Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1884-06-21
The Anti-Piauo Movement.

| It's laws ana acts honorable ana just To-
ward mankind Astoria independent
| The Anti-Piano Movement.
| The details of the auto-piano movement
| in Berlin will be awaited with interest on
| this side of the Atlantic From the dis
patch published on Sunday ii looks as if
the popular feeling against the instrument
was not too violent to allow the Germans
TO consider the remedial measures with the
cool calmness which the crisis demands.
| Piano-playing in Berlin has. it is said,
reached a point at which the public health
and the price of real estate are seriously
affected. 1t is therefore proposed that the
| Government shall restrict playing and prac-
| ticing within certain hours of the day; l. e..
| between II o'clock in the morning and
| noon, and between 5 and II in the evening.
In this country, where the piano is an al
| most universal instrument, and where the
| capacity to own or rent one is the great
mark of division between the wage earning
and the property-oWning classes, and where
it is the popular substitute for every other
instrument, the damage to health and real
estate must be even greater than i'll Ger
many where the quieter violin is more cul-
tivated and where there is a smaller popu-
lation interested in pianos In New York
life the piano plays an especially important
part, owing to the great number of flats, in
which the piano of each family is practi
cally curse or blessing to the floor above
or the floor below-a fact admirably brought
out in the popular song, The Family
Overhead
Some Of our contemporaries treat the
piano revolt with leyity and indulge them
selves in humor at the expense of what
they call the "phlegmatic' Germans. But
this is an erroneous view of the subject, for
the Germans are by no means phlegmatic
about music, and their rage against the
piano is no blind rage. The piano is the
instrument of democratic age, because il
is an instrument which within certain
limits anyone can learn to play 1t is an
instrument which seems to bring music
within the reach of everybody provided,
as the dry goods people say, with " full
line of fingers and thumbs and eyes. The
beauty of the piano, as distinguished from
the violin, Is that every note and half note
is identified to the eye and touch by its con-
nection with a particular piece of ivory
and in practicing" the apprentice does not
have to strike the true note by ear which is
regarded by the musical aristocrats as the
true musical organ, but simply by pressing
down the appropriate key with the finger
As long as she is willing to labor-and
the duiIest piano players are nOtorieusly |
the most induStrious-she can certainly in |
the end master her instrument, and play |
just as many and difficult pieces as Paga- |
mini ever could on the violin. 1t is this fact |
which has given the piano its triumph in |
the modern world, and accounts to musical |
people for the extraordinary number of |
people who play 1t extremely well and yet
so very diSagreGably. They maintain that
it might just as well be played by machine
ry, or that mechanical instrument like a |
musical box, would be as good for ordinary
family use.
If this is true it is easy to see why the
piano is so well adapted for a really I'M
race like ours, race of which Mr.
Lowell had the audacity to say the other
day that it was not, and never would be,
artistic. We have produced some of the
greatest piano manufacturers in the world,
and the American home into which the
daughters do not force a Grand a Baby
Grand, or at least an Upright, is a rarity
one of those houses in which we miss
feminine and familiar a home
in which we involuntarily suspect that the
husband is a cold, unmagnetic man. who
rules his household with rod of iron
The great difficulty in the way of any
movement in England or this
country has always been that the people
who We're hostile to the instrument were
Of being mere men. with no ear
for music Punch used to contain many a
broad hint directed against the piano and
. scales, but the friends of the instrument
never needed this much because they felt
above it. They looked down with amuse-
ment or pity upon those who demonstrated
against practicing, feeling toward them
much as we do toward the expressions of
dissent which come from dogs and other
exposed to piano.
But the attack on the piano in Germany,
as it is by a threat of resort
to the police, and no doubt, in the end, to
Bismarck, is a much more serious matter
because those who make it are presumably
musical people. Their movement is ii
rected against the unreasonable use of the
instrument but any restriction in hours
Will greatly reduce the number of PLAYERS,
because as practicing is done in the morn
ing, and one morning hour only is to be al
Owed, it is only those naturally gifted with
A musical taste who could acquire any
hour day to practicing.
This would rule out a great host of play
FRS who rely for success solely on indefati-
gable industry. 1t is by having the whole
morning TO themselves, when the men are
away at business, and when no one but the
leighborS can be annoyed, that the women
II the type We mean reach that proficiency
celebrated in the well-knOwn story of DR..
Johnson, who, hearing that a piece per
ormed in his presence was very difficult"
politely replied, Would to God, madam, it
we're impossible
That the violin men, as we should say,
IRE probably behind the attack on the piano
Toes not rob the movement of its interest
rqt inc ! In N, |
Germany have for long time insisted that
he violin was the true instrument for edu-
ational purposes, and it is by no means
Uncommon for girls in England who,
twenty-five years ago, would have been
aught the piano TO learn the violin in
tead. Probably to person afflicted with
N ear girl playing badly and indus
riously on the violin is even worse than
,lrl playing badly and industriously on q
'lanO But then the violin battles the I'M
musical girl in the end, because there are
10 ivory keys which she can make sure of -,
nd rely on hitting with accuracy every ,
imc
Therefore she soon wearies of the violin,
nd leaves it for those with ears. The
worst that can be said of the ant-piano
movement is that it is undemocratic. The =
iano Is the only good instrument which is c
eally compatible with equal rights in mu- a
ic. But then we get more undemocratic, l
ocially every year, and it is doubtful o
whether there can be any permanent de-
nocracy in art. But the Germans have s
ne great resource from which we are cut Il
II: they can rely on the police to enforce
he ordinance.-[ New York Evening Post o
Marriage as a Financial Speculation. a
More difficult divorce will put an eStop-
Ell to a great extent upon marriage as a f
nancial speculation. There are men who s
o into the relation Just as they 60 into "