I am compiling a bibliography of magazine and journal articles about
player pianos and mechanical music, and came across the following
editorial published in 1901.  It makes very interesting reading!

"The Possibility of Self-Playing Instruments" by W.S.B. Mathews.
An editorial printed in "Music: a monthly magazine, devoted to the
art, science, technic and literature of music."  Chicago, Illinois.
July 1901.

"The perfecting of what are called "self-playing" instruments, of
the Aeolian and Pianola type, is going on at a great rate, and the
vast popularity of this kind of ready-made music is bound to have
a material influence upon popular musical culture in this country.
In the long run the piano self-player is likely to occupy the
leading position, numerically at least, because one of these
instruments can be bought for a couple of hundred dollars or less,
and then every household will be able to play any music for which
they care sufficiently to buy or hire from the circulating library
the necessary rolls.

     [ I infer from the preceding sentence that in 1901, piano  ]
     [ rolls could be checked out from public libraries, the    ]
     [ same as CD's, cassettes and videos are today.  --  Joyce ]

In this way Mollie Jones, who may have had a piano but a week, has
the power to put in her instrument a Liszt Rhapsody, the most
celebrated sonata of Beethoven, Schumann's Etudes Symphoniques, the
Chopin A flat Polonaise--all pieces which tax the virtuoso--and
perform them faultlessly so far as succession of tones go.  Should
it happen that Mollie Jones is a music person who has heard these
pieces often from artists and knows how they ought to sound, it is
within her reach to reproduce mechanically, with the assistance of
the pedal key, the tempo stop and the expression knobs, all those
effects which have delighted her.

Curiously enough the music played by these instruments need not
sound mechanical.  The facilities for accenting, the application of
pedal and the absolute control of tempo are now so perfect that an
artistic rendering is possible--or at least something so near it as
to quite remove these instruments from the reproach which formerly
attached to them.  There are several of these instruments, the
Pianola being the most celebrated, by reason of its having been
longer before the public and so much more having been expended in
making its merits known.   The Kimball Company has a self-player
which has remarkable qualities, but of this it will be time to
speak when the new editions have been placed on sale.

I confess that I have been much surprised to find the welcome which
virtuosi give these instruments.  Everybody has seen the
recommendation given by the Dresden pianist, Emil Sauer, and I have
heard Godowsky tell how amazed he was at hearing his own "Badinage"
played by a Pianola more surely than even he could do it himself.
The astonishment and admiration which these great artists give the
Pianola shows how terrible the pressure upon them of never being
quite able to attain to their own ideal of finger perfection.  Many
pianists do not know how far they fall short; but these artists do,
and when they hear a thing done to perfection, they at once
recognize the satisfaction they feel.

It is not true, however, that any person can place a roll of
perforated paper in one of these machines and immediately realize
the ideal they have of a certain complicated or difficult piece.
The self-player is a player which you control yourself; the "self"
you furnish, the instrument does the rest.  Take one of these
instruments in a far-away country home, where artists are never
heard and where the prevailing instrumental selections are rag time
or commonplace salon banalities, and suppose the ambitious woman
provided with a roll for a sonata or important concert solo.  What
happens?  Inevitably that it goes through so fast that she fails
utterly to get the effect the piece was meant to furnish.  In order
for her to be able to reproduce a master work by means of the roll,
it is necessary for her to know the master work in all its ideas,
tempi, ritards, accellerandos, the use of pedal, and other general
points of interpretation.  This means that a new field is opened
for the teacher.  In place of spending most of the lessons upon
technique, he can now spend time upon the works themselves; and if
in a half dozen lesson Mollie Jones learns a great sonata well
enough to be sure of the movement and the effects of the several
movements in succession and can anticipate from one part to the
next the transitions which are to occur, she will have gained
something of music which she might have missed after years of
lessons upon the keyboard.  For nothing is surer than that the
great majority of students of the piano take lessons for years
without ever coming to the study of music as literature.  That is
to say, while the lessons last each piece presents itself as a
problem for fingers; but the actual enjoyment of the music,
appreciation of its several moods, and the like, are not such as to
afford the player anything properly to be described as esthetic
satisfaction.

The truth is that the self-playing apparatus is not complete when
the rolls are bought.  Besides having the rolls, which are merely
the instrument's technique for that particular piece, the player
needs the music itself, the ordinary print, and this should also be
marked for its tempo and general style.  Then by looking through
the notes and ascertaining the tempo by means of a metronome, to
get the movement, one is in position to bring out in time all the
fine points of the piece.  Wanting assistance of this kind, the
buyer of a self-played is in danger of giving up the search for the
higher kinds of music and of confining her work to waltzes, dances
and popular selections with which she is familiar.  The self-player
does not take the place of music knowledge; it merely furnishes
some better fingers than most people happen to have of their own.

And when one has obtained a self-player there is a great field for
lessons.  Supposing, for instance, an adult person, man or woman,
full of enthusiasm for music but now so old that in the ordinary
course of events they could never hope to attain to fine fingers,
this kind of instrument at one bound places them upon a level with
the enthusiast of sixteen, with the added elements of maturity and
leisure.  I even have an idea that a book of instructions might be
compiled for the use of students of this kind.  But this is another
story."

Joyce Brite
brite@ksu.edu       http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~brite/