Excerpt from The Art of the Player-Piano: A Text-Book for Student and Teacher

The Art of the Player-piano lies in the pedalling and in the use of Tempo-control Lever or Buttons. Pedalling is as breathing in singing or fingering in pianoforte playing. Certain of the more subtle refinements of musical performance remain outside the Art of the Player; but in the main everything is possible that is necessary in an intelligent, personal, and complete performance. I say complete, because what cannot be produced in the normal way of musical effect may be produced in a way special to the new instrument - there is compromise in the executive art of any musical instrument.

Rhythm, the foundational and constructional power in music, determines pedalling and tempo rubato, or free time. The player-pianist creates mentally the rhythmical form of the motive or phrase, and then creates it in the instrument by process of pedalling and tempo-control. It is a curious thought that, since the imaginative conception of rhythm is a highly intellectual act, the Art of the Player-piano is entirely volitional; the playerist has no mechanical work to do, even in the beginning, of the order inseparable from the piano, the organ, and the violin. My idea throughout this book has been the development of the rhythmical consciousness. I am not aware that any attempt has been previously made to formulate the principles of this new executive art.

Cadenced metrical counting must take the place of fingering in the work of the player-pianist; after that, articulation of notes into motive on the one hand, and on the other hand the cadential phrasing of groups of motives into measures, clauses, and sentences.

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