“SWEEPING across the country with the speed of a transient fashion in slang or Panama hats, political war cries or popular novels, comes now the mechanical device to sing for us a song or play for us a piano, in substitute for human skill, intelligence, and soul. Only by harking back to the day of the roller skate or the bicycle craze, when sports of admitted utility ran to extravagance and virtual madness, can we find a parallel to the way in which these ingenious instruments have invaded every community in the land. And if we turn from this comparison in pure mechanics to another which may fairly claim a similar proportion of music in its soul, we may observe the English sparrow, which, introduced and welcomed in all innocence, lost no time in multiplying itself to the dignity of a pest, to the destruction of numberless native song birds, and the invariable regret of those who did not stop to think in time.
On a matter upon which I feel so deeply, and which I consider so far-reaching, I am quite willing to be reckoned an alarmist, admittedly swayed in part by personal interest, as well as by the impending harm to American musical art. I foresee a marked deterioration in American music and musical taste, an interruption in the musical development of the country, and a host of other injuries to music in its artistic manifestations, by virtue – or rather by vice – of the multiplication of the various music-reproducing machines. When I add to this that I myself and every other popular composer are victims of a serious infringement on our clear moral rights in our own work, I but offer a second reason why the facts and conditions should be made clear to everyone, alike in the interest of musical art and of fair play.
It cannot be denied that the owners and inventors have shown wonderful aggressiveness and ingenuity in developing and exploiting these remarkable devices. Their mechanism has been steadily and marvelously improved, and they have come into very extensive use. And it must be admitted that where families lack time or inclination to acquire musical technic, and to hear public performances, the best of these machines supply a certain amount of satisfaction and pleasure.
But heretofore, the whole course of music, from its first day to this, has been along the line of making it the expression of soul states; in other words, of pouring into it soul. Wagner, representing the climax of this movement, declared again and again, ‘I will not write even one measure of music that is not thoroughly sincere.’
From the days when the mathematical and mechanical were paramount in music, the struggle has been bitter and incessant for the sway of the emotional and the soulful. And now, in this the twentieth century, come these talking and playing machines, and offer again to reduce the expression of music to a mathematical system of megaphones, wheels, cogs, disks, cylinders, and all manner of revolving things, which are as like real art as the marble statue of Eve is like her beautiful, living, breathing daughters.
Away back in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries rebellion had its start against musical automatics, Palestrina proving in his compositions, that music is life, not mathematics; and Luther showing, in his sublime hymns for congregational use and in his adaptations of secular melody for the church, that music could be made the pouring out of the souls of the many in one grand, eternal song. From the days of these pioneers, all great workers in the musical vineyard have given their best powers to the development of fruit, ever finer and more luscious, and in the doing have brought their art near and nearer to the emotional life of man.
The nightingale’s song is delightful because the nightingale herself gives it forth. The boy with a penny whistle and glass of water may give an excellent imitation, but let him persist, he is sent to bed as a nuisance. Thunder inspires awe in its connection with nature, but two lusty bass drummers can drive you mad by what might be called a fair reproduction of Jove’s prerogative. I doubt if a dramatist could be inspired to write a tragedy by witnessing the mournful development and dénouement of ‘Punch and Judy’; or an actress improve her delineation of heroic character by hearing the sobs of a Parisian doll. Was Garner led to study language and manners of the orang-outang and his kin by watching the antics of a monkey-on-a-stick?
It is the living, breathing example alone that is valuable to the student and can set into motion his creative and performing abilities. The ingenuity of a phonograph’s mechanism may incite the inventive genius to its improvement, but I could not imagine that a performance by it would ever inspire embryotic Mendelssohns, Beethovens, Mozarts, and Wagners to the acquirement of technical skill, or to the grasp of human possibilities in the art.
Elson, in his ‘History of American Music,’ says: ‘The true beginnings of American music – seeds that finally grew into a harvest of native composition – must be sought in a field almost as uncompromising as that of the Indian music itself – the rigid, narrow, and often commonplace psalm-singing of New England.’
Step by step through the centuries, working in an atmosphere almost wholly monopolized by commercial pursuit, America has advanced art to such a degree that to-day she is the Mecca toward which journey the artists of all nations. Musical enterprises are given financial support here as nowhere else in the universe, while our appreciation of music is bounded only by our geographical limits.
This wide love for the art springs from the singing school, secular or sacred; from the village band, and from the study of those instruments that are nearest the people. There are more pianos, violins, guitars, mandolins, and banjos among the working classes of America than in all the rest of the world, and the presence of these instruments in the homes has given employment to enormous numbers of teachers who have patiently taught the children and inculcated a love for music throughout the various communities.
Right here is the menace in machine-made music! The first rift in the lute has appeared. The cheaper of these instruments of the home are no longer being purchased as formerly, and all because the automatic music devices are usurping their places.
And what is the result? The child becomes indifferent to practice, for when music can be heard in the homes without the labor of study and close application, and without the slow process of acquiring a technic, it will be simply a question of time when the amateur disappears entirely, and with him a host of vocal and instrumental teachers, who will be without field or calling.
Great Britain is experiencing this decline in domestic music and the English press is discussing it seriously in its editorials. A recent writer in the London Spectator dwells at considerable length upon the prevailing condition, and points to the novel as a sign of the times. The present-day fashionable writer of society fiction, he declares, does not find it necessary to reinforce his heroine with vocal accomplishment, ‘as in the good old days.’ He ascribes the passing of home performance, both vocal and instrumental, to the newborn love of athletics among the maids of Albion, together with the introduction of the phonograph as a mechanical substitute for amateur performances.
He believes that the exclamation of the little boy who rushed into his mother’s room with the appeal: “O mamma, come into the drawing-room; there is a man in there playing the piano with his hands,” is far less extravagant than many similar excursions into the domain of humorous and human prophecy. He states from observation, that music has been steadily declining in Great Britain as a factor in domestic life, and that the introduction of machine-made music into the household is largely helping to assist in the change.
While a craze for athletics may have something to do with the indifference of the amateur performer in Great Britain, I do not believe it is much of a factor in this country. It is quite true that American girls have followed the athletic trend of the nation for a long while; at the same time they have made much headway in music, thanks to studious application. But let the mechanical music-maker be generally introduced into the homes; hour for hour these same girls will listen to the machine’s performance and, sure as can be, lose finally all interest in technical study.
Under such conditions the tide of amateurism cannot but recede, until there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executant. Singing will no longer be a fine accomplishment; vocal exercises, so important a factor in the curriculum of physical culture, will be out of vogue!
Then what of the national throat? Will it not weaken? What of the national chest? Will it not shrink?
When a mother can turn on the phonograph with the same ease that she applies to the electric light, will she croon her baby to slumber with sweet lullabys, or will the infant be put to sleep by machinery?
Children are naturally imitative, and if, in their infancy, they hear only phonographs, will they not sing, if they sing at all, in imitation and finally become simply human phonographs – without soul or expression? Congregational singing will suffer also, which, though crude at times, at least improves the respiration of many a weary sinner and softens the voices of those who live amid tumult and noise.
The host of mechanical reproducing machines, in their mad desire to supply music for all occasions, are offering to supplant the illustrator in the class room, the dance orchestra, the home and public singers and players, and so on. Evidently they believe no field too large for their incursions, no claim too extravagant. But the further they can justify those claims, the more noxious the whole system becomes.
Just so far as a spirit of emulation once inspired proud parent or aspiring daughter to send for the music teacher when the neighbor child across the way began to take lessons, the emulation is turning to the purchase of a rival piano player in each house, and the hope of developing the local musical personality is eliminated.
The country dance orchestra of violin, guitar and melodeon had to rest at times, and the resultant interruption afforded the opportunity for general sociability and rest among the entire company. Now a tireless mechanism can keep everlastingly at it, and much of what made the dance a wholesome recreation is eliminated.
The country band with its energetic renditions, its loyal support by local merchants, its benefit concerts, band wagon, gay uniforms, state tournaments, and the attendant pride and gayety, is apparently doomed to vanish in the general assault on personality in music.
There was a time when the pine woods of the north were sacred to summer simplicity, when around the camp fire at night the stories were told and the songs were sung with a charm all their own. But even now the invasion of the north has begun, and the ingenious purveyor of canned music is urging the sportsman, on his way to the silent places with gun and rod, tent and canoe, to take with him some disks, cranks, and cogs to sing to him as he sits by the firelight, a thought as unhappy and incongruous as canned salmon by a trout brook.
In the prospective scheme of mechanical music, we shall see man and maiden in a light canoe under the summer moon upon an Adirondack lake with a gramophone caroling love songs from amidships. The Spanish cavalier must abandon his guitar and serenade his beloved with a phonograph under his arm.
Shall we not expect that when the nation once more sounds its call to arms and the gallant regiment marches forth, there will be no majestic drum major, no serried ranks of sonorous trombones, no glittering array of brass, no rolling of drums? In their stead will be a huge phonograph, mounted on a 100 H. P. automobile, grinding out ‘The Girl I left Behind Me,’ ‘Dixie,’ and ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever.’
How the soldiers’ bosoms will swell at the thought that they are being led into the strife by a machine! And when in camp at night, they are gathered about the cheery fire, it will not be:
Give us a song, the soldier cried.
It will not be:
They sang of love, and not of fame,
Forgot was Britain’s glory;
Each heart recalled a different name,
But all sang ‘Annie Laurie.’
But it will be:
Whir – whir – whir – Song by the Bungtown Quartet: ‘Your Name is Dennis.’
Shades of Alexander, of Washington, of Napoleon, of Wellington, of Grant, and of the other immortal heroes!
Never again will the soldier hear the defiant call of the bugle to battle, and the historic lines must be changed to: ‘Gentlemen of the French guards, turn on your phonographs first.’
And the future d’Auteroches will reply: ‘Sir, we never turn on our phonographs first; please to turn yours first.’
It is at the fireside that we look for virtue and patriotism; for songs that stir the blood and fire the zeal; for songs of home, of mother, and of love, that touch the heart and brighten the eye. Music teaches all that is beautiful in this world. Let us not hamper it with a machine that tells the story day by day, without variation, without soul, barren of the joy, the passion, the ardor that is the inheritance of man alone.”
-Excerpt courtesy of HathiTrust Digital Library, Google, Harvard University, Appleton’s Magazine, “The Menace of Mechanical Music,” by John Philip Sousa, illustrated by F. Strothmann, September 1906. (top) Collage based on an image courtesy of HathiTrust Digital Library, Yale University, The Yale Record, advertisement for Tuxedo Tobacco featuring John Philip Sousa, 1906
JOHN PHILIP SOUSA STILL ALARMED
Over the Great Dangers That Must Ensue from the Use of the Talking Machines and Mechanical Piano Players by the Musically Inclined People of This Country — He Draws Some Fantastic Pictures in Which He Presents a One-Sided View of the Situation — Demonstrates His Narrowness of Vision and His Lack of Knowledge of General Conditions.
“Ever since John Philip Sousa, the eminent bandmaster, appeared n Washington in connection with the hearing on the copyright bill, he has been conspicuously in the limelight, always talking about the great danger and evils to ensue from use of the talking machine. He has been interviewed by newspaper men, and his remarks have been the subject of many editorial comments. The daily papers, however, could not afford him scope enough for his views, so this time he has taken the pains to contribute a lengthy article to Appleton’s Magazine, for September, under the caption, ‘The Menace of Mechanical Music.’ Mr. Sousa goes on record as saying he is willing to be reckoned as an alarmist, and proceeds in this wise:
‘I foresee a marked deterioration in American music and musical taste, an interruption in the musical development of the country, and a host of other injuries to music in its artistic manifestations, by virtue, or, rather, by vice, of the multiplication of the various music reproducing machines. When I add to this that I myself and every other popular composer are victims of a serious infringement on our clear moral rights in our own work, I but offer a second reason why the facts and conditions should be made clear to every one, alike in the interest of musical art and of fair play.’
‘It cannot be denied that the owners and inventors have shown wonderful aggressiveness and ingenuity in developing and exploiting these remarkable devices. Their mechanism has been steadily and marvelously improved, and they have come into very extensive use. And it must be admitted that where families lack time or inclination to acquire musical technic, and to hear public performances, the best of these machines supply a certain amount of satisfaction and pleasure.’
Mr. Sousa says that the present mechanical appliances reduce the expression of music to a mathematical system of megaphones, wheels, cogs, discs, cylinders and all manner of revolving things, which are as like real art as the marble statue of Eve is like her beautiful, living, breathing daughters.
Composer Sousa evidently believes that the sale of music producing inventions interferes with what was termed formerly the regular business, and will ultimately drive the amateur musician out entirely. According to his views, ‘there are more pianos, violins, guitars, mandolins and banjos among the working classes of America than in all the rest of the world, and the presence of these instruments in the homes has given employment to enormous numbers of teachers who have patiently taught the children and inculcated a love of music throughout the various communities.
‘Right here is the menace in machine-made music! The first rift in the lute has appeared. The cheaper of these instruments of the home are no long being purchased as formerly, and all because the automatic music devices are usurping their places.’
‘And what is the result? The child becomes indifferent to practice, for when music can be heard in the homes without the labor of study and close application, and without the slow process of acquiring a technic, it will be simply a question of time when the amateur disappears entirely, and with him a host of vocal and instrumental teachers, who will be without field or calling.’
He refers to an article recently appearing in the London Spectator, which shows how the talking machine is being used as a substitute for musicians at amateur performances, and quotes the exclamation of the little boy who rushed into his mother’s room with the appeal: ‘O mamma, come into the drawing room, there is a man in there playing the piano with his hands!’
The March King is full of fear and trembling for the musical future of America, for he says: ‘It is quite true that American girls have followed the athletic trend of the nation for a long while; at the same time they have made much headway in music, thanks to studious application. But let the mechanical music maker be generally introduced into the homes; hour for hour these same girls will listen to the machine’s performance, and, sure as can be, lose finally all interest in technical study.
‘Under such conditions the tide of amateurism cannot but recede, until there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executant [sic]. Singing will no longer be a fine accomplishment: vocal exercises, so important a factor in the curriculum of physical culture, will be out of vogue?’
‘Then what of the national throat? Will it not weaken? What of the national chest? Will it not shrink?’
‘When a mother can turn on the phonograph with the same ease that she applies to the electric light, will she croon her baby to slumber with sweet lullabys, or will the infant be put to sleep by machinery?’
He does not evidently view the educational power of the piano players and talking machines in a favorable light, for he says that ‘the mechanical inventions, in their mad desire to apply music for all occasions, are offering to supplant the illustrator in the classroom, the dance orchestra, the home and public singers and players, and so on. Evidently they believe no field too large for their incursions, no claim too extravagant. But the further they can justify these claims, the more noxious the whole system becomes.
‘Just so far as a spirit of emulation once inspired proud parent or aspiring daughter to send for the music teacher when the neighbor child across the way began to take lessons, the emulation is turning to the purchase of a rival piano player in each house, and the hope of developing the local musical personality is eliminated.
‘The country dance orchestra of violin, guitar and melodeon had to rest at times, and the resultant interruption afforded the opportunity for general sociability and rest among the entire company. Now a tireless mechanism can keep everlastingly at it, and much of what made the dance a wholesome recreation is eliminated.’
He yields, however, on one point, that it may play a strong part in the love affairs of the nation, for he says:
‘In the prospective scheme of mechanical music we shall see man and maiden in a light canoe under the summer moon upon an Adirondack lake with a gramophone caroling love songs from amidships. The Spanish cavalier must abandon his guitar and serenade his beloved with a phonograph under his arm.’
Mr. Sousa believes, too, that in war as well as in love, the talking machine will win renown. He asks:
‘Shall we not expect that when the nation once more sounds its call to arms and the gallant regiment marches forth, there will be no majestic drum major, no serried ranks of sonorous trombones, no glittering array of brass, no rolling of drums? In their stead will be a huge phonograph, mounted on a 100 horse-power automobile, grinding out ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me,’ ‘Dixie,’ and ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever.’
Through the opening of Mr. Sousa’s article there is an ever-present sarcastic vein, and he obviously fails to give credit to the wonderful educational influence of the automatic devices which enable people in every part of the land to became acquainted, through their media with the musical compositions of this and past generations. The sarcastic element in Mr. Sousa’s article is succeeded by a serious trend of thought toward the close in which Mr. Sousa gives his impression of the new copyright bill, which was introduced at Congress at the last session. He describes his experiences before the joint committee, where he made a strong plea for the composers.
‘Of course, it must not be overlooked that in the United States Circuit Court of Appeals a case has just been decided adversely to the composer’s rights in the profits accruing from the use of his compositions on the talking and playing machines, but this case awaits final adjudication, on appeal, in the United States Supreme Court. Judges Lacombe, Coxe and Townsend rendered a decision as follows:
‘We are of the opinion that a perforated paper roll, such as is manufactured by defendant, is not a copy of compainant’s staff notation, for the following reasons: It is not a copy in fact; it is not designed to be read or actually used in reading music as the original staff notation is; and the claim that it may be read, which is practically disproved by the great preponderance of evidence, even if true, would establish merely a theory or possibility of use, as distinguished from an actual use. The argument that because the roll is a notation or record of the music, it is, therefore, a copy, would apply to the disc of the phonograph or the barrel of the organ, which, it must be admitted, are not copies of the sheet music. The perforations in the rolls are not a varied form of symbols substituted for the symbols used by the author. They are mere adjuncts of a valve mechanism in a machine; in fact, the machine, or musical playing device, is the thing which appropriates the author’s property and publishes it by producing the musical sounds, thus conveying the author’s composition to the public.’
My I ask, does this machine appropriate the author’s composition without human assistance? Is the machine a free agent? Does it go about to seek whom it may devour? And if, as quoted above, the machine ‘publishes it,’ is not the owner of the machine responsible for its acts?
Mr. Sousa has evidently devoted considerable time to the consideration of this matter, and he says: ‘The section of the Constitution on which my whole legal contention is based provides: ‘The Congress shall have power to secure for a limited time to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.’ And my claim is, that the words ‘exclusive’ and ‘writings,’ particularly the latter, are so broad in their meaning that they cover every point raised by existing copyright laws, even to the unauthorized use of musical compositions by the mechanical reproducing apparatus, and all this because these two words deal, not alone with the letter, but with the spirit as well.’
Mr. Sousa says later that ‘the day will come when the courts will give me the absolute power of controlling the compositions which I feel are now mine under the Constitution. Then I am not so sure that my name will appear as often as at present in the catalogues of the talking and playing machines.’
He closes by saying that it is possible that if the composers do not receive a just reward for their efforts in the end it will have the effect to check incentive to creative work, and that compositions will cease. My, my, how sad!”
-Excerpt courtesy of Archive.org, The Talking Machine World, January to December, 1906
Roger Sherman house 