instruction in music or not, can 
 become familiar with the world's best mus- 
 ical compositions. Not only can they fa- 
 miliarize themselves with the past, they are 
 able to keep up with the present. For ex- 
 ample, many of Richard Strauss's works, 
 including selections from " Salome," are to 
 be found on the rolls prepared for this 
 modern instrument. In fact every new com- 
 poser whose work has any significance is 
 represented in the catalogue of music rolls. 
 Supposing a pianolist is planning to attend 
 an opera or a concert. It would have to 
 be a very peculiar opera or a very peculiar 
 concert program which he could not obtain 
 and try over beforehand. Needless to say 
 that, by trying it over beforehand, his ap- 
 150
 
 EDUCATIONAL FACTORS 
 
 preciation of the performance would be in- 
 creased a thousandfold. 
 
 Singers who cannot accompany themselves 
 on the pianoforte, will find this new instru- 
 ment a boon. For there is a special list of 
 accompaniments in which the principal 
 works in the vocalist's repertory are repre- 
 sented. Lovers of chamber music in which 
 the pianoforte figures, will find pieces like 
 sonatas for pianoforte and violin or violon- 
 cello, trios for pianoforte, violin and violon- 
 cello, pianoforte quartets, quintets and sim- 
 ilar works, arranged so that the pianolist 
 can play the pianoforte part. " This is the 
 first time I ever have heard every note of 
 the pianoforte part of the Schumann quintet," 
 said the first violinist of a well known string 
 quartet to Mr. E. R. Hunter, a professional 
 pianolist, after a performance of this fam- 
 ous work with Mr. Hunter at the pianola. 
 
 The importance of the educational value 
 
 11
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 of this new instrument is recognized by 
 many of the leading educators in music. 
 Harvard, Yale, Columbia, the University of 
 California, the University of Michigan, Vas- 
 sar and many other institutions of learning 
 use the instrument in connection with their 
 musical courses. At Harvard, in connection 
 with the lectures on music, the students are 
 not only allowed but encouraged to go in 
 groups of six or eight to the hall in which 
 the instruments are installed, and play for 
 themselves the symphonies of Beethoven, the 
 music dramas of Wagner and other music 
 that has formed the subjects of the lectures. 
 "As a self-educator," writes Henry T. 
 Finck, " this instrument is worth more than 
 all other instruments combined, for the rea- 
 son that any one can, without practice, play 
 on it any piece ever written." 
 
 Under the editorship of Carroll Brent 
 Chilton, assisted by a staff of musicians and 
 152
 
 EDUCATIONAL FACTORS 
 
 writers on music, among them Paul Morgan 
 and Edward Ziegler, thorough educational 
 courses for pianolists have been devised. 
 The courses collectively are known as " The 
 New Musical Education," and are conducted 
 in connection with the Music-Lovers Library 
 of music rolls. These courses are admirably 
 arranged. There is a " Popular Course on 
 the Great Composers " with a supplementary 
 one on the " Modern Great Composers." 
 The former is divided into five lessons: 
 Bach and Handel; Haydn and Mozart; 
 Beethoven and Schubert; Schumann and 
 Mendelssohn; and Chopin and Wagner. 
 The course on the modern great composers 
 also is divided into five lessons: Liszt and 
 Wagner; Chopin and Brahms; Tschaikowsky, 
 Dvorak and Paderewski; Saint-Saens, Mos- 
 kowszki and Chaminade; and Grieg and 
 MacDowell, the last named the most dis- 
 tinguished among American composers. 
 
 153
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 Care has been taken in arranging these 
 two courses not to aim above the head of 
 the musical novice. For example, in deal- 
 ing with Bach and Handel, two of their 
 lighter pieces are taken up and analyzed. 
 Biographical data are given and, in addi- 
 tion to the pieces that are analyzed, supple- 
 mentary rolls of seven compositions by Bach 
 and five compositions by Handel are given, 
 together with lists of reference books. The 
 other lessons in these two courses are planned 
 in the same popular style. They give the 
 pianolist a bird's-eye-view of music and its 
 development from Bach to Wagner. 
 
 The " New Musical Education " also 
 takes up the great composers separately and 
 gives most thorough-going courses on them. 
 The Beethoven course, for example, is ar- 
 ranged in twelve lessons. The course fur- 
 nishes the student with the Beethoven biog- 
 raphy by Crowest; with twelve "lesson 
 
 154
 
 EDUCATIONAL FACTORS 
 
 pamphlets," each pamphlet relating to a 
 division of the course and written by Thomas 
 Whitney Surette; with twelve scores, orches- 
 tral and pianoforte ; and sixty-two " educa- 
 tional " music rolls. The scores correspond 
 with the twelve works discussed in the twelve 
 lessons, each lesson being devoted to the 
 analysis of one composition. The rolls in- 
 clude not only those which give the works 
 complete, but also special rolls with music 
 quotations illustrating the points made in 
 the lesson pamphlets. The various musical 
 forms employed by Beethoven are explained 
 and analyzed, and in the complete rolls the 
 different sections characteristic of each form 
 are clearly indicated in print, so that the 
 student, having read the analysis, can follow 
 it intelligently on the roll. There are many 
 other practical details of this kind in all the 
 courses and which go to enhance their value 
 to the pianolist-student. 
 
 155
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 There are two splendid Wagner courses 
 to which I direct special attention because 
 of the frequent performances of his works 
 in opera and concert, and because a compre- 
 hensive knowledge of the development of 
 his theories adds so greatly to the enjoyment 
 of his music. The first course begins with 
 his early opera " Rienzi " and ends with 
 " Parsifal." All his works for the stage are 
 embraced in this course which consists of 
 ten lessons, each lesson having, in addition 
 to the ordinary rolls, a " quotation roll," 
 illustrating the points in the lesson pamph- 
 lets, and in the case of the music-dramas, 
 giving the " leading motives," so that the 
 student can familiarize himself with these, 
 and with their significance in the drama, 
 and readily recognize them when he hears 
 them, while playing the complete rolls or 
 at a performance. 
 
 The second Wagner course relates to the
 
 EDUCATIONAL FACTORS 
 
 " Ring of the Nibelung." It takes up con- 
 secutively the four great divisions of the 
 work, " Rhinegold," " The Valkyr," " Sieg- 
 fried " and " Dusk of the Gods," devoting 
 a lesson to each. Each lesson contains a 
 quotation roll of leading motives and the 
 following examples from the scores : Lesson 
 I., " Rhinegold." Prelude and scene of the 
 Rhine-Maidens, Loge's Narrative, and the 
 finale of the work. Lesson II., " The 
 Valkyr." Siegmund's Love Song, Ride of 
 the Valkyries, and the Magic Fire Spell. 
 Lesson III., " Siegfried." Forge Song, 
 Siegfried and the Forest Bird, Siegfried and 
 Briinnhilde. Lesson IV., " Dusk of the 
 Gods." Siegfried's Rhine Journey, Song 
 of the Rhine-Maidens, Siegfried's Funeral 
 March. I know from the experience of 
 one of my pianolist friends, how admirable 
 this course is. He took it before hearing 
 the " Ring " for the first time, with the 
 
 157
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 result that he knew the music and the names 
 of all the leading motives, recognized them 
 whenever they occurred in the score, and in 
 consequence, enjoyed the performance as 
 much as if he had become familiar with it 
 through repeated hearings. I may add that 
 the catalogue of music rolls contains a com- 
 plete collection of Wagner's works, making 
 the music of this composer accessible to the 
 pianolist whether he wishes to play it for 
 study or enjoyment 
 
 The pianolist holds in his hand the future 
 of the development of music in this country. 
 The instrument on which he plays is the 
 only practical means as yet devised of mak- 
 ing the great masterpieces of music pene- 
 trate to the minds and hearts of the masses. 
 Art has to advance on its own shoulders. 
 " I cannot rest contentedly on the past, I 
 cannot take a step forward without its aid." 
 The pianolist has both the past and present 
 of music at his command. 
 158
 
 VIII. A FEW " DON'TS " FOR PIA- 
 NOLISTS. 
 
 BY way of postscript I give here a few 
 hints to pianolists. General directions 
 on how to play the pianola are provided 
 in pamphlets and circulars which can be 
 obtained without charge, and I do not pro- 
 pose to traverse these. The instrument is 
 capable of great brilliancy and great power, 
 greater than lie in the ten fingers of any 
 pianist. This very fact is what has caused 
 the instrument to be called " mechanical." 
 But in reality it is the fault of the player, 
 because, carried away by the capacity of 
 the instrument, he is apt in the beginning 
 to play too loudly and too brilliantly. One 
 of the first don'ts for the pianolist is that 
 he refrain from putting the instrument to 
 the full test of its not really mechanical 
 but superhuman capacity for brilliancy and 
 power. 
 
 Indeed, not only the beginner, but all 
 
 159
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 pianolists should bear in mind that the chief 
 distinction of the instrument lies in its ex- 
 ceeding delicacy. No virtuoso can play 
 as delicately and lightly and, at the same 
 time, as distinctly as can the pianolist those 
 rapid pianissimo runs and those exquisite 
 traceries and ornamentations which are 
 found in modern music; all of which does 
 not mean that the pianolist never should 
 play loudly and brilliantly, but that he 
 should not allow himself to be carried away 
 by the possibilities of the instrument in 
 these directions. 
 
 Certain refinements of interpretation 
 which the pianist long has made his own 
 also should be observed. Don't start a 
 trill and keep it up with an evenly sus- 
 tained strength of tone and rapidity from 
 beginning to end. Begin it a shade slower 
 and a shade more softly than the tempo and 
 dynamic signs indicate, let it swell and grow 
 1 60
 
 A FEW DON'TS 
 
 louder, then taper down, and slightly retard 
 the turn which leads back to the melodic 
 phrase. This is not a hard-and-fast rule, 
 but one which usually it is safe to follow. 
 The pianolist can execute his trills with a 
 combination of delicacy and clearness that 
 is absolutely unique. 
 
 Don't rip off runs as if you were tearing 
 cloth. Come down with decision on the 
 first note, begin somewhat slower than the 
 indicated tempo and then increase the time 
 to the proper acceleration. This is the 
 true virtuoso effect, adopted, no doubt, be- 
 cause on the pianoforte it is easier to execute 
 a run in this manner; and so, however 
 erroneously, it has come to be considered 
 the genuine musical way showing that even 
 in art we are creatures of habit. 
 
 Don't use the sustaining pedal too fre- 
 quently, not even as frequently as indicated 
 on the rolls. The pedal directions on the 
 
 161
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 rolls follow those of the printed sheets too 
 closely. The pianist often is obliged to 
 use the sustaining pedal to hold a note that 
 he cannot keep down because his fingers are 
 otherwise employed. But the music rolls 
 are cut so that every sustained note is held 
 down as long as the composer directs that 
 it should be. Remember too that the term 
 " loud pedal " as applied to the sustaining 
 pedal, as it properly is called, is incorrect. 
 This pedal sustains but does not increase the 
 power of the sound that is produced. That 
 effect is secured by a stronger pressure of 
 the feet upon the pumping pedals. In fact 
 by varying the degree of pressure of the 
 feet on the pumping pedals the pianolist 
 can vary the degree of sound from a whis- 
 pered pianissimo to the strongest fortissimo. 
 The pianolist should remember that, as 
 the instrument on which he plays relieves 
 him of all burdens of technique and enables 
 162
 
 A FEW DON'TS 
 
 him to play anything, no matter how diffi- 
 cult, with absolute technical accuracy, it is 
 all the more his duty to play with as much 
 expression as he can call forth from his 
 inner nature. Emotion, the power of ex- 
 pression, the art of interpretation, can be 
 developed by practice as well as any other 
 latent capacity. It is an excellent plan 
 for the beginner to take one piece, the Nevin 
 waltz that I have described, for example, 
 and play it over many times, not necessarily 
 at the same sitting, in fact better not; but 
 without attempting anything else. Each 
 time let the pianolist try to get more mean- 
 ing, more expression out of it than he did 
 before. He will find, if he does this, that, 
 when he takes up another composition, the 
 expression, the art of interpretation, will 
 come to him more naturally and more 
 quickly, until, from an ignorant beginner, 
 he soon will have developed into a musical 
 
 163
 
 THE PIANOLIST 
 
 artist who can give himself and hundreds 
 of others the most exalted pleasure that of 
 listening to music, not to mere playing. 
 
 164
 
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