Player Piano

From Dead Media Archive
Revision as of 02:51, 31 October 2007 by 207.237.246.232 (Talk)

Jump to: navigation, search

Pianistas, Pianolas, Piano Players– Oh My!

According to Player Piano Treasury by Harvey Roehl, the first man to construct a piano to play itself through mechanic means was, Fourneaux, a Frenchman who patented the player in 1863. The first player was constructed on pneumatic principles by pumping a handcrank in which a vacuum powered a set of metal fingers to play the keyboard of an ordinary piano. This device was called the Pianista and was literally a piano playing another piano (2). In the 1897 a man named Edwin Votey perfected the Pianola piano-player, which like the Pianista was a separate player that could "make any piano into an automatically-played instrument." (33). It was known as a cabinet-style player and consisted of pedals or "exhausters" in which the performer would work with their feet, "a paper-roll transporting device which fed the perforated music over a tracker board containing small windways leading to a set of pneumatic valves, and a row of small fingers at the back of the player which rested on the piano keyboard" (33). The Pianola was fiercely marketed by the Aeolian Company and it was because of this aggressive campaign that the Pianola had a short lived but large popularity. The machines, however, were large and clumsy and one would have to be careful the metal fingers didn't damage the piano keys, which were always at risk (33). The Pianola also only played 65 notes of the 88 note piano scale so original compositions had to be rearranged, "in many cases mutilated" to fit the range. (8). By 1908 the Pianola profits halted and the popularity for automated musical instruments gave way to the 'inner piano.'

The Ad of Liszt and the Gypsies

"The poor tinsel, the gaudy clothes, the dark passionate faces seemed to rise again from the keys. Mystery, lament, glad, mad, gaiety became crystallized in one imperishable beauty of music-in the soul of immemorial gypsies enshrined upon the keys."

Inner Player Pianos

Through the Looking Glass

A Note from St. Peter's on Player Pianos

Error creating thumbnail: Unable to save thumbnail to destination