The Evolution of the Piano 
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THE WHITE HOUSE “ GOLD ” PIANO 
out in the short-lived fashion that obtained in Paris 
room from the charming 
Lohengrin grand, decorated 
with wreaths of orange bios- 
soms and designs from the 
opera and in which fancy 
seems to catch a resemblance 
to one of our noted prima- 
donnas in Elsa, to the count¬ 
less other treasures and won¬ 
ders where to stop. More 
and more the conviction 
forces itself that the piano 
forte is the greatest of musical 
instruments. Who can define 
its limitations or test its pow¬ 
ers to the utmost ? No sooner 
does one fancy that nothing 
further can he done to en¬ 
hance its possibilities than 
some inventor gives it greater 
volume or sweetness of tone. 
Piano making is becoming 
more and more of an art. 
Its wages keep alive the 
hearthstone of many nations 
for a piano contains valu¬ 
ables from every zone. Its 
ivory is a costly treasure, the 
tusk perhaps the cost of a hu¬ 
man life; its ebony is the sym¬ 
bol of an old and little known 
people and tropical land¬ 
scapes; its wood recalls jun¬ 
gles of Central America or the 
sublime forests of the Great 
Lakes. Such is the piano. 
Among the triumphs of art 
and science is this art of 
piano making in which we Americans have 
cause for pride for we have outstripped all 
other nations. Our pianos have graced every court 
from that of the Shah of Persia to the Grand Duke 
Vladimir, the great Russian connoisseur of music. 
A peculiarity about the piano builder is his devotion 
to his art, for every fine piano leads captive the mind 
who planned it. The devotion of the employees of 
our best piano firms is proverbial. Some of these 
men are sons of those who formerly worked for them. 
Another century will face new problems and fresh 
triumphs are awaiting an art whose brilliant promise 
seems limitless. 
And so, as luxury has increased, the piano has 
become an object upon which sculpture and painting 
and the craftsmanship of the cabinet-maker have been 
expended to a degree hardly realized by those who 
have not followed the artistic side of the matter. 
Have you a music-room with furniture and hang¬ 
ings in the Empire style ? Behold an upright carried 
during the heyday of Napoleon’s triumph -shields 
and cupids and sphinxes in fire gilt or dull metal, 
garlands of silver applied to ebony or mahogany 
panels, eagles of France clutching the fire-bolt in their 
talons. Is the interior colonial ? Here is a prim, 
white-winged baby-grand with quaint lattice-work 
designs between small fluted columns, just such a 
piano as ought to have been found in the old square 
bouses with pillared porticos which still exist in the 
Atlantic States and are not unknown in the Central. 
Is your music-room paneled in natural woods ? 
Observe what a variety you may choose from 
staid, dull-glowing mahogany or brilliant satinwood 
full of little soft flames, Circassian walnut from the 
Caucasus, Abyssinian maple from northeastern 
Africa, which makes one think of zebras; strange, 
beautiful woods from the Philippines, which may be 
seen in the rough and the smooth at the Museum of 
Natural History. 
267 
