Los Angeles herald., 1907-08-04

fore her fingers can follow the new guild
ance. Defective taste, defective even to
the point of vulgarity, is the greatest
hindrance to musical progress. The mu-
sic that is playing itself through the
minds of our young people and dropping
through their fingers upon the keyboard
of any innocent instrument which they
may encounter may be called the slang
of music. What the products of the pens
of George AIDE and Finley P. Dunno are
to classical English, that rag time and
coon songs are to classical music. 1t
is utterly impossible that a girl should
take pleasure in producing music which
she does not at all understand; and In
the realm of music, more even than in
the realm of letters. comprehension is
the result of familiarity.
Piano a Machine
1.-THE distress which 1 have experienced
in watching successive groups of pretty
girls, supposed to be well born and re-
fined, as they gathered eagerly about
piano to listen to one of their number
while she degraded fine instrument by
the production of 'ragtime,' has COM
PEELED me to think very seriously upon
these questions. One does not need to
think seriously long in order to discover
that the piano itself is machine; the
development of the harpsichord, which
was also a machine. One can easily see
that the Cecilian, that most perfect me-
chanical piano player, Is just as legiti-
mate a successor to the piano as the
piano to the harpsichord. or the harpsi-
chord to the shepherds pipe. The devel-
opment of man is measured by mans
development of his machines. He began
life in hand to hand tussle with ma
ture with neither hoe nor rake between
his fingers and the soil. We know that
the art of agriculture has not suffered by
the perfection of the machinery with
which 1t is prosecuted. The imagination,
however is captivated by the word art;
particularly by the words fine art We
enormously feel that the fine arts are
a something apart from the other activi-
ties of everyday life; we make them not
a part of our life, but an establishment
of It, This is great mistake; they are
part of 1t, an essential part, and life
will become complete and beautiful only
as this recognition of the fine arts as
essential parts of it-parts of its very
web and wool, grows.
at have come to believe that piano
player like the 'Cecilian' can do for the
fine art of music more than photography
has done for the fine arts of painting.
sculpture and architecture. AS artists of
the brush have been spurred to new
conception of truthfulness as applied to
their art by the accuracy with which the
sun tells the story of light and shade, so
will the performer on the pianoforte ac-
quire an accuracy and a precision hith-
erto unknown as he observes and emu
lates the perfect mathematical precision
of the 'Cecilian.
Extends Human Power
"I have recently had the pleasure of
studying under intelligent supervision the
mechanism of this inanimate magician.
1 recognize in it's sixty-five little bellows,
its sixty-five delicate pipes, its other
sixty-five flexible fingers such an extern
sion of individual human power as the
individual human being dare not discard
or scorn. The limitations which the pos
session OF merely two hands imposes