A DIALOGUE BETWEEN COMPUTER AND PIANO MAESTRO

Following is recent dialogue between Man and Machine.

The COMPUTER:- A Piano is an apparatus, It is a machine. It produces various sounds.

THE MAESTRO:- Oh! What a pity! What a tragedy! A Piano is an instrument that produces sounds of gradual pitch depth and tone. The Piano-players were world-known celebrities. There are quality pianos used by celebrities. The world knew they never played except before a vast audience. They received astronomical sums for such concerts in advance. The pianos were concert-size grand and majestic. Some are known as PLEYEL, RIPPEN, BENTLEY, GAVEAU, SCHIMMEL, ERARD, SCHINDLER, BECHSTEIN. The best is the BECHSTEIN.

It can be played singly or by a group. It is an art. The computer does not know art. Art moves men.

THE COMPUTER:- A Piano is a set of wires of different thickness struck by felt covered hammers working by manually operated levers arranged horizontally.

THE MAESTRO:- It is a cold-blooded description of men's nobler works. The Computer makes world celebrities in the field of playing the Piano, mere laboratory technicians.

The Maestro, his fingers gliding and weaving the ivory bars, drew back from the keys and thread of melody melted into silence. The hands fluttered over the keys. At its sound, it looked as if everything else had stopped as the strains of the great Waltz in G-flat Major rose and  blended in the faint murmur of the hall.

THE MAESTRO to COMPUTER:- How was that? It is called music. It rings like merry bells in our ears.

THE COMPUTER:- The sounds were well-formed. They did not jar the auditory senses.

THE MAESTRO :- These sheets of paper indicate a sound to be made. The maestro fed in the computer the co-relation between the dots in the papers and the levers of the panel into the memory bank. It was as if he installed the Muse into metal and machinery.

He started with Beethoven as a test case. He installed all the fundamentals of musical notations in the computer memory book, the compact dish.

The Maestro retired for the night. The maestro fell asleep with a smile on his face. In between sense and sleep, his ears listened to the tunes. Someone was at the piano. It had the touch of a professional.

The computer had already begun to create sounds with the keyboard. A torrent of sound rippled from the keys spreading in the room reaching to his ears.

It was something the Maestro knew, had played himself over and over and again and again. His lips framed a silent 'O' as the sound rose and fell, half gay, half sad,a timeless melody- the Debussy- the immortal Arabesque. The music ebbed and flowed, changed mood and entered more solemn phases then, again a merry ripple, higher, ever higher; but at last with a descending scale, dissolving, vanishing disappearing slowly slowly slowly, far far away in the distant past.

In his half sleep he felt the music had resumed. This time a Chopin prelude, mournful and quite passionate. Chopin indeed waltzes in any key. It was saying the thousand things that it wanted to say but it can not say verbally. Within a few hours the music rack was empty. There was a pile of sheet-music on the Piano, which was empty and used. The copy of Beethoven's Appassionato lay closed on the disc.

In the morning, the Maestro was shocked to see the speed and strength. He decided to call all conductors, concert-pianists, composers, managers- in short all the musical giants. There appeared an alert on the computer-screen.

"The computer has the option to reject any action which it considers harmful to the general public at large."

THE COMPUTER:- "These nobler art is not for a machine." -the computer inscribed.

The computer can translate notes into sounds in a jiffy. But. Music is not for computer, to transform the sheets of musical papers into musical sound. It is for man. It is easy for the computer. It was not meant to be easy. It is meant to be tough and impossible for all.

The computer rejected the data. Music is an art. All arts are meant to be testing, hard, and laborious. There is no end. It is immortal.

The computer refused to interfere in areas in competition with arts like music dancing painting etc.