ing."

Machinery has already done as much for the true spirit of music as the
"safe and sane" movement has done for the true spirit of the Fourth of
July. Both have shifted the emphasis from brute noise and fireworks to
more spiritual considerations. The piano-player has done a great deal
to cheapen the glamour of mere technical display on the part of the
virtuosi and to redeem us from the thralldom of the school of Liszt.
Our admiration for musical gymnastics and tight-rope balancing is now
leaking away so fast through the perforations of the paper rolls that
the kind of display-piece known as the concerto is going out of
fashion. The only sort of concerto destined to keep our favor is, I
imagine, that of the Schumann or Brahms type, which depends for its
effect not at all on display, but on sound musicianship alone. The
virtuoso is destined soon to leave the circus business and bid a long
farewell to his late colleagues, the sword-swallower, the trapeze
artist, the strong man, the fat lady, the contortionist, and the
gentleman who conducts the shell-and-pea game. For presently the only
thing that will be able to entice people to concerts will be the soul
of music. Its body will be a perfectly commonplace affair.

Many a good musician fears, I know, that machine-made music will not
stop with annihilating vulgar display, but will do to death all
professional music as well. This fear is groundless. Mechanical
instruments will no more drive the good pianist or violinist or
'cellist out of his profession than the public library, as many once
feared, will drive the bookseller out of business. For the library,
after persuading people to read, has taught them how much pleasure may
be had from owning a book, with the privilege of marking it and
scribbling one's own ideas on the margins, and not having to rush it
back to headquarters at inopportune moments and pay to a stern young
woman a fine of eight cents. Likewise people are eventually led to
realize that the joy of passively absorbing the product of phonograph
or electric piano contrasts with the higher joy of listening
creatively to music which the hearer helps to make, in the same way
that borrowing a book of Browning contrasts with owning a book of
Browning. I believe that, just as the libraries are yearly educating
hosts of book-buyers, so mechanical music is cooeperating with
evolution to swell the noble army of those who support concerts and
give private musicales.