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Aeolian Pianola

Not available for use in Recording Studios

Not currently on exhibit

Artifact TypePiano, Player

Manufacturer The Aeolian Company, Ltd.

Manufacturer LocationUSA, North America

Datec. 1910

Like the music box and the barrel organ, the player piano was one of the most popular forms of home entertainment in the pre-radio, pre-phonograph era. This particular example, the so-called “push-up pianola,” is unique in that it features no sound-producing components at all—instead, a player uses his or her feet to pump pedals that control a series of levers or “fingers,” which then “play” an external piano.

Operation/FunctionThis particular artifact is characterized by its Voresetzer, or “push up” feature, and employs two foot-operated pedals for activating the vacuum power necessary to drive the automated player mechanism. The player mechanism consists in a spindle, music roll, and tracker bar with two levers to control the speed and volume, as well as a rewind lever located underneath the hinged cover. The foot pedals may be folded back into the case for storage and when in transition.Cultural SignificanceThe player piano holds a particularly significant place in the proliferation of musical technology to the greater population. Although it was by no means the first device to employ such automated technologies, the player piano stands as one of the most commercially successful and accessible mechanical instruments, and was designed so as to allow those who were not professionally trained in the performance of the piano to engage in some form of musical entertainment. Not only were those who may not have had the means to access professional training able to “perform” with these instruments, but also those who may not have had the means or interest to experience formalized musical performances were now being exposed to popular forms while running their day-to-day errands. Devices such as the player piano, barrel organ, music box, and phonograph eschewed in an era that saw increasing value placed on more informal methods of musical entertainment, including those that could be used in a number of uncommon public venues, and signaled a way of experiencing music that diverged from the exclusively orchestral contexts of concert hall settings. Although more informal methods of interacting with music were less common throughout the nineteenth century, historical traditions that preceded the emergence of the concert hall advocated a similar concept that stressed the incorporation of music into everyday life. Today, the idea that music making is meant for only the formally or professionally trained is rather antiquated, with many technologies existing that offer greater flexibility for those wishing to engage in listening to or creating music for pure enjoyment or curiosity.Technological SignificanceThe music box stands as one of the first fully mechanical musical instruments, and is also one of the first to be capable of automation, predating both the player piano and the phonograph, and influencing the development of similar mechanical instruments such as the barrel organ. That being said, more primitive versions of mechanical musical instruments have been in existence since approximately the ninth century, while devices employing some sort of automatic mechanism, not necessarily for musical purposes, can be said to date back to Greece in approximately the fifth century BCE. The earliest musical examples emerged in the Middle East and, later, in Western Europe, and consisted of a mechanism that employs the rotation of a barrel outfitted with a series of pins; this design largely remained standard until the advent of the disc-playing music box in the nineteenth century. The primary predecessor to the music box is often considered to be the carillon; though an instrument that employs a struck instead of plucked action, the carillon was one of the first musical instruments to employ the occasional use of an automatic mechanism that would ring the bells of the instrument based on a musical program. Throughout the fifteenth century, the carillon continued to be developed into much smaller forms, and eventually found equal usage in both outdoor and indoor settings. The development of mechanical musical devices continued to grow throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe, and throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, cylindrical mechanisms similar to those found in music boxes were incorporated into large clocks, often employing the same system of gears, and consisted of an assortment of percussive instruments, including drums and, more commonly, bells, instead of metal tines. The use of a steel comb edged with metal tines instead of bells as the sound producing material is believed to have originated in Geneva, Switzerland in 1796, attributed to the Swiss watchmaker Antoine Favre, with the first fully developed music boxes appearing in around 1811. The first disc-playing music boxes emerged in Germany in around 1870, and by 1895 they had eclipsed the cylinder music boxes in popularity. The player pianos that succeeded music boxes employed a similar method of programming musical information into the machine: in player pianos, the pitch and duration of notes is transcribed as perforations onto a paper roll. Although these paper rolls may look similar to the perforated metal discs of music boxes, the player piano still functions as a piano, employing a striking mechanism to activate vibrations in strings instead of the plucked action found in music boxes. The player piano was even more flexible than the disc-playing music box, and it was standard for paper rolls to contain a number of different musical pieces that could be selected by moving through the scroll. Player pianos could also be operated as a “regular” piano, and thus served a dual function in the household, both for those who could play the instrument and those who could not. One advantage player pianos had over the cylinder music boxes and barrel organs of the time is that, while the pins of the cylinders had to be inserted manually, the perforations in paper rolls could be produced by a machine, making the latter format far easier to manufacture and reproduce. The first prototype of the player piano mechanism emerged during the summer of 1895 and is credited to the American instrument builder Edwin Votey of Detroit, Michigan. This prototype closely resembled the Voresetzer or push-up design, with a wooden cabinet that sat in front of an ordinary piano, with felt-covered fingers aligned directly above the keyboard. Votey’s design employed suction in order to power its action, which has since remained the standard in the construction of subsequent player piano mechanisms. Aeolian acquired the rights to Votey’s design and marketed their first instruments starting in 1897 under the Pianola trademark. Push-up player pianos were often regarded as being cumbersome and inconvenient to move and operate. As an alternative, the first built-in player mechanism was introduced in an instrument referred to as the ‘Apollo’, the creation of American piano builder Melville Clark in the early years of the twentieth century. This design soon eclipsed usage of the external, or push-up player mechanism. The earliest player pianos were not capable of activating the full 88-note range of the modern piano, typically only spanning between 58 and 65 notes; as such, many manufacturers produced a series of modified paper rolls with adapted scores. It was not until 1908 that the 88-note roll was standardized. The so-called ‘reproducing’ piano emerged in 1904 from the German firm of Edwin Welte, which came to be known as the Welte-Mignon. Reproducing pianos were viewed as a significant improvement upon the standard player piano in that they were capable of imitating many of the expressive articulations, dynamics, and even pedaling of a live, or human, performance. In 1914, Aeolian introduced the Duo-Art reproducing piano, which employed rolls featuring transcriptions of performances by well-known performers and composers.Users/PerformersAs with most automated entertainment devices, the player piano was designed specifically for use by those who were not trained in piano performance. In the early decades of the twentieth century, the player piano allowed users to experience “recorded”, so to speak, music in their homes as a form of entertainment. Prior to the introduction of radio in the 1920s, player pianos were often used in the home alongside phonographs and both disc- and cylinder-playing music boxes.

Object number1998.07.01