Brief history of player pianos and their musical legacy

Classical
Clarence Adler
Eugen d'Albert
Wilhelm Backhaus
Harold Bauer
Alexander Brailowsky
Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler
Ferruccio Busoni
Teresa Carreno
Cecile Chaminade
Shura Cherkassky
Alfred Cortot
Fanny Davies
Erno Dohnanyi
Claude Debussy
Annetta Essipoff
Arthur Friedheim
Ignaz Friedman
Rudolph Ganz
Walter Gieseking
Percy Grainger
Enrique Granados
Alfred Grunfeld
Leopold Godowsky
Myra Hess
Josef Hofmann
Vladimir Horowitz
Ernest Hutcheson
Vincent d'Indy
Jose Iturbi
Frederic Lamond
Wanda Landowska
Ethel Leginska
Theodor Leschetizky
Mischa Levitzki
Josef Lhevinne
Arthur Loesser
Robert Lortat
Paquita Madriguera
Gustav Mahler
Nikolai Medtner
Benno Moiseiwitsch
Mieczyslaw Munz
William Murdoch
Bendetson Netzorg
Elly Ney
Guiomar Novaes
Erwin Nyiregyhazi
Leo Ornstein
Vladimir de Pachmann
Ignace Paderewski
Sergei Prokofiev
Raoul Pugno
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Maurice Ravel
Carl Reinecke
Alfred Reisenauer
Arthur Rubinstein
Camille Saint-Saens
Olga Samaroff
Emil von Sauer
Xaver Scharwenka
E. Robert Schmitz
Artur Schnabel
Alexander Scriabin
Rudolph Serkin
Bernhard Stavenhagen
Richard Strauss
Vera Timanoff
Michael von Zadora

The player piano goes back to the 1890s, however in 1905 German company M. Welte & Sons marketed the first "reproducing piano", a player piano that played with expression. Reproducing piano rolls have extra information on them to control the volume of the playing notes.

This invention spawned a huge industry that saw a range of other reproducing pianos, including Ampico and Duo-Art. These instruments and their rolls were expensive, the Welte-Mignon the most expensive.

Reproducing piano rolls ceased being made in 1941, leaving a legacy of piano roll recordings by many important pianists of the day. These include well-known pianists such as Rachmaninoff, Horowitz, Serkin, Paderewski, Grainger and Rubinstein. There are many others, now forgotten, but who were very famous in their day, such as Leschetizky, Busoni, Samaroff, Bloomfield Zeisler, Carreno, Saint-Saens and Pachmann.

Into the 21st Century
In the 1980s I developed a system of recording Ampico piano rolls in electronic form. This required a recording machine and a suitable interface fitted to my Ampico so the e-roll files could be played on the Ampico. (Click here for photos.) Other interface systems have since come on the market, and today numerous collectors play their instruments from MIDI files of piano rolls.

In 2006, I began developing a new suite of equipment to record all types of reproducing piano rolls as MIDI files. (Click here for photos.) The new equipment was commissioned in late 2011 and has since been used to record over 6000 reproducing piano rolls as MIDI files, including many rolls from the Condon collection, now held by Stanford University.

The end result
It has taken nearly 10 years to reach the point where we can offer such a wide range of MIDI files from Ampico, Duo-Art and all types of Welte rolls. The MIDI files come in two formats: as an e-roll, to suit original reproducing pianos fitted with MIDI valves, or as a standard MIDI file for a piano such as the Disklavier. At this time, we offer over 85 percent of the Ampico and Duo-Art classical roll libraries, and over 40 percent of the Welte-Mignon/Licensee classical roll libraries. Several rare roll recordings are included.

Popular music
While we have concentrated on gathering classical music from rolls, we also have a large number of popular roll recordings, in particular a significant selection of roll recordings made during the 1930s, including the last to be made in 1941. A feature of many popular rolls is the arrangement, achieved either by two live pianists, or post editing the roll. One of the great arrangers was legendary piano roll artist Frank Milne. The popular music library includes a wide range of musical styles, played by some of the best known musicians of the times.