Mr. Pianola, might I inquire as to what you mean when you talk of 'terraced dynamics'?

(Oh, i said I'd get around to letting you know my web-hosting arrangements.  will have to wait)

I started a reply to this thread last night, well, this morning, at an hour I am too ashamed to disclose, Mrs Pianola being away until tonight. Bachelordom asserts its predominance all too speedily. Here it is, edited in the brightening light of day.

Hello, Alistair and Inky,

Mrs Pianola (whom Alistair has met) is in the south of France as we speak, managing her musical artists and, without knowing of your reply, Alistair, she told me that she had finally cracked Aix and had reached her hotel without getting lost. No more puns, I insisted, un oeuf is as good as a feast, as the Egg Marketing Board used to say when I was beardless.

Were I to tread on the eggshells you suggest, I should indeed be a basket! Both Humpty and Dumpty went to my university, one of them overlapping with me, and they have been exceptionally good eggs, not least by inviting me to record my recent CD for NMC. No omelettes yet, then, but an 'omily of praise would be in order, I think!

By terrace dynamics, Inky, I mean discrete fixed levels, without hairpins or accents. Conlon could have used any old player pianos, and indeed he said exactly that to me and to others, but he ended up with two Ampico uprights. I think John Cage found one in NYC, and the other came later, but I'm not sure of the detail. At any rate, the Ampico was designed to reproduce the playing of famous pianists, most notably Rachmaninoff, by a mixture of slow and fast crescendos and diminuendos, plus a series of six levels of accent that could be superimposed on the general dynamic. Conlon generally only used the fixed levels and not the crescendos, because his interest was in the contrasting of voices, rather than any great subtlety of phrasing.

There are exceptions, and one of my favourites is Study no. 6, a gentle, reflective impression of basking in the Mexican sun. Interestingly, he puts in just a little bit of rubato at the very end, effectively pausing minutely before the last chord. That's one of the aspects where I think his music is better on a pedalled pianola, because you can never predict the acoustic or the response of the audience, and things like rubato ought to be a two-way process, involving, or at least responding to the listeners.

Cheers, Pianola