I am starting this thread in the hope of stimulating discussion and interest in what may at first sight appear to be a rather obscure subject. This is a British forum, although it is clear that it is also used by correspondents from abroad with similar interests. But the history of the player piano has varied according to country, and in Britain over the last fifty or so years, it has been sneered at on a regular basis. Given the poor standard both of instruments and of many performances, that is quite understandable, but it has meant that the whole concept of the player piano as a serious instrument has often been unreasonably dismissed.

The BBC, and Radio 3 in particular, often used to denigrate the player piano, and have been prepared to play some very poor examples on air. An exception occurred when John Drummond, that wonderfully enthusiastic Controller of Music, organised the late Percy Grainger to play the Grieg Concerto at the Last Night of the Proms in 1988, when I was involved in the performance, but his idea stemmed from a desire to introduce a light-hearted item into a very particular Prom atmosphere, and there has been almost no serious involvement of the instrument on other occasions. The Tchaikovsky Experience, which was supposed to have included the complete works of Stravinsky, managed Stravinsky's Etude pour Pianola and Les Noces 1919 (which includes pianola in the accompaniment) mainly because I happened to meet a BBC executive backstage at the Proms the year before, and buttonholed him. But it was clear that they would not have been there otherwise, and none of Stravinsky's other re-compositions for Pianola were played.

By contrast, the West German Radio commissioned Paul Usher, the British composer (and member of this forum) to complete Conlon Nancarrow's sketches for a Pianola Concerto, Carnegie Hall saw the first successful post-war performance of George Antheil's Ballet Mécanique with Pianola, and the Flemish Radio Symphony Orchestra was brave enough to trust the pianola in the Rachmaninov Third Concerto. Perhaps it is always easier abroad, and Germans, Americans and Belgians will rush to confirm how lucky we are in Britain. Well, maybe so, but at any rate this thread will allow the doubters to doubt, just as much as the enthusiasts to enthuse.

That's enough preaching. I need to emphasise that there are two very distinct types of player piano. There is the reproducing piano, which plays back the recordings of pianists who sat and recorded in real time, and there is the pianola (my usage of the word), which is foot-operated, and whose rolls are generally not recorded, but simply transcribed from the sheet music.

If you are interested in background information on these instruments, then the Pianola Institute website is a reasonable place to start.

Here are two dreadful examples on YouTube of utterly uninformed commentary and pianola playing (no offence to our dear American friends):

UGH1

UGH2

Here is a non-recorded roll of the 18th Variation from Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, played (I hope) in a less distorted way:

18

Here are a couple of recorded Duo-Art rolls of Chaminade's Les Sylvains, Op. 60. I've tried to compare like with like, but the same piece played by two pianists is the best I can do at the moment.

Firstly, played by Ernesto Berumen, on YouTube, on a "fully restored" Steinway Duo-Art grand.

Then here is the composer, on my friend Denis' 1926 Steinway Duo-Art grand. The interpretation is a little different, of course, but it's the way the two pianos respond and sound that is important. The tone of the first one is metallic, and there is little dynamic variation. In fact, it sounds like a old pianola, people would say. That's unfair to pianolas, of course, but we'll let that pass. The second version is more natural, and one can believe that Chaminade actually sounded something like that. There is a tiny amount of artificial reverberation, since the piano lives in fairly dry acoustic.

With these thoughts in mind, I leave you to read and listen. Please respond, as this needs to be a thread, and not simply a discourse.

Cheers, Pianola

PS: I can upload music to the site at www.pianola.org, but I'm limited to 250 Mb download (by the whole world for the whole site) per day. I'll try it for the moment, because it's convenient to have "click-and-play" links, but if I get problems of over-usage, I'll use myspace instead.

So that picture is of a foot-operated one? SO: what is that guy doing with his hand?  (this is likely a very silly question, but I'm having trouble thinking of something sensible to say).

The recordings are quite lovely, though I'm not sure what more to say.  I'm a big lover of Nancarrow.  But I can't think of anything to say about him either!  I'm going to have to sit back and wait for somebody else to say something I think.

(also, though I cannot offer permanent hosting, I can offer hosting of mp3s for a month or so at a time, and I have a daily limit of several gigabytes).

Just listening to some of the mp3s on the website now.  I imagine the piano rolls of scriabin, in particular, must be of interest, given how much he was said to vary his interpretations of his own pieces (often changing dynamics considerably, I think).  (I don't have the score of the Poeme on the site at the moment, and I'm not well-acquainted enough with it to be able to tell how it departs from the score).

It came as something of a revelation to hear on the 96 Crackpots thread the Bach Prelude and Fugue taken from a 1905 roll. Of course we have to distinguish between an exact re-creation of what happened in 1905, and a re-interpreted re-creation. But the elimination of crackles alone in a message from those days is a giant leap for mankind. Imagine how different the world of pianism would be had Beethoven, even, made rolls!

And to-day we are thanks to the excellent Mr. Pianola preparing ourselves for the thrill of listening to Scryabine!

The description of the multitude of controls used by the player is interesting. Twenty-three years ago we used a little Japanese sequencer contraption with only one control - a large knob that controlled the speed. Even with a single control it was difficult to get the performance of rallentandos and so forth exactly right. Three or four separate controls must require great skill and become if it is absent a great nightmare.

Naturally nowadays it is possible to use sampled pianofortes of all kinds, and indeed entire sampled orchestras, which enable experienced MIDI composers to dispense altogether with the executant stage. There are many - possibly too many - tweaks and touches which can be applied to every recorded note or sound - literally hundreds. Much valuable information (and astonishing examples of people's productions) is available here for the younger members.

It all leads us to wonder whether executants as we know them are in the process of being phased out altogether!

Bryn, I didn't say thank you earlier for your info about YouSendit. I'll keep it in mind, though I'm going to try to stick to "click-and-play" to start with. Thank you.

Sydney, you are named after the house I was in at school. I know I need to address you more formally in your guise as a steward of the Crackpots, but I hope I shall not overstep the mark by adopting a slight informality in this worryingly schoolmasterly thread. I'm already halfway through a reply on the Pianola Appreciation thread, which includes some of my views on the relative unsuitability of automatic music to the concert platform, so I'll probably touch there on what you have said.

We are dealing with two different types of player pianos. The skill with reproducing pianos, where my friend Denis is, in my view, unsurpassable, lies in repairing them and tweaking them to sound as they were meant to. That means first of all getting the piano right, so setting up a Steinway as it would have been in 1925, say. Steinways themselves cannot do such a thing. I believe they try not to restore their old pianos, but if they have to, then they turn them into modern pianos as far as tone and touch are concerned. You can't blame them for that, because they have to remain in touch with current taste, and inevitably their workforce loses the old traditions.

The pianola, on the other hand, is the one with the multiplicity of controls. The right notes are a doddle, but playing them at exactly the right time and dynamic is the real challenge, as well as phrasing with the sustaining pedal, which is used for additional purposes on the pianola. This will all come out in time, if we all keep posting.

Tommo, I hope I didn't spoil any intended gentleness of your new thread, and if I did, I hope it may return! There were about 100 composers during the 20th century who wrote in various ways for pianola. Most of them did so just once or twice, and Stravinsky was by far the most prolific. He rewrote most of his major early works for the instrument. Take a look at the page which I keep about him here. Milhaud wrote quite a bit, and Hindemith, and Grainger arranged at least three folksongs. And Howells, Parry, Antheil, Honegger, Casella, James Wood, Ibert, de Falla, and so on and so on.

As it happens, if it isn't too badly behaved to tell you here, NMC has just published a CD which I made of compositions for the pianola. I don't really think I ought to provide links, but Google isn't far away! I also have very many accompaniment rolls for violin, which may surprise you in particular. I did the Grieg Third Sonata with a Norwegian violinst called Atle Spønberg last year. I think I would make a hopeless conductor, because I could never bring myself to tell others what to do, and it's the same in chamber music, which can make for difficulties. But Atle and I just dived straight in - he's an old hippie, a bit like me, and it was just wonderful, at least for me!

Here then is Scryabine, or indeed Scriabin or Skryabin, playing his Poème, Op 32. I've simply linked to the mp3 on the Pianola Institute website. It has an almost improvisatory quality, and was recorded in February 1910. This is a picture of the recording session. How did they do it? Watch this space ...


Cheers, Pianola

We thank the Member for the marvellous recording or re-creation of Scryabine's performance, which contains many noteworthy points. How slowly and carefully he plays! It accords with his indication at the beginning, "ben marcato le due voce, ma dolce," and we note by the way that the time signature is 9/8!

And not only that; he also brings out details we had never before heard nor noticed in this little piece. Especially the descending motif marked A and B here. It foreshadows such things in the decade to come!


The preceding section is marked "Inaferando" but being able to find it neither in Grove nor in Percy Scholes we do not know what that signifies. Is there a Member with Italian connections who might enlighten the Group?

Good afternoon!


In MT for January 1972, Hugh MacDonald wrote a four page article on Skryabin's vocabulary of foreign musical expressions. If you'd like a pdf, let me know. The paragraph in which inaferando appears runs as follows:

"A glossary of these expressions is revealing. His vocabulary is indeed rich and far-ranging. He enjoyed speaking French and could draw upon terms like 'fondu', 'velouté', 'envolé', 'recueilli', all relatively recherché French terms, while 'accarezzevole' and 'con una ebbrezza fantastica' represent an attempt at an equivalent Italian sophistication. There are mistakes and inconsistencies; for example, 'doux' and 'douceur', which appear frequently, seem to mean 'sweet' rather than 'soft', Skryabin apparently overlooking this dangerous ambiguity; 'inaferando', in op. 32 no. 1, is obviously intended to mean something, but it doesn't; Skryabin was not a careful proof-reader and his Soviet and American editors have added misspellings to his own. But it is not fair to say that Skryabin simply invented fanciful terms to suit his purpose. These are markings that fit the music more precisely and more poetically than any critic could achieve."

I admit to being very lucky with regard to MT. I have a run of most of it from 1903 to 1975, the main omission being the Second War, when my father didn't succeed in buying it. But Google provides the most wonderful index. It points me towards pages for which I would need a subscription, of course, but then I simply run downstairs and look up the hard copy! In principle, I would regard it as my duty to share this advantage with fellow forum members, although I don't want to be losing weight as a result of constant ascents and descents. And I frequently have other matters to attend to. But do regard me as a library of penultimate resort.

Baynes in a moment, ruby2!

Cheers, Pianola

Oooh - watching this space! 

Is it Sydney Baynes then, do you think?  Only I had ruled him out because I couldn't find any reference to him and the Witchery Valse, but then if you can't find it either then that's probably why.

Oh it's a shame there isn't some way to record it and send it to you, but with the pianola not working (and being in a different county) it seems like a non-starter.  I'll try to transcribe a little bit of the top melody some time, but I need a keyboard to hand.

Thanks for the link.  Unfortunately many things are blocked from this PC, including YouTube (rather spoils many a thread on here) and the above, but I'll have a listen at the weekend from my better half's broadband connection.

Ah - found this in here here:


So I didn't just imagine it then.  Although I would have been impressed if I had, I think it's a great piece.