Scan 6
Musical Courier 1907-12-04: Vol 55 Iss 23, 1907
12 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026. Printed page 7. See the scan on archive.org.
1nials can have no possible value in the estimation of the sensible public, which is the public to which the high grade piano manufacturers appeal.
3One of the other subsidiary and melancholy results of it is found in the fact that after they return to Europe, their pupils come from America. The American girls and young men who hear them play here, instead of taking lessons here, go to Europe to take lessons* from them and the greatest part of their teaching is supported by American money, and all this is wrong, all this is unpatriotic, all this is exceedingly inartistic and will forever and forever banish the chances of America to become anything else but an Anglicized musical country, because England is suffering today from the pursuit of this kind of a policy ever since the days of Handel, followed by Mendelssohn and Moscheles, Julius Benedict and the Italian Clementi and Michael Costa and others by the thousands. Ever since those days England has been a foreign musical country and for that reason it has never produced a first class singer, a first class pianist, a first class conductor, or a first class composer. Outside of Grove's Dictionary, no such persons exist. The continent doesn't recognize English musicians except in a very restricted sense; they don't figure on the programs of the continent. That has been going on for over a century and the same results will be obtained here. We shall have no American musicians, no high grade American musical scholars, conductors, composers, performers, etc., except in very restricted instances, until we make this country artistic through the culture of our own artistic sense and the support of our own national instincts, based on our national conditions.
5France, which gets $100,000,000 a year from us, in this last panic here has refused to loan money to the large bankers and banking institutions without government endorsement. That is the money from America, which is hoarded and it is the profits gained from the Americans. No one considers France unreasonable, because France is patriotic and chauvinistic and insists upon supporting itself and maintaining itself at all risks and it, therefore, will take no risks here by loaning to the great establishments money when it is needed here. The French musical world recognizes nothing in music coming from America; publicly, absolutely never. Neither does it consider anything English as musical. English musicians cannot succeed in making any money in France, whether they are composers or reproducers. That is due to the fact that there has been no English musical standard of a high order. We are in the same position exactly and we will remain there forever, as England will, unless we change this policy, and the piano manufacturers will be the first to do it, because they depend almost entirely on the United States and most of them upon the American musicians, particularly now after they have exploited European pianists for the last fifty years nearly. That is the proposition and it will be manifested next season by the fact that some piano houses will refuse to enter into this piano playing proposition.
7It must be understood here that no one attaches any blame to the pianists themselves who come over here from Europe. They are supplying the demand. They know where their bread is buttered and how it is buttered. They have the distinguished honor of not only keeping the American pianists out of the field, but of taking the money to Europe to live in comfort and happiness and enjoy the prospect of re-engagements if they can make themselves sufficiently pleasant and agreeable to the piano houses, the latter paying the bills with an unction that seems surprising, considering the fact that all of them are doing the same.
9Naturally, there is a feeling among pianists here in America and among musicians that resents this policy, and for that reason a great many pianos are sold that are not high grade and whose makers are not engaged in the concert business. There is no public demonstration of this kind, but there is a quiet under-current of feeling, and these other houses exist without having piano playing schemes among their projects. One of these days we will find that public opinion—if there is such a thing here, which seems very doubtful,—will demand a cessation of this practice, from the fact that the people themselves will find that these pianists are simply nothing else but demonstrators engaged to play pianos for so much money. Surely, there is nothing artistic in such a course and, surely, it can be of no benefit to the piano manufacturer in the long run; and it is not. Each one in it is counterbalancing any possible advantage the other may acquire and hence it is all nil. Stop it; drop it and cultivate our American pianists for a change. They are better salesmen anyway than the foreigners.
11*This acts against American piano manufacturing because pupils going to Europe do not use American but European pianos, rent them, purchase many which are usually resold to new American pupils.
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