sight on the part of the phonograph manufacturer. I mean the sort
of electric piano which faithfully reproduces every _nuance_ of the
master pianists. Many of the records of this marvelous instrument
sound as though the recording-room of the factory had been "papered"
with creative listeners who cooeperated mightily with the master on the
stage. Would that the phonographers might take the hint!

But no matter how effectively the creative listener originally
cooeperates with the maker of this kind of record, the electric piano
does not appeal as strongly to the creative listener in his home as
does the less perfect but more impressionable piano-player, which
responds like a cycle to pedal and brake. For the records of the
phonograph and of the electric piano, once they are made, are made.
Thereafter they are as insensible to influence as the laws of the
Medes and Persians. They do not admit the audience to an active,
influential part in the performance. But such a part in the
performance is exactly what the true listener demands as his
democratic right. And rather than be balked of it, he turns to the
less sophisticated mechanism of the piano-player. This, at least,
responds to his control.

Undeniably, though, even the warmest enthusiasts for the piano-player
come in time to realize that their machine has distinct limitations;
that it is better suited to certain pieces than to others. They find
that music may be performed on it with the more triumphant success
the less human it is and the nearer it comes to the soullessness of an
arabesque. The best operator, by pumping or pulling stops or switching
levers, cannot entirely succeed in imbuing it with the breath of life.
The disquieting fact remains that the more a certain piece demands to
be filled with soul, the thinner and more ghost-like it comes forth.
The less intimately human the music, the more satisfactorily it
emerges. For example, the performer is stirred by the "Tannhaeuser
March," as rendered by himself, with its flourish of trumpets and its
general hurrah-boys. But he is unmoved by the apostrophe to the
"Evening Star" from the same opera. For this, in passing through the
piano-player, is almost reduced to a frigid astronomical basis. The
singer is no longer Scotti or Bispham, but Herschel or Laplace. The
operator may pump and switch until he breaks his heart--but if he has
any real musical instinct, he will surely grow to feel a sense of lack
in this sort