Music by Machinery.
Dr. Cahill, a wizard of Holyoke, Mass., has perfected his telharmonium. By means of electric vibrations of differing frequency and power he has become able to build up all kinds of musical sounds, from the clear tones of a flute to the blare of a cornet or the rumble of a drum or the exquisitely intricate tones of a violin. More than that, his machine evolves all sorts of new and fascinating tones, whose like has not yet sounded forth from human instruments. Still further, because the means of operation is electricity, the lovely results may be sent anywhere, and the telharmonium can give a concert a thousand miles from where it is.
You see at once what is coming. There is to be in your parlor a little hole in the wall covered by a plate. You will attach a paper cone, turn a key or push a button, and at once the whole house will be filled with the most entrancing melody. All instruments will combine in the superb symphony, and new, strange instruments will seem to enter continually, keeping the ear alert with fresh surprises. Goodbye, then, to phonograph cylinders and gramophone plates. We shall get our music "right off the bat," as the boys say, without any clumsy intermediary. It will be a little foretaste of the music of the spheres.
But someone has to play, even in the case of the telharmonium. Let not Paderewski abandon his art, and take to sawing wood. You may call this music by machinery, but the machine must have an operator, and the operator must have a soul for music. Nothing comes from nothing, even in these days of the Patent Office. You must put music in before you can get music out. In all cases, you must put the thing in before you can get the thing out. And always the main difficulty is to put the thing in.
Ah, no! The Paderewskis will never be out of a job.