Teaching Music Appreciation
By Dan Wilson
Troy Taylor's remarks about the impact of player-piano and -organ music on the young are interesting.
We have spells of demonstrating to the general public here, made possible by using relatively portable 65/88-note push-up players, either on grand pianos already installed in shopping malls or restaurants, or digital pianos. Experience has taught us which rolls to bother taking !
Up-tempo dance music or jazz is always popular, and brings people thronging 'round. Put on some blues or some good smoochy cocktail piano, which "Southport Rolls" do here, and they'll still listen, but further away and in an absent-minded way. (Also, we've had stores complain because it makes customers who can hear it dreamy and less apt to splash out on an impulse purchase -- but we still include it, to make a balance.)
Umperty-tumperty 1914 show music or early jazz is not liked, and classics are a complete turn-off unless very dynamic and tuneful, like Gilbert & Sullivan, the Chopin Op 31 Scherzo or the Rachmaninov Paganini Rhapsody. Ragtime done in modern style -- measured and with a swing that certainly isn't on old arranged rolls -- is another hit. But yes, anything with a modern tune is welcome. There's a star QRS roll by Marian McPartland of Beatles hits.
In one case an amateur operatic society did "The Boy Friend" at a main theatre in Bromley (a London suburb) and asked us to play in a park area just outside during the day while they handed out leaflets, and specifically to stick with 1920s music. What happened here was that all the seats nearby filled with people over 60, who then complained we had prevented them getting their shopping done !
I would guess that there is a familiarisation curve. My sister gave me a Muggsy Spanier LP one Christmas which her son (then 15) called "Noddy music". Two years later he was collecting revival jazz himself (and now 30, he's onto opera).
Dan Wilson
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