A development of the ordinary player piano which, with special reproducing music rolls, can re-enact the original touch and expression of the recording pianist.
Early player pianos generally sounded artificial because only the coarsest variations in tone between bass and treble were possible, and early piano rolls were ‘metrically cut’ (meaning in strict time) by the roll manufacturer. The success of the instrument was dependent on the realism attainable by the performer working the treadles and hand controls (see Player piano). As early as 1895 both mechanical and pneumatic piano players were provided with a rudimentary means by which the treble notes could be played louder than those in the bass and vice versa. In 1900 J.W. Crooks of the Aeolian Co. invented the ‘Themodist’ expression system, whereby individual notes could be made to sound out over or within an accompaniment; this idea was taken up by virtually every other major maker of piano players and player pianos, and given a variety of names such as Accenter, Solotheme, Automelle, Solodant and others. It was then found that by varying the vacuum tension of the air between the separate halves of the valve chest or stack, combining this with a Themodist-type accenter, and applying the same technique to both halves of the keyboard, a much more realistic performance could be produced.
Pianos which used this type of artificially enhanced music-roll performance were called ‘expression pianos’ (sometimes also known as ‘semi-reproducing pianos’). They were almost always electrically driven (the operating vacuum was produced by a suction bellows worked by a motor), and were produced, mainly in Germany and America, as instruments for use in public places such as restaurants and ballrooms. Percussion instruments and organ pipes were sometimes incorporated; from these instruments evolved the piano-orchestrion (see Orchestrion). Expression pianos offering up to seven or more degrees of artificial expression continued to be made into the 1930s. Cheaper than reproducing pianos, they were ideally suited to playing popular music in places of public entertainment.
The player piano reached its fullest development in the ‘reproducing piano’, in which devices were incorporated that could reproduce the performing nuances of an artist, including changes of tempo, crescendos, diminuendos, sforzandos etc. by careful adjustment of the suction levels in the expression mechanism. The first such instrument was the ‘Welte-Mignon’, devised by Edwin Welte in Freiburg in 1904 and offered first as a cabinet-style piano player, later as a built-in player mechanism (fig.1). To compete with this the German firm Hupfeld introduced the ‘DEA’ in 1905. The Philipps ‘Ducanola’ was produced in Frankfurt in 1909. By 1913 two American reproducing player mechanisms were developed which were to become by far the most successful of the genre – the ‘Duo-Art’, made by the Aeolian Co., and the ‘Ampico’, made by the American Piano Co. (which became the Ampico Corporation in 1915). Hupfeld introduced the ‘Duophonola’ and the ‘Triphonola’ (1905), both marketed primarily in Europe. The method of reproducing a performance usually involved making two ‘recordings’ – one of the notes and pedalling, a separate one of the dynamics – as the artist played the piece on a recording piano. To record the dynamics the Duo-Art used a delicate mechanical device to register the rebound of the hammer from the string. The Ampico employed a spark chronograph to record the speed of the hammer during its last quarter inch of travel before it struck the string, with a trace on a revolving cylinder to record the power applied. Reproducing player mechanisms, which were usually powered by electricity, were installed in pianos of many makes, including Knabe, Chickering, Broadwood, Steinway, Weber and Steck. The Welte-Mignon, at one time, was available in pianos of 115 different makes. The heyday of the reproducing piano was between 1915 and 1930. As with other forms of Mechanical instrument, the reproducing piano industry was wiped out in the 1930s by a combination of the economic Depression and the increasing popularity as sources of home entertainment of the radio and the gramophone.
At their best, and when properly adjusted, reproducing player pianos could recreate the style of the original artist to a remarkably fine degree (fig.2). Piano rolls recorded by many of the leading composers and pianists of the day have survived. The value of each roll as a document of performing practice is affected by the quality of the pianist, the repertory, the roll itself, and of the recording piano mechanism and the degree to which it could reproduce nuances such as dynamics, balance of the hands, and voicing of chords and pedals. Likewise the instrument used to replay the rolls must be in first-rate condition to give a fair reproduction. While recording artists were content to endorse the product by signing the master roll, the question also remains as to how much editorial intervention was made between its cut and its publication. Besides the removal of wrong notes and the insertion of missing ones, roll editors were also known to ‘adjust’ dynamics and pedalling. At the very least the rolls are valuable as indicators of speed and rubato, and to a certain extent it is possible to generalize about the performances as indicators of practice from about 1905 and into the 1930s.
Many rolls have long been in the hands of private collectors, willing to invest time and money in their preservation, and the field has been only tentatively investigated. The number of surviving rolls is not known: a thorough catalogue of surviving rolls has yet to be compiled, especially with regard to rolls from the smaller manufacturers. Rolls cut for one make of reproducing piano will not play on any other. In order to extend their respective catalogues of rolls quickly, several makers, notably Welte, Aeolian and Ampico, pooled their artists’ recordings, licensing other makes to re-process the rolls to suit their own reproduction systems. Table 1 shows some of the pianists and composers whose recordings were issued by the main labels. The Artecho and Artrio-Angelus labels boast a similar roster of names, and the Duca catalogue adds Pfitzner and Toch to the list.
The fields of ragtime, jazz and popular music are also richly represented on piano rolls, including performances by Felix Arndt, Eubie Blake, Zez Confrey, Earl Hines, James P. Johnson, Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, James Scott, Art Tatum, Fats Waller and Teddy Wilson.
The repertory that has survived on music rolls is, to a great extent, music of the time, and may be viewed as an indication of what was popular in the concert halls (including the licence to perform separate movements of large works, something that came to be frowned upon in the later part of the 20th century). The great Romantic piano music was then either still being written or still fresh and this is reflected in the catalogues of music rolls of the day. In general, the older the music, the less it is represented: Beethoven is recorded more than Mozart, and of Haydn or earlier composers there is very little. All the pianists played flashy salon music and very difficult arrangements of light music, such as Strauss waltzes (almost all of them composed or arranged such showpieces for their own concerts). The music of Liszt, Chopin and Schumann is well represented, including Liszt’s transcriptions of Bach and Schubert. There is much Russian and Polish music, reflecting the nationality of many of the pianists.
The essence of the performing styles shown on the rolls encapsulates great rhythmic freedom, a soaring sense of space in phrasing, great lyricism and unabashed emotionalism. The playing may be described as uninhibited and pianists were clearly unafraid to take artistic risks. Absent is slavish adherence to the printed text and the reticence to add or subtract. The pianists did not see themselves as self-effacing in deference to the composer; rather, their role was to merge their personality with that of the composer and to create a new, individual whole. That composers may also be heard treating their own scores with the same cavalier attitude is surely a demonstration of the aesthetic principle at work.
Since the 1960s a revival of interest in the performing styles of such artists has led to performances of their rolls, and some have been made available on gramophone record or CD. Under contract with the Aeolian Co., Stravinsky composed his Etude for the pianola op.7 no.1; other composers who have written for the player piano include Hindemith, Howells and Malipiero.
A. Dolge: Pianos and their Makers (Covina, CA, 1811–13/R)
J. McTammany: The Technical History of the Player (New York, 1915/R)
H.N. Roehl: Player Piano Treasury (New York, 1961, 2/1973)
L. Givens: Re-enacting the Artist: a Story of the Ampico Reproducing Piano (New York, 1970)
Q.D. Bowers: Encyclopedia of Automatic Instruments (New York, 1972)
C. Ehrlich: The Piano: a History (London, 1976, 2/1990)
A.W.J.G. Ord-Hume: Pianola: the History of the Self-Playing Piano (London, 1984)
R.J. Howe: The Ampico Reproducing Piano (Austin, 1987)
C.H. Roell: The Piano in America, 1890–1940 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1989)
L. Sitsky: The Classical Reproducing Piano Roll: a Catalogue-Index (New York, 1990)
FRANK W. HOLLAND, ARTHUR W.J.G. ORD-HUME (1), LARRY SITSKY (with ARTHUR W.J.G. ORD-HUME) (2)