Almost all of Liszt’s piano works can be found on piano rolls. The piano roll era lasted from about 1904 to 1930 and player pianos became so popular during this period they took one-seventh share of the American piano market with more than one million pianolas being sold. Although, to lower expenses and also for greater precision, most rolls were mechanically made and not recorded live, the name of a pianist (the composer of still alive or another well-known artist(79) ) was on the label for commercial reasons. Because of this, it is hard to tell today, whose playing is preserved on the rolls or whether they are just so-called fakes.The ragtime and jazz hits were immediately reproduced on rolls and many good works are known only from these sources. It was good business, too, so romantic piano virtuosi were busy making their roll-recordings. One of Liszt's last pupils, the German Emil von Sauer (1862-1942) never gave concerts in the United States, as far as I know, but he was a well-established pianist in America because of his piano rolls. The same applies to many artists who never toured America.

Even if ragtime and early jazz pianists and composers did not have the opportunity to listen to the great European players in concerts or examine the score of the geniuses of European romanticism, piano rolls surely filled these gaps. Especially as pianists could study each other's runs if they played the rolls slowly, even note by note. Great pianists therefore often refused recording as they were afraid of being plagiarized. (That was the downfall of the New Orleans Rhythm King as they had the opportunity to make the very first jazz recordings in 1917 but, after their refusal, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band were credited for being the first.)

Let us return to Liszt and European romanticism: what pieces became popular and definitive from the point of view of ragtime? The answer is simple: those that could became big hits.(80) And here it is worthwile to investigate what could become a hit and why. The topic was carefully studied by many aesthetes and musicologists, by Júlia Lévai and Iván Vitányi(81), among others. Hits must target the masses as consumers thus they must be musically simple but characteristic, easy to remember. This might seem a little contradictory as easy recognizability and simplicity also often result in the use of musical commonplaces and uniqueness cannot be something present only in text or some special effects. Dance and popular music are certainly always based on commonplaces of the serious music of the previous era, on the harmonic, melodic and formal elements already familiar to the public. Thus popular music always works with ready-made patterns. Everything that makes the tunes unique can be ‘built’ on top of this: occasional harmonic, melodic but mostly only rhythmic novelties. Hits must be easy to sing or whistle. And now we are talking about two different types of hits: tunes that became hits and genres. Because in America ragtime and jazz (dixieland, swing dance music) became chic, the big hits were the styles, the genres themselves, and the dance parties, the national pride and freedom connected to them. Only with this in mind can one understand the popularity of such tunes as Alexander’s Ragtime Band(82) or even of certain places of entertainment. (Probably this is the case in the beat and pop era, as well.)

It seems, however that those pieces by Liszt and other romantic composers could become hits in America that matched the ‘requirements’ below:

1. shorter piece, mostly a dance or catchy ‘character-piece’ (encore miniature)
2. contains commonplace harmonic patterns, sequences, authentic turns
3. exotic for some reason (because of its mood, minor key, topic or melody etc.)
4. simple in form (16 or 32 bar periods, mostly in duple metre)
5. can be Americanized easily (can be jazzed up, turned into dance music, for example), can be updated (in topic)

So pieces like Dvořák’s Humoresque, Liszt’s 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody, Liebestraum, Chopin’s Funeral March, Revolutionary Etude or Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C minor became hits. The list could be continued, more pieces will be mentioned in Chapters X and XV. Even though availability was not mentioned among the requirements, it is obviously an important factor and Liszt (and the composers of pianistic works) had an advantage in this. Also an exotic character was very important (see Chapter XI) and it was true for almost all music of folk roots or character. That’s why not only the ‘exotic but still ours’ Afro-American culture became a hit in America due to the activity of the minstrel companies, but the somehow exotic ‘but still ours’ music of the European immigrants was also adopted into the ‘new American music’ previously affected by Afro-American culture. (Think of polkas, for instance, that were, and still are, extremely popular in some regions.) And as much as Afro-Americans wanted to prove their cultural equality to whites, ‘Yankee Americans’ wanted to prove the same to Europe. In both cases this resulted in a slight transformation of the sought-after culture (thus American culture was Afro-Americanized among blacks and European culture was Americanized in America). It is true that influences worked both ways. I write a little more about this in Chapter XIX.