A player piano is a self-playing piano containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates the piano action via programmed music recorded on perforated paper or metallic rolls, with more modern implementations using MIDI. The rise of the player piano grew with the rise of the mass-produced piano for the home, in the late 19th and early 20th century. Sales peaked in 1924 and subsequently declined as the improvement in phonograph recordings due to electrical recording methods developed in the mid-1920s. The advent of electrical amplification in home music reproduction via radio in the same period helped cause their eventual decline in popularity, and the stock market crash of 1929 virtually wiped out production.
A piano roll is a music storage medium used to operate a player piano, piano player or reproducing piano. Piano rolls, like other music rolls, are continuous rolls of paper with holes punched into them. These perforations represent note control data. The roll moves over a reading system known as a tracker bar; the playing cycle for each musical note is triggered when a perforation crosses the bar.
Chickering & Sons was an American piano manufacturer located in Boston, Massachusetts. The company was founded in 1823 by Jonas Chickering and James Stewart, but the partnership dissolved four years later. By 1830 Jonas Chickering became partners with John Mackay, manufacturing pianos as "Chickering & Company", and later "Chickering & Mackays" until the senior Mackay's death in 1841, and reorganized as "Chickering & Sons" in 1853. Chickering pianos continued to be made until 1983.
Mason & Hamlin is a piano manufacturer based in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1854, they also manufactured a large number of pump organs during the 19th century.
M. Welte & Sons, Freiburg and New York was a manufacturer of orchestrions, organs and reproducing pianos, established in Vöhrenbach by Michael Welte (1807–1880) in 1832.
Wm. Knabe & Co. was a piano manufacturing company in Baltimore, Maryland from the middle of the nineteenth century through the beginning of the 20th century, and continued as a division of Aeolian-American at East Rochester, New York until 1982. It is currently a line of pianos manufactured by Samick Musical Instruments.
Sohmer & Co. was a piano manufacturing company founded in New York City in 1872. Sohmer & Co. marketed the first modern baby grand piano, and also manufactured pianos with aliquot stringing and bridge agraffes, as well as Cecilian "all-inside" player pianos and Welte-Mignon-Licensee reproducing pianos. Sohmer pianos were owned by U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, and composers Victor Herbert and Irving Berlin. Sohmer is now a line of pianos manufactured by Samick Music Corporation in Korea.
Lindeman was a name used by a series of piano manufacturers in New York in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The concern was founded by William Lindeman (1794–1875) on a small scale in Dresden in about 1822, and reestablished by him in New York City in 1835 or 1836, where it grew to a medium size within twenty years. American piano historian Daniel Spillane credited him as one of the first successful immigrant German piano makers in the United States.
Duo-Art was one of the leading reproducing piano technologies of the early 20th century, the others being American Piano Company (Ampico), introduced in 1913 too, and Welte-Mignon in 1905. These technologies flourished at that time because of the poor quality of the early Phonograph. Between 1913 and 1925 a number of distinguished classical and popular pianists, such as Ignace Paderewski, Josef Hofmann, Percy Grainger, Teresa Carreño, Aurelio Giorni, Robert Armbruster and Vladimir Horowitz, recorded for Duo-Art, and their rolls are a legacy of 19th-century and early 20th-century aesthetic and musical practice. The recording process – using a piano wired to a perforating machine – was unable to capture the pianist's dynamics automatically. These were added by a recording technician, who manipulated hand controls to notate the dynamics onto the recording 'master'. Thus, post-recording editing was required to produce the finished performance – usually a joint effort by the recording technician and the pianist themself, who approved the final product. Thus, these recordings do represent the overall style of these great artists and are a good representation of their live performances.
The Aeolian Company was a musical-instrument making firm whose products included player organs, pianos, sheet music, records and phonographs. Founded in 1887, it was at one point the world's largest such firm. During the mid 20th century, it surpassed Kimball to become the largest supplier of pianos in the United States, having contracts with Steinway & Sons due to its Duo-Art system of player pianos. It went out of business in 1985.
Bertha ("Bee") Walker (1898–1987) was an American composer and pianist.
The Cable Company was an American manufacturer and distributor of pianos and reed organs that operated independently from 1880 to 1936.
The Weber Piano Company is a former piano manufacturing company based in New York City and East Rochester, New York from the middle of the 19th century through the beginning of the 20th century, and continued as a division of Aeolian-American at East Rochester, New York until 1985, when Aeolian went out of business.
Clarence Nichols Hickman was a physicist who worked on rockets with Robert Goddard. He is known for developing the bazooka man-portable recoilless antitank rocket launcher weapon, and the American Piano Company Model B player piano. He is also known as the "Father of Scientific Archery".
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music.
Marguerite Volavy, also known as MadameVolavy, was a pianist known for her recordings of Czech music and composers.
Winter and Company was an American manufacturer of pianos. Founded in 1901 as Heller & Co. by cabinetmaker Gottlieb Heller, the firm was purchased and renamed in June 1901 by Julius Winter. In 1903, the company opened a factory on Southern Boulevard in The Bronx borough of New York City. In 1904, the company began to sell player pianos that used a "Master Player" mechanism of its own design.
Adam Carroll was an American composer, pianist and conductor. Over the course of his career, he worked on nearly 500 player piano recordings and rolls, sometimes using house pseudonyms Cal Adams, Victor Lane, and Harry Shipman. He was one of the most prolific Ampico artists of the time.
Frances Nash Watson was an American concert pianist and composer. In the 1920s, she was part of a musical trio with Elisabeth of Bavaria, Queen of the Belgians, and Albert Einstein. Later in life she was prominent in social and musical circles in Washington, D.C.
