An organ, other than a Barrel organ, which may be played either by a keyboard or by perforated paper rolls; it is similar in this respect to a Player piano. The earliest player organs were reed instruments and were developed from the small portable automatic Reed organ (see also Organette). The first was the Symphony, made by Wilcox & White of Meriden, Connecticut, in 1888. This was little more than an American organ with a paper-roll-playing mechanism. The makers of the Vocalion reed organ produced a small 46-note organette called the Syreno. This became the basis of the first Aeolian player organ, built into a piano-type case and working on suction. The compass was extended to 58 notes and the instrument was named the Aeolian Grand (first produced in 1895). The Aeolian Company’s most successful player organ was a pressure-operated instrument, the Orchestrelle. A wide range of Orchestrelles was made between 1890 and 1918, all featuring a rich variety of Vocalion-patented ranks of orchestrally voiced reeds. Although generally retaining a single keyboard, two-manual Orchestrelles were made which used 112-note music rolls arranged to control two separate divisions of stops: these were particularly fine instruments. Manufacture was mostly in America but many were assembled for the British market by Aeolian’s piano factory at Hayes, Middlesex. Despite their relatively high cost, Orchestrelles enjoyed great popularity, having a large and varied repertory of music. In Europe the best makers of player reed organs were Schiedmayer in Stuttgart (the Scheola) and Mustel in Paris (the Concertal).
Player organ technology was soon applied to the pipe organ and Aeolian built a number of costly domestic instruments including some which used the Duo-Art system that was developed for the Reproducing piano. These pipe organs controlled their own stops and swell shutters from the music roll. Some of the finest player pipe organs were built by Estey and by Skinner in America, and by Welte in Germany. These generally were 88-note actions which would play piano rolls, but alternatively 58-note actions could be fitted to play the rich library of Aeolian music rolls.
J. Fox: ‘The Aeolian Orchestrelle’, Music & Automata, i (1984), 253–62
A.W.J.G. Ord-Hume: Harmonium (Newton Abbot, 1986)
A.W.J.G. Ord-Hume: ‘Who Invented the Aeolian Orchestrelle? The Story of the Vocalion’, Music & Automata, iv (1989), 240–57
ARTHUR W.J.G. ORD-HUME