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.

The conductor Will Crutchfield, who specializes in bel-canto opera and doubles as a musicological detective, recently sat down to compare all extant recordings of “Una furtiva lagrima,” the plaintive tenor aria from Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’Amore.” Crutchfield wanted to know what singers of various eras have done with the cadenza—the passage at the end of the aria where the orchestra halts and the tenor engages in graceful acrobatics. Donizetti included a cadenza in his score, and later supplied two alternative versions. Early recordings show singers trying out a range of possibilities, some contemplative, some florid, none the same. Then came Enrico Caruso. He first recorded “Una furtiva lagrima” in 1902, and returned to it three more times in the course of his epochal studio career. After that, tenors began replicating the stylish little display that Caruso devised: a quick up-and-down run followed by two slow, sighing phrases. Out of more than two hundred singers who have recorded the aria since Caruso’s death, how many try something different? Crutchfield counts four.

Nate

‘Are you fond of music, Mr. West?’ Edith asked.

I assured her that it was half of life, according to my notion.

‘I ought to apologize for inquiring,’ she said.

‘It is not a question that we ask one another nowadays; but I have read that in your day, even among the cultured class, there were some who did not care for music.’

‘You must remember, in excuse,’ I said, ‘that we had some rather absurd kinds of music.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I know that; I am afraid I should not have fancied it all myself. Would you like to hear some of ours now, Mr. West?’

‘Nothing would delight me so much as to listen to you,’ I said.

‘To me!’ she exclaimed, laughing. ‘Did you think I was going to play or sing to you?’

‘I hoped so, certainly,’ I replied.

Seeing that I was a little abashed, she subdued her merriment and explained. ‘Of course, we all sing nowadays as a matter of course in the training of the voice, and some learn to play instruments for their private amusement; but the professional music is so much grander and more perfect than any performance of ours, and so easily commanded when we wish to hear it, that we don’t think of calling our singing or playing music at all.