The Menace of Mechanical Creation

There’s a chapter in How Music Works where David Byrne looks at the effect of the introduction of record players into the household. Until then, if someone wanted music in their house, they had to play it. Or find someone else who could. This meant that musical literacy at this time meant playing instruments, and almost everybody could play at least one.

With the advent of the phonograph you could listen to a whole lot of music you couldn’t previously access. This opened up a different kind of music literacy. Exposure to more songs through recordings meant those who lived in a village or small town could hear symphonies. Those in a city could hear rural folk songs, thanks to the Lomax recordings among others. Or songs from other parts of the world. The amount of songs you could hear in a lifetime multiplied. Then came the radio, and the number multiplied again.

The concern at the time was that this introduction of mechanical music machines would lead to a loss of musical literacy. It wasn’t blind panic. It was fear that a part of what connected people would be lost.

Byrne’s book includes the following written by John Philip Sousa in his essay The Menace of Mechanical Music, in 1906.

“There are more pianos, violins, guitars, mandolins, and banjos among the working classes of America than in all the rest of the world… [but now] the automatic music devices are usurping their places.

“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…

The tide of amateurism cannot but recede, until there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executants.”

The amateur musician doesn’t mean someone fumbling with the guitar fingering of D to G. It’s someone who can entertain and find a way to still express themselves. The amateur musician played a strong part of the community of music pre-phonograph – households and towns often gathered around them, they were found in the piazzas and bars. Beyond that, playing and sharing music was a way to experience being human. You didn’t need to be a professional or study at Juilliard to find a way to express yourself.

Yes, that type of musical literacy has passed us by where not every household has a musician to lead music gatherings. Many don’t have those gatherings at all. The culture has changed. We had the Top 40, and now that’s not so relevant either.

As for the current technological trend, the automatic probability devices, Sousa’s sentiment is relevant again – a fear that people forget how to express being human. How to develop skills to do that. How to enjoy writing. Or drawing. Or making art.

Not every piece is going to hang on a wall. Not every piece of writing is going to be read by the masses or held up as literature. It shouldn’t be and that’s not important. Being able to engage with the process of making it is.

Writing is expression and it is about the experience of being human. Without learning the simple tools of writing we lose touch with that simple act. Expression. A shift happens to where those able to write – and think in a way that makes sense… “recede, until there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executants.”