Boom Fortissimo

The way to surprise and amaze your friends, according to the old ad, is to sit down at the piano and dash off a few tricky arpeggios learned on the sly. These days, so many Americans are sitting down at their pianos that friends are no longer surprised; it is the piano makers who are amazed. They are enjoying their biggest boom in 25 years. Sales last year of 154,000 instruments were still below the booming '20s, when the player-piano craze pushed sales to 300,000. But the figure still represents a lively rise from the low note struck by the industry during the Depression.

A bumper crop of war babies helped the business to get back on key; so did the shorter work week, which provided more leisure time to enjoy music. Nowadays, some 2,000 U.S. cities have classical-music concerts each year, twice as many as before the war. Says President R. C. (for Reuben Charles) Rolfing of Chicago's Rudolph Wurlitzer Co., biggest piano maker in the U.S.: "People are getting back more & more to wanting to do something for themselves--entertaining themselves." Many piano makers, such as Cincinnati's Baldwin Co., have helped the boom along with smart styling, hard selling, and by making it easy for beginners to learn to play.

New Models. Their first big move was to introduce the small, low-priced ($500 and up) spinet, which has almost entirely replaced the oldfashioned, lumbering upright and the high-priced grand piano. (Manhattan's famed Steinway & Sons, however, still concentrates half its output on grand pianos, from $2,700 up, for the carriage and professional trade.) The second big step was to offer a wide selection of pianos. Chicago's mass-production piano makers, such as Wurlitzer, Kimball, and Story & Clark, now offer from 30 to 50 different styles and finishes apiece. Story & Clark, which last year brought out a "corner" piano that looks like a combination spinet and tiny grand ($1,195), is making a new model this year in honor of Queen Elizabeth's coronation. Designed after a desk which belonged to the Duke of Wellington, the Lord Carleton will sell for $1,000. Story & Clark's most striking number: the "ranch-style spinet," cased in knotty pine, and decorated with a carved steer's head, leather straps on the music rack, and ranch brands carved to order on either side.

Colored Notes. In an effort to take the drudgery out of learning, many a piano maker has helped revolutionize teaching techniques. Instead of long hours of practicing scales, moppets are now taught to play simple tunes in their first few lessons. Piano classes, instead of individual lessons, also help by giving them a chance to compete with one another while learning such old standbys as The Maiden's Prayer. Some piano dealers have set up classes in industrial plants. Detroit's Grinnell Bros., for example, gives lessons to 120 Ford workers each week. In Chicago, the Kimball piano company makes things easy by distributing specially printed music in which the notes are indicated by little blocks of color. With the help of a colored cardboard strip inserted behind the piano keyboard, only the color-blind can fail to strike the proper chords.

With the number of children between 7 and 14 expected to increase 30% in the next eight years, many a piano maker soon expects to pass even the peaks of the old player-piano days.

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