Grew Sydney. The Art of the Player-Piano

London: Kegan Paul; Trench; Trubner and Co; New York: E.P. Dutton, 1922. — 333 p.A treatise on music and instructions on how to play the pianola.The Art of the Player-piano lies in the pedalling and in the use of Tempo-control Lever or Buttons. Pedalling is as breathing in singing or fingering in pianoforte playing. Certain of the more subtle refinements of musical performance remain outside the Art of the Player ; but in the main everything is possible that is necessary in an intelligent, personal, and complete performance. I say complete, because what cannot be produced in the normal way of musical effect may be produced in a way special to the new instrument — there is compromise in the executive art of any musical instrument.Rhythm, the foundational and constructional power in music, determines pedalling and tempo rubato, or free time. The player-pianist creates mentally the rhythmical form of the motive or phrase, and then creates it in the instrument by process of pedalling and tempo-control. It is a curious thought that, since the imaginative conception of rhythm is a highly intellectual act, the Art of the Player-piano is entirely volitional ; the playerist has no mechanical work to do, even in the beginning, of the order inseparable from the piano, the organ, and the violin.
My idea throughout this book has been the development of the rhythmical consciousness. I am not aware that any attempt has been previously made to formulate the principles of this new executive art.Cadenced metrical counting must take the place of fingering in the work of the player-pianist ; after that, articulation of notes into motive on the one hand, and on the other hand the cadential phrasing of groups of motives into measures, clauses, and sentences. The teacher of the pianoforte first shows his pupil how to finger notes ; the teacher of the player-piano instructs his pupil first how to count. The instrument itself compels correct quantitative counting, being its own metronome.I have provided generous supplies of music, for the reason that the playerist will get through as many as twelve large works in an evening. The pieces set for close intellectual study in the latter half of the book are of the type that is easy to memorise. It is my idea that the student should play a piece some twelve or fifteen times, and then reconstruct it in mind by aid of the abstracts I make of the form, rhythm, cadency, and accentuation of the piece. He will thereupon complete his study of a composition with the same fine and accurate knowledge of its dynamical features as a reader of elaborate verse has of the same features in a poem. Every detail of the rhythmical abstracts can be transcribed to the roll.I have assumed that the student has no ability to read music. The course of instruction, however, gradually supplies facts and principles of musical notation which will in the end enable the student to find his way about printed music, and to observe the many details of the pieces which I have not been able to mention.The intellectual effort required in Chapters XXV-XXIX is slightly less than that required in the study of instrumentation, canon, building construction, algebra, and so on ; but it requires the same qualities and similar determination.