Of course
if you are to have a real music-room, then there are great
possibilities.
A piano may be a princely thing, properly built and decorated. The old
spinets and harpsichords, with their charming inlaid cases, were
beautiful, but they gave forth only tinkly sounds. Now we have a
magnificent mechanism, but the case which encloses it is too often
hideous.
There is an old double-banked harpsichord of the early Eighteenth
Century in the Morgan collection at the Metropolitan Museum that would
be a fine form for a piano, if it would hold the "works." It is long and
narrow, fitting against the wall so that it really takes up very little
room. The case is painted a soft dark gray and outlined in darker gray,
and the panels and the long top are in soft colors. The legs are carved
and pointed in polychrome. This harpsichord was made when the beauty of
an object was of as real importance as the mechanical perfection.
Occasionally one sees a modern piano that has been decorated by an
artist. Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Sir Alma Tadema, and many of the other
English artists of our generation have made beautiful pianos. Sir Robert
Lorimer recently designed a piano that was decorated, inside and out, by
Mrs. Traquair. From time to time a great artist interests himself in
designing and decorating a piano, but the rank and file, when they
decide to build an extraordinary piano, achieve lumpy masses of wood
covered with impossible nymphs and too-realistic flowers, pianos
suggestive of thin and sentimental tunes, but never of _music_.
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