He studied all the different styles of music ranging from ragtime, blues, classical and popular ballads. I began my search for J. I received a swift reply from Ramsi P. About a month after I wrote to Lawrence, I received the first of many letters from him. The exchange of correspondence between us continued right up until the time of his death. I decided to keep my letters as brief as possible, so that any questions put to him might receive a direct answer. I find that if you burden musicians with an excessive amount of probing questions and badger them for detailed references to past events, they will simply take the easy way out and give answers that they believe you would like to hear.
I explained in my very first letter that I had an interest in player pianos and music rolls and would like to obtain a background history of his career, beginning with how he managed to get started in the music roll industry, and how he was enjoying his retirement. I received the following reply: Reddings, sic Thanks for yours of above date. Eubie Blake is a long time friend of mine since About two years have now passed since I semi-retired from Aeolion Rolls. Ramsi had promised me an occasional assignment when I retired, but nothing has happened as yet in this regard.
In my next letter to Lawrence I asked him just how many music rolls he had arranged during his career and how he compared the arrangements of today with the great numbers of the past. I also wanted to know if he could help me obtain some sheet music arrangements of Jelly Roll Morton. This is the reply I received from him: It has been estimated that I have made something between 10, and 20, piano roll masters in my lifetime.
Interest in the result of all my efforts has survived through all these years only because I have worked very hard to please everyone who liked various styles of musical expression from Nursery Rhymes to Concertos. I would suggest that you contact Lewis Pub. Regards to you and all of yours from me and all of mine.
During the s, while he was working at QRS, Lawrence arranged a huge number of music rolls that were recorded by named artists on the Melville Clark recording piano. He continued to do this until recording operations were suspended due to falling sales caused by the Depression. In the s, Lawrence took a job with the U. Postal service, but still continued to take on assignments both for Imperial and the Aeolian Corporation. Working in the basement of his home in the Bronx, he also produced small quantities of rolls for collectors.
John Farrell has compiled a comprehensive listing of all known piano rolls played by Thomas Waller , together with those arranged by J. Among his finest works, created during the 40s and 50s, are his transcriptions of famous jazz pianists of the day. Many of these high-quality masterpieces were featured at my player piano concerts from to Alan Wallace sends the following article from the New York Age , dated Saturday, 2nd November , page 8, column 2. Among those initiated were John C. Christian and Lionel Russell, C.
King, secretary; Walton Mitchell, treasurer. Lawrence Cook, Edgecombe Ave. Jean Lawrence Cook sends details of this interesting piano folio titled: During the past decade J. Lawrence Cook has devoted his time to recording and arranging popular music for player piano rolls. This folio is published to satisfy the demands of many of his pupils in jazz, admirers of his playing and his innumberable friends. This collection holds no charm for beginners. It will furnish a wealth of worthy material to those who have studied music to some extent.
The miscellaneous selections of choruses offers an interesting study in styles of executing the diversified types of popular songs they represent. For those who wish to obtain these rolls, the following list is offered —. We wish to express our sincere appreciation to Mr. Max Kortlander and Mr.
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Handy for the use of their compositions, and our heartiest gratitude to Mr. Sparkes for going over the proofs. This book is respectfully dedicated to Mr. Steven Townsend and Prof. The photograph of J. Lawrence Cook accompanies his entry and appears on page July 14, , Athens, Tenn.
Jacob Lincoln and Zella Lawrence Cook; m. July 28, ; Annizella, b. Elks; Monarch Lodge, No. Presbyterian; Residence, Prospect Ave. He is the son of the late Rev. Song Service Studios, a school of modern popular music, that seeks to approach the subject seriously and from a new pedagogical angle, in May, Wrote and published J. Compiled a twenty-lesson correspondence course in refined popular piano playing, with player piano rolls to demonstrate the exercises included in lesson assignments.
Scored a concert-jazz arrangement of St. Louis Blues for W. Handy, the composer and publisher, and released the manuscript to W. It will help pianists to improvise when accompanying singers who like to have their own interpretation of this great song. Alan Wallace sends details of the following items of J. Lawrence Cook memorabilia from his collection. In Handy Brothers Music Co. Player Roll Artist and Earle L. In Alfred Music Co. Karl Ellison and Randolph Herr send the following article, which was published in the Fortune magazine, dated December Music Rolls Like the piano industry see page 99 , the player-piano roll industry has had tough sledding.
But while the piano industry has good hopes of recovering, the player-roll industry looks very much as if it might not. But now it is almost completely archaic and a bit wistful. There is only one very active company in the business — the Imperial industrial Corp. Max Kortlander takes the business to heart.
QRS was the great roll name though no one knew for sure what the name stood for — maybe Quality, Real Service. He spotted Max as a natural for player rolls and persuaded him to go to Chicago. As QRS slipped softly into its decline, Mr. Kortlander became a Director and in bought out the musical end of the business. He calls it Imperial Industrial Corp. Sacred songs sell well and so does foreign music — Polish, Bohemian, and German, with Greek picking up fast. South Africa is the best export field. But they make rolls that can he played only on their own pianos. Their only new output is popular stuff, no classical.
Hardly any player pianos are made. You probably know the principle of the player piano. In the player piano is a perforated cylinder over which the roll passes. When air is sucked in through a hole in the cylinder, a note plays. When you want to play C, you punch a hole in the paper so that it will pass over the C hole in the cylinder. This makes it possible for anyone to make it piano roll by punching holes in paper. Which is just the way Imperial makes its rolls today.
Lawrence Cook, a Negro, sits at his desk, a piano at his side, and plays a few bars of a song on the piano, arranging as he goes along. Then he draws lines on a roll of paper to indicate notes. Then someone punches holes where the lines are drawn, and there is your piano roll. It never gets near a piano until you play it.
Cook does an average roll in two or three hours and is very adept at imitating the styles of popular pianists. Ampico and Duo-Art scorn this cheaper method; their rolls are actually played and interpreted — as the old QRS roll were. It is, naturally, always possible to correct an interpretation by pasting up a wrong note or punching in an omitted one. Paderewski, a notoriously inaccurate player, always needed a lot of editing.
It is also possible to perform feats that no pianist could dream of doing — miraculously full of chords and fantastic arpeggios. The old and very popular pianola style of rolling bass and octave tremolo was never actually played by pianists. It was punched in afterwards. The potentialities of the player once got musicians very excited. Busoni was going to write a special work for one but died before he got around to it. Lawrence Cook was my chief assistant there and he was great on the theoretical side of the jazz piano and shaped the printed courses we had, containing sheet music of my improvisations on popular melodies.
They proved very successful in teaching by mail. However, I had to give it up in the end because costs just kept soaring. Advertising and copyright payments were heavy items, especially as the latter were always for very popular songs. The other partners in my school were Eve Ross and Teddy Cassola. Their contribution rounded out the work done by the [ sic ] Cook and me.
I was completely involved. Alan Wallace sends the following article from the New York Age , dated Saturday, 8th February , page 6, columns 3—4. Ubert Vincent, son of Mrs. Naomi Vincent, of West th street and the late Dr.
Your search for "The Piano Man" returned 57 results.
Conrad Vincent, made a fine scholastic record of standing the fifth highest through his school career with an average of On the basis of his regents of One of his prize possessions is a gold medal for three years Latin. In the romance language department young Vincent attained an average of Caliper school literary publication staff and received gold scholarship pin and gold service pin.
This boy who ranked fourth highest among other graduates had a page of merits listed in his name. During his career in Stuyvesant he kept his average at On his New York State Regents tests given in these subjects he made 97 per cent and 96 per cent. At the commencement exercises he received a gold scholarship pin and a bronze service pin, and a French medal.
Roll On, Imperial One of the most magniloquent named organizations on earth. But Imperial is a complete monopoly and it is enjoying a small boom, largely produced by A. Its customers are mostly U. To this small but steady market, Imperial sells approximately half a million pianola rolls a year. President Kortlander has about 25 employes sic. Lawrence Cook is a nearly indispensable man. There hangs a tale and a technique. It also hired such early jazzers as J.
But as the pianola gave ground to the phonograph, the pianola industry could no longer afford to pay for personal recordings. Most of the pianola artists moved on to greener pastures. He continued to make his own rolls, also produced rolls that accurately ghosted the performances of other jazz improvisers. All are ghosted by J.
Cook was born in Athens, Tenn. Cook High School bears the name of his father, a Presbyterian minister. As a boy he learned the clarinet and piano. He never made the big time as a jazz pianist. He has made over 20, arrangements for pianola rolls. Today, Cook spends his days with Imperial, his evenings earning a little extra cash as a clerk in the post office near Grand Central Station. His year-old son, Jean Lawrence, studies medicine at Columbia University, his daughter, Annizella, takes a voice course at the Julliard School of Music. Cook has found time to complete a course in short story writing, also contributes a monthly column to the International Musician official organ of the American Federation of Musicians on jazz piano technique.
Lawrence Cook, which was published in Each is entirely different, yet are often mistaken for each other by the general public and amateur musician. In chronological order, the blues, no doubt, came first. That is the object of this publication. First printing May Roger Richard sends the following article titled: Frog-I-more Rag By R. In Frog-i-more Rag Morton followed a customary form, — introduction, first part, second part, repeated first part and a trio. The composition is tuneful, the 32 bar trio especially having a beautiful melody.
About the Spikes Brothers and Jelly Roll in collaboration used the first part and trio of the rag for a song which they called Froggy Moore, which was never published. Recordings have been made and issued under the various titles, but it is always Frog-i-more that is used. The limited edition I have just published fully justifies my belief. Lawrence Cook did a superlative piece of transcribing and editing. Duncan Schiedt , renowned jazz photographer, author and historian sends the following breathtaking black-and-white photographs, which he took of J.
Lawrence Cook and others at the Imperial Industrial Co. Duncan had gone along to ask J. Performing and recording an arrangement direct onto the master roll using the step-perforator and recording piano unit. Editing the pre-production master roll against a first test punching of the finished roll. Here a hand punch is being used. Using a suction pump to keep the perforator mechanism clean for optimal operation. Once the pre-production master is produced, a copy for use in factory production is run off, as shown in this picture.
Another view of J. Lawrence Cook performing and recording an arrangement direct onto the master roll using the step-perforator and recording piano unit. A side view of J. Lawrence Cook editing the pre-production master roll against a first test punching of the finished roll. This picture shows him using a knife. Checking the paper that feeds into the twin production perforator.
Producing piano rolls from the final master roll. This twin perforator uses one master roll to operate two side-by-side punches to produce multiple copies quickly. There is another similar machine in the background. The onlooker appears to be John Sonnentag who worked in the shipping department from to Some of these shots may well be simply posed around the factory to make an interesting photo-shoot.
In , when Duncan took the above photographs of J. Lawrence Cook and others, the Imperial Industrial Co. Lawrence Piano Roll Cook is featured on the cover, along with a number of other notable artists. Abbey Records, a small record company located at W. In March , Abbey discovered what they were looking for in terms of publicity, credibility and success.
It came from a surprising source. Matrix G Abbey by arr. Lawrence Cook was issued on QRS Lawrence Cook was contracted to make music rolls, which would appear on r. There are still at least , in use today. Perhaps the guy around the corner from you has one rotting in his basement.
His name is J. Lawrence Cook, and since May 1st, , he has been a piano roll maker for Q.
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From his home at E. Hawkins, pastor of St. Augustine Presbyterian Church, had this to say: They are an inspiration, not only to their race, but to all peoples who look to church ties and family ties as the last hope of salvation in a troubled world. Just returned from a one-month vacation in Europe where he and Edith the little woman visited their son and daughter more about them anon , the inventor-musician was a picture of ease and relaxation in his E. My reception was less than enthusiastic until I met James P.
Johnson who was just hitting the big-time with his music on piano rolls. I did most of the work on a little machine at home. I sent some of my work to the U. Music Company in Chicago, and surprisingly enough, they liked it. Before long I was so improved that the U. Music Company investigated the success of the rival company, and after finding out that I was one of the main cogs in the wheel, they called on me quick.
They are the only company in the U. Cook had set up his machinery and workshop. So I purchased these machines and went into business for myself. A fellow in Hempstead, L. I also supply music rolls for merry-go-rounds, hurdy gurdys, carillons, chimes, and all mechanical instruments. It was sort of a reunion.
She is spending a year in France studying literature and music to get additional credits as a voice student. Army in Captieux, France. Remember years back some of us could boast of a player-piano. I never had one, because my father believed in piano lessons for his daughter, so I had to be the piano player in the family. I used to throw the lever and pump like anything and watch the roll go around as the music rolled out. Who made these rolls or how I never did find out. Today there are still 50, player pianos in this country and their hunger for music rolls is supplied by J. Cook turns out these magic rolls in a little room in the Bronx.
The nickelodeon foreran the player-piano. I remember someone showed me how to take a long string and attach paper clips the length of the piano inside. One clip for each string, so that when I played the piano the clips hit the various strings, sort of a mandolin effect was accomplished. It sounded fine to me, but when my father heard it, he did not think it such a good idea and made me take it off.
In those days, so it. After school you heard piano practicing coming from many homes, today I hear it very seldom. Also, I used to see students walking with their music either rolled in leather roller or flat going to or from the music teacher, now I never see it. Also I remember popular orchestras used to have their own arrangements in books sold on stands with sheet music in many stores, today these same stands seem to be filled with comic books.
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Tricky modern chords became popular which made all melodies seem to sound alike. I remember how my father was against me making up my own chords. Johnson piano rolls recordings, which appeared on a London LP record. The record features 8 piano rolls by James P. The recordings were made with the co-operation of J. He is also a great composer.
For the past few years ho has been seriously ill and not much in the musical limelight, but, for his artistry, his teaching, and, more practically, his generosity to struggling artistes, he is and always will be remembered particularly amongst the musicians of his own race. His music and his records are sought by collectors for they are always authentic and first-rate. As one critic says: A pounding, good-time music, full of exhilaration and the joy of playing, a professional and skilful kind of jazz that retains all the true spirit of the cruder New Orleans variety.
Very few of them had been issued in this country until recently when two long-playing selections were made up, one called Daddy of the Piano which included some of his earlier solos and another of Fats Waller Favourites which he recorded in June, The piano roll library is proving a positive treasure-trove of such music, recorded by early composers like Scott Joplin and the great jazz pianists such as Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton. Johnson started with the ragtime tradition strong in his blood.
He was born in New Jersey but soon drifted to New York and with the ragtime as basis, he added a strong feeling for the blues and his natural flair and liking for the better type of party and theatre music; the result is the unique mixture to be heard in its original form here and to be heard at second hand in the playing of all the pianists who learnt their playing within the orbit of the great originator. These rolls were made from to , of tunes by such diverse composers as Jimmy Durante and W.
All of them take on a new vigour at his touch. Lawrence Cook, a pianist in his own right who can be heard on London records. He has probably cut more piano rolls himself than anybody else, and was present at many of these sessions by other pianists. Judging by his faithful rendering of the solos on the Fats Waller Jazz Archive record, a style we are more familiar with, we can assume that these mechanical renderings at James P.
Johnson have been given the maximum of reality and authenticity by his sympathetic and expert touch. Now, at any rate, we have the proof. Original QRS label numbers of the roll and months of issue are as follows: Loveless love , April Harlem strut , May Charleston , June Pallet on the floor , September From Cadence is J.
Alan Wallace sends details of the following J. In Cadence Records released a 7-inch extended play record titled: Not everyone owns a player-piano. Not everyone wants to own one. But now, with this album, everyone who owns a record player can enjoy the music that comes from this one. As nearly as we can figure, and this is mostly a guess, there are fewer than , player-pianos in the United States.
A person who is addicted to player-piano music, is really addicted. Player-piano music is extremely nourishing. By that I mean very satisfying to hear, because something seems to be going on with much more profusion than it seems to have a right to. It is also a real link with the past and, if no personal association is made with the past, then an historical memento. An old yellow player-piano roll, mellowed with age and still playable gives a person the same feeling as reading hieroglyphics from an Egyptian papyrus.
It might seem hard to believe, but player-piano music has kept astride of the times like the modern automobile. One can trace the history of different styles of piano playing through piano rolls. There are the usual different moods, tempos and styles. This brings us, then, to modern piano — player roll style. Who would think to record player-piano rolls. Archie was listening to a player-piano one night and he was so charmed with the music that he decided then and there to record the selections contained herein.
Lawrence Cook, who is the chief and only active player-piano artisan was contacted for help in preparation of these sides. Cook has devoted his life-time to the making of player-piano rolls. He claims that player-piano music is a separate and distinct art form aside from manual piano playing and the nickelodeon. The nickelodeon usually does not compare with the range of sound or beauty of the player-piano. Most player-piano owners will feel rather deeply insulted if you refer to their instrument as a nickelodeon. The interesting thing to most people is the fact that the player-piano rolls recorded in this album include some of the hit tunes.
Lawrence Cook music rolls, which appeared on a Mercury LP record. The record features 12 music rolls by J. Guitar, string bass and drums accompany the numbers. The liner notes on the reverse side of the record cover give no indication that Lawrence was involved in the actual recording. But how can Cook claim to be an artist when a player-piano is mechanically grinding out the modern hits, backed by rhythm section? Cook happens to be one of an almost deceased profession. Lawrence Cook came to New York from Pittsburgh in , after completing a college preparatory course in piano technique.
In the spring of , he purchased a simple, hand-operated music roll perforator and studied the work of contemporary piano roll artists. His first piano rolls were made for U. Music Rolls in and continued thru , when he joined the staff of Q. Lawrence Cook Pure Music Co. Garlic Arc Music Corp. For this recording session, the Hardman Duo player-piano, which played the piano rolls arranged and perforated by J.
Bass was set on the left with the piano, while drums and guitar are on the right for stereo. For the monaural recording, all four mikes were picked up on one tape track as on Amplex , while for stereo, the separate left and right channels were etched on quarter-inch tape by an Amplex stereo tape recorder. Notice the authenticity of this recording, wherein at the start of each number, the mechanical noise of the player-piano is slightly audible. In fact, player piano rolls are extremely difficult for live musicians to work with, because their mechanical perfection is at times disconcerting in that sidemen vary tempo, while the piano roll is as steady as its mechanical counterpart, the metronome.
Hal Mooney Mercury Recording Director. Kortlander, composer of popular songs and a manufacturer of piano rolls, died yesterday in the office of the Imperial Industrial Company, East th Street, the Bronx. His age was Kortlander was president of the company, which engages exclusively in the manufacture of player piano rolls. Kortlander of Pacific Palisades, Calif. Then he gave the nod for the first piano passage, and the piano came right in on cue.
The instrument was a player piano, and the unseen fingers that pounded the keys belonged, in a way, to Stravinsky himself. Most of them — foot-pumped jobs with no concert-grand pretensions — were being played for the sheer rinky-tink fun of it by people who own either vintage instruments rescued from dusty oblivion or brand-new models, bought in a shiny showroom.
The player piano is coming back into its own again to the tune of Moon River and The Peppermint Twist. In my dreams it always seems I hear you softly call to me. Lone survivor of the once more than 50 U. Lawrence Cook, turns out the rolls by playing on a special piano rigged to a device like an IBM machine, which punches the proper holes in a master roll. Then the master roll is placed on the production perforator, which can punch out more than 30 finished rolls at a time. In Palisades Park, N. In cabarets and coffee houses across the land, pianolas are twanging away. Says Co-Owner Harry Schwimmer: Many buyers are women who recall the pleasure of pumping one as a child and want to share the fun with their own kids.
In suburban Elmhurst, Our seven-year-old twins bring in all their friends on weekends, and they sing away for hours. Through the years, they were modified and improved until — at the peak of their heyday around when , were sold in the U. The Hardman, Peck Co.
Player Piano Rolls - Popular - THE MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE
They feature player spinets with foot pedals only, feel that pumping out the music is a genuine part of the nostalgia that is their stock in trade. Says one foot-pumping purist: Lisa Fagg, granddaughter of J. Lawrence Cook, sends the following photographs, which are from the collection of his daughter, Annizella Cook Fugate. Julian Dyer, bulletin editor of the Player Piano Group, sends the following photograph, which is from the collection of Jack Shaylor.
Lawrence Cook leads nostalgic revival of long-forgotten player piano. No, the Broadway composer had not been resurrected. He was simply represented by a dowdy old contraption known as the player piano. Prior to his death, Gershwin had preserved That Old Feeling [ sic ] on the piano roll and his performance was now being rendered posthumously. The event, two years ago, was a kind of eerie red-letter day in a nationwide revival of the player piano, once the rage of the twenties.
Collectors are buying rolls of everything from gospel to show tunes and the strange upright instruments lend a delightfully dated atmosphere to off-beat entertainment spots. Leading this nostalgic resurgence is a retired New York postal worker, J. Lawrence Cook, who since has arranged some 20, rolls. Last year he issued between and and the market for both rolls and instruments to play them on is growing monthly. Today the player piano has caught on with all the suddenness of Batman.
Rolls are beginning to move like phonograph records and certain labels, notably Columbia and Mercury, have recorded it electronically for the regular market. Unlike Batman, however, the player piano is anything but camp. But more and more people are beginning to realize that this is an actual piano. Rachmaninoff and Paderewski often used it and their rolls have been preserved.
Over the years, Cook and his former boss, the Imperial Company of the Bronx, were alone in preserving its technology. It would appear that he was not a supporter of Womens' Lib! From a musical family, whose members had sung in Haarlem choirs since the early 19th century, he was a teenager during the Second World War, and remembered hiding a group of Jewish fugitives in the old house in which he had lived all his life. Rein was a wonderful ambassador for the pianola, by the way he could engage audiences, especially children, and he toured for a while with the North Holland Philharmonic Orchestra, entertaining audiences in the foyer during concert intervals.
Rein died on 31 December , just missing the new millennium, but his memory is still alive with many player piano enthusiasts in the Netherlands, and part of his collection of instruments has been donated to the Museum van Speelklok tot Pierement in Utrecht. Rod Hull and E M U Immortal - Click for Picture The late Rod Hull had the distinction of being the only guest on the BBC's "Desert Island Discs" to have chosen a pianola and a supply of music rolls as the luxury he wanted to take with him to his enforced isolation on an uninhabited tropical paradise.
Those who are unaware of the merry havoc which Rod Hull and his VERY lively arm-puppet created can find many stories on the Internet, notably about the time when Michael Parkinson, another pianola owner, was attacked by Emu during a chat-show interview, to the extent that he fell off his chair and needed rescuing. During the s, Hull's best-known TV series was produced, entitled "Emu's Broadcasting Company," and on occasions this featured a pink-coloured pianola, with occasional specially-commissioned music rolls.
Rod Hull also had a pianola in real life, and those who are curious about his musical tastes can find a selection of them listed on the Desert Island Discs website.
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He was clearly an extremely charming man and, according to the late Bob Good of the Aeolian Company, had attractive lady friends in most of the towns of Britain! Ashton Jonson - Click for Picture Ashton Jonson is remembered mainly for his Handbook to Chopin's Works, for the Use of Concertgoers, Pianists and Pianola-Players , first published in , which was so lastingly successful as a vade mecum that in he was chosen to represent British music at the inauguration of the Chopin Memorial in Warsaw. Initially a stockbroker and amateur pianist, Jonson changed direction in middle age and devoted himself to artistic activities.
He travelled widely, on two occasions around the world, and he lectured on music and musical appreciation in Britain and America. At various times he was the Chairman of the Poetry Society and the Hon. In Jonson gave a lecture on the Pianola to the Royal Musical Association in London, and from the recorded discussion it is clear that he was an accomplished player.
Gustav von Klemperer - Click for Picture In January , the Aeolian Company in New York received a letter from the German concert pianist, Emil Sauer, in which Sauer gave fulsome praise to the Pianola, a brand-new instrument having just been delivered to his home in Dresden.
Aeolian's publicity department was never slow to sense a useful opportunity, and it condensed two letters from Sauer into one very effective testimonial, in which the pianist also ordered a mahogany Pianola and sixty music rolls for his good friend, Gustav von Klemperer. In those balmy days before the advent of computers and mass marketing, no-one minded that Klemperer's private address formed part of a worldwide advertisement, though someone inadvertently transformed Wiener Strasse into Wein Strasse!
Lachmund Christened Arnaud Filbert Lachmund, this pianolist and Duo-Art editor was one of the six children of Carl Lachmund, born in Missouri, who travelled to Europe and became a pupil and devotee of Liszt. Lachmund Junior altered his first name to Arno at the Aeolian Company, where he shared some of the Duo-Art production and editing work with W. Creary Woods, and in the s he moved to Ampico, where his name became even more anglicised, ending up as Arnold Lackman, if the reminiscences of Adam Carroll are to be believed.
MacClymont The son of a successful New York jeweller, William MacClymont was a native of Plainfield, New Jersey, who became a well-known organist in East Coast musical circles, and in particular in those parts of New Jersey which formed the heart of the Aeolian Company's worldwide empire. His proficiency as an organist and choirmaster were very well reported in the local press of the time, and he was also a composer, of liturgical music and at least one opera.
MacClymont joined the Aeolian Company's staff no later than , as an organist and pianolist, and continued in that role until , when he resigned and moved between a number of other piano companies. As the cinema developed, he became one of the first theatre organists, at a time when such musicians were very highly regarded, ending up in early as the resident organist at the Strand Theater in San Francisco.
Unfortunately his tenure of that position lasted only a few months, because he died suddenly in the April of that year, perhaps as a result of the worldwide flu epidemic. He clearly had many contacts at the Metropolitan Opera, playing the organ at the funeral gala for Heinrich Conried, director of the Met from to , and attracting such soloists as Reinald Werrenrath and Louise Homer to sing at the Aeolian Company's New York Pianola recitals, to his own accompaniment.
He is mentioned affectionately in Elgar's diaries, and he was responsible for creating the Metrostyle lines on the note rolls of the composer's First Symphony, under Elgar's direction. He also made a number of 78 recordings of Aeolian Organ rolls, but he is best remembered by the general musical public as a composer of attractive songs and occasional keyboard pieces. Sadly, he developed tuberculosis at quite an early age, and spent many of his winters at the home of a friend in Monte Carlo, where he was a musical favourite of the local expatriate community.
He was nursed for a time by the family of William Knightley, the Aeolian Company's Export Manager, and he died at a nursing home at Hampstead, in north London. It's a good story, and we shall try to verify it in due course! Ignaz Jan Paderewski Paderewski was the proud owner of not one, but two Pianolas, which he acquired between and , no doubt as a gift in return for testimonials.
There is no particular record of his expertise on the instrument, but Frances Hodgson Burnett, mentioned above, throws some light on the apparent paradox of a world-class pianist needing to use music rolls to play the piano. Writing to a nephew, she explains that Paderewski found the instrument useful as a form of relaxation, and in the playing through of new music.
Most present-day pianists would use CD players in exactly the same way. Parkyn, born in the early s, started his working life in Boston, where he was principal 'cellist and manager of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, in addition to running a concert agency across the street from the Boston Commons. In this location he was less than a minute's walk from Steinert Hall, where Morris Steinert and his family ran the main Aeolian Company agency in Massachusetts, retailing Aeolians and Orchestrelles in the days before the Pianola had been invented.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, therefore, Parkyn appears, along with Vincent Toledo, in a concert at Steinert Hall in April , as one of the Aeolian "conductors" an apt title! Charles Parkyn's musical and organisational talents must soon have come to the notice of the Aeolian Company itself, for in late he moved to New York, where he took charge of the Company's rapidly expanding concert activities, playing himself in many of the twice-weekly recitals at Aeolian Hall.
It seems likely that he participated in a Mendelssohn Hall concert in November , accompanying the Kaltenborn Quartet in part of the Schumann Piano Quintet in E flat, and the photograph which can be seen by clicking the link above was taken during a rehearsal for this concert, in the Aeolian Company's warerooms at 18 West 23rd Street.
Parkyn also travelled for Aeolian, giving concerts in Baltimore, Boston and, in August , in Pittsburgh, accompanying the concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony, Luigi von Kunits, as well as venturing into four-hand piano music with Joseph Gittings, the doyen of Pittsburgh music at the time, by means of two hands and two feet. This concert was sufficiently well reviewed in the Pittsburgh Times that the Aeolian Company saw fit to publish the review as an advertisement.
At some point he seems to have returned to the Aeolian fold as a Duo-Art editor, as his signature appears on some of the Duo-Art trial rolls housed at the International Piano Archive at the University of Maryland. He met his wife, the Swedish pianist Ellen Berg, in Boston in the late s, and they performed together on many occasions in that city. His talents were spotted by the Aeolian Company, and he joined them as a recording artist for the new Metro-Art series of hand-played rolls.
According to his biography in the Duo-Art Catalogue, he had the unique distinction of being the first person to record an Aeolian hand-played music roll, and he also took part in Aeolian Hall concerts as a pianolist. Sergei Rachmaninov Rachmaninov spent many months in at the estate of his wife's parents at Ivanovka, some miles south-east of Moscow.
While there he wrote his Third Piano Concerto, commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra for his first American tour in early , and when not composing or enjoying the countryside, he was able to make use of his father-in-law's upright Pianola Piano. Many years later his sister-in-law wrote in her memoirs that she remembered him pedalling gleefully through the rolls of the Second Piano Concerto, and it is enjoyable to speculate that some of the sunnier, scurrying passages in the Third Concerto might have been inspired by his overfast use of the Pianola tempo control in the Second!
The details of a concert at Providence, Rhode Island, in which he participated, are preserved in the pages of Music Trade Review, and he must have been a reasonable player, since the programme included the Mendelssohn D minor Trio and a number of song accompaniments. Around , Reed was appointed Assistant Manager of the Aeolian Company in London, remaining as the second-in-command for most of its active existence. He was probably the most influential figure in the history of the Pianola in Europe, albeit in a discreet, "behind the scenes" manner.
It was he who took a Metrostyle Pianola to Norway in , where he spent a week working with Grieg, playing the Pianola to the composer's direction, and thereby marking up the red Metrostyle lines for Grieg's Autograph-Metrostyle rolls. Together with Percy Scholes, the British music educationalist and writer, Reed was responsible for the creation of the Duo-Art Audiographic project, which saw hundreds of recorded music rolls being printed with copious programme notes and illustrations throughout their length.
After Aeolian more or less ceased trading in Britain in the mids, George Reed took out British citizenship and bought the Belgrave Hotel in Eastbourne, on the south coast of England, but the Second War intervened, killing off the tourism industry, and his venture failed. He died in Bristol, where lack of funds compelled him to work in his later years as a book-keeper. Riess was a member of the Player Piano Group, and stated that he never liked to play anything on the pianola that he could not also play by hand. On one occasion, Denis Hall of the Pianola Institute heard him playing a Viennese waltz on the player piano, in a rather mannered way which suggested that he might not have been in full control of the instrument.
To Hall's amazement, Riess then folded the pedals away and played the same piece by hand, identically! This experience was the "Road to Damascus" moment that convinced Denis Hall of the value of the pianola as a serious musical instrument. Rorke Rorke was an occasional writer on music, who "discovered" the player piano in August , soon after the coronation of George V. He documented his journey into music and rolls in a little book entitled A Musical Pilgrim's Progress , first published by the Oxford University Press in The ways in which he travelled through Chopin and Wagner, to late Beethoven and beyond, clearly struck a chord with amateur music lovers of the time, because the book ran to three editions, and continued selling for decades.
If you are thinking of purchasing a secondhand copy of this book, which is in plentiful supply on the Web, then be aware that only the first edition has the full references to his passion for the player piano. By profession and calling a Presbyterian minister, Joseph Rorke remained a keen pianolist to the end of his life, with both a grand and an upright player piano at his home. By courtesy of the University of Toronto, a pdf file of the first edition of his book is now available for free download, from www.
Artur Schnabel - Click for Picture Artur Schnabel didn't actually play the pianola, and he might well have been horrified that a pianist of the accomplished rank which he considered himself to have achieved, should appear on a page devoted to such a base instrument. Well, it serves him right for making a nasty quip about the reproducing piano, which we shall seek to redress here! You can fill in the figures as you please, since that is what many historians and their uncritical publishers have seen fit to do. In fact, Schnabel was one of the more prolific piano roll artists, recording at least 56 rolls, for four different companies in both Germany and the USA.
And yet there is something elusively authentic about this story that needs to be pinned down. The most believable version concerns the Aeolian Company's Duo-Art piano, with the insidious untruth that the Duo-Art had only sixteen degrees of touch, whereas Schnabel had seventeen. Whether Schnabel really had only seventeen is for his devotees to say, and he would certainly have been a rather poor example of a pianist if such were true, but what is absolutely certain is that the Duo-Art had an almost immeasurable range of dynamics.
The dynamic coding on Duo-Art rolls begins with 32 theoretical levels, each of which, since pneumatic pianos are not the same as electronic computers, is effectively a miniature crescendo or decrescendo. It would be a brave musician who sought to quantify levels in the face of such variables, and in practice the Duo-Art editors added or removed coding perforations until the music sounded right to both their own ears and those of the pianists.
They certainly had a palette that was a good deal more sensitive than many modern MIDI-controlled pianos. But, although Artur Schnabel did not record for the Duo-Art, or at least did not record any known rolls, the Aeolian Company printed advertisements in October and November that proudly announced him as an exclusive Duo-Art artist. Aeolian was no tin-pot company, to make mistakes over the status of such a significant musician, so something must have happened. A well-functioning Duo-Art unfortunately a great rarity in the 21st century is a match for any other reproducing piano, and certainly for some of the others for which Schnabel was content to record, so it cannot have been a technical problem.
That narrows it down to a clash of personalities, a better financial deal from the opposition, or most likely a sharp reminder from Knabe, whose pianos he was billed exclusively to play, that if he failed to remain loyal to Ampico, in which Knabe pianos took pride of place, he could no longer expect to be supplied with pianos for his impending concert tour.
One possible clue as to the story's origin comes from the fact that he was guest of honour at a New York dinner on 11 January , at which Ampico entertained its retail agents from all over the United States, to brief them on its plans for the forthcoming year. By that time Schnabel was being publicly described as an Ampico artist, and yet some of those present would undoubtedly have seen the Aeolian advertisements barely two months before, which might well have set them wondering. If there were ever a time when Schnabel's legendary wit might have been put to ideal use, his after-dinner speech on this occasion would have been the very moment.
With such an important and far from impartial audience, the witticism would have been guaranteed safe passage into player piano immortality. Percy Scholes - Click for Picture. Scott of the Antarctic As with the expeditions which he rather autocratically led, Captain Robert Falcon Scott gains the titular glory for this particular entry, although on his journeys to the Antarctic, the transport and playing of the Pianola and the Broadwood player piano were something of a joint enterprise. For the first expedition, from to , the piano firm of John Broadwood and Sons presented an upright piano for use on the S.
Discovery , but the crew lacked pianists, and so a push-up Pianola was donated by Lady Baxter of Dundee, together with some 20 rolls of music. These were played mainly by Charles Royds, the First Lieutenant of the crew, but over the long voyage south there must have been complaints about monotony, because another or so rolls were sent out from England around Christmas , joining the ship at Lyttleton in New Zealand.
Royds, who later became Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, brought both instruments back to England in , along with a small reed organ which had been presented to the expedition by the people of Christchurch, New Zealand. Subsequently all three instruments passed to his daughter, who lived in Maiden Newton, Dorset, and for many years the organ was used at the Methodist Chapel in that village. No doubt it was lowered to its travelling position by means of ropes and a crane, and Broadwoods had sensibly constructed it so that it could be divided into sections when necessary.
Melographic rolls were frequently advertised as being impervious to changes of climate, so the Antarctic was no doubt perceived as an ideal advertising opportunity. Since fairy stories have a way of becoming accepted as historical truth, it is worth pointing out that there is no record that the musical repertoire for the second expedition included "Knees Up, Mother Brown," as mischievously reported by the British writer, Sara Wheeler, in both her travel book, "Access All Areas," and her biography of Apsley Cherry-Garrard, a member of the crew who went on to document the expedition's history in some considerable detail.
Cherry-Garrard was referring to a religious service at sea, and not at the Antarctic base, and all he can possibly have meant is that either the roll of selected hymns had insufficient verses to suit the occasion, and so proceeded onwards to the next hymn on the roll, or that the pianola player was inexperienced, and thus unable to match the speed of the music roll to the singing of the assembled crew. Such instruments are very definitely not automatic, and the notion that a player piano might somehow, of its own accord, decide to accompany Mother Brown, or indeed to play any music other than what was perforated on the selected roll, is palpable nonsense.
The piano and its removal to the Antarctic shore were described in some detail by Griffith Taylor, an Australian member of the expedition, whose reports were published in the Sydney and Melbourne newspapers in the spring of While on ship, the instrument was protected from any storm leaks in the deck by a covering of rubbercloth attached to the ceiling, with a tube diverting any accumulated water elsewhere. In mid-January , it appears to have taken two days to remove the stairs outside the wardroom, to dismantle and hoist the piano to the deck, along with the roll cabinet and its contents, and to transport them all across the ice and re-erect them in the Winterquarters Hut at Cape Evans.
Lieutenant Henry Rennick seems to have been in charge of the operation, and on 20 January , he courageously tuned the piano, and played Home, Sweet Home probably by hand , as a sign that culture had finally arrived! Cecil Meares, in charge of the dog teams, also played the Broadwood from time to time, and was captured on camera , sitting cosily next to the central heating. The Broadwood was later returned to London, via Christchurch in New Zealand, where repairs necessitated by water damage on the return voyage were carried out, and it subsequently went on display at the Ideal Home Exhibition.
Unsuccessful as Scott may have been in establishing priority of claim at the South Pole, one should not blame his Pianola or the other musical diversions which he quite sensibly took with him to Antarctica. Roald Amundsen took an upright piano on the Fram , which clearly did not prevent him from proceeding successfully southwards, and which nowadays survives at the museum located at his former home near Oslo, and Lieutenant Robert Peary took an Aeolian Pianola Piano on board the Roosevelt as he headed north, whether or not he actually reached his destination!
In the film of Scott of the Antarctic , James Robertson Justice pedalled an upright player piano as members of the crew danced round energetically in cossack fashion, crouching down and kicking their feet out, in celebration of midwinter on 22 June Although the incidental music for the film as a whole was composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams, it seems likely that the music on roll was the special Pianola arrangement of the Second Cossacca by Giacomo Marchisio, at one time the chief musician at Kastner Autopianos in London.
In May , conservationists from the Antarctic Heritage Trust in London visited Cape Evans, under the auspices of the Natural History Museum, and came across some spare pneumatic motors from the Broadwood, the wood still in good condition, though the rubbercloth having perished. It may be seen that the player mechanism used the system of unit valves designed by the American, Peter Welin, with whom Broadwoods co-operated for a while in the years preceding the First World War. Photographs of the pneumatics and valves were formerly included in the Museum's Antarctic blog, but they were removed a few years ago.
Luckily for us, they were safely archived by the Pianola Institute! George Bernard Shaw Bernard Shaw had at least two pianolas, which were sold at Christies in London many years ago. One of them was a note Metrostyle-Themodist push-up in a light oak case, sold again in Cornwall in Shaw used his pianolas to help introduce him to music, and he wrote about them occasionally. In the preface to his novel, The Irrational Knot , he explains that "I was an execrable pianist, and never improved until the happy invention of the pianola made a Paderewski of me.
I could play a simple accompaniment at sight more congenially to a singer than most amateurs. Johannes Sikemeier On Monday 9 December , the "Symphonia" orchestra of Rotterdam accompanied a performance of the Grieg Piano Concerto, in which the solo part was played on a Hupfeld Meisterpiel Phonola, the latest note model of the time. The identity of the "Phonolist" is also shrouded in the mists of time, but the renowned Rotterdam piano teacher, Johannes Sikemeier, is credited with helping the orchestra on this occasion, and it may be that his year-old feet provided both the motivation and the motive power for the performance.
Given that the player system was a Hupfeld Phonola, provided by the local agents, Gebr. Some Hupfeld solo rolls of the Grieg and Schumann Concertos have survived, and Backhaus is the soloist in both cases. Josef Stalin It seems that Stalin might have been a closet pianolist, for in October Leon Trotsky paraded his former colleague's private life in Life magazine, paying for his indiscretion some ten months later by a close encounter with an ice-pick.
His account runs as follows:. In one of the rooms there is a motion-picture screen; in another, a valuable instrument which has the function of satisfying the musical wants of the master - a pianola. They tell how delighted Stalin was when, as a child, he was shown for the first time this marvel of marvels.
He has another pianola in his Kremlin apartment for he cannot live without art. He spends his hours of relaxation enjoying the melodies of Aida. In music as in politics he wants a docile machine. And the Soviet composers accept as law every preference of the dictator who has two pianolas. There is currently no way of knowing whether this apparent insight was the un-french-polished truth, or perhaps a subtle attempt at black propaganda, at a time when the player piano had lost its former cachet.
Trotsky describes Stalin as encountering his first pianola in childhood, but by the time the Pianola went on sale in Russia, Stalin was hardly a child. If we count any Russian musicologists as readers of our website, perhaps they might enlighten us. Fermin Toledo - Click for Picture Don Fermin Toledo was the Aeolian Company's first artistic director, for about ten years at the end of the nineteenth century. Born in Spain around , he studied piano at the conservatory in Madrid, under the supervision of Manuel Mendizabal, who is better known for having taught the composer, Isaac Albeniz. In , at an apparently rather early age, he was one of the two prizewinning pianists of his year, the award being presented by Queen Isabella II of Spain, and then as a young man in the s he moved to Puerto Rico, at that time a Spanish dependency, where he found great success as a concert pianist and teacher.
In the late s he moved to New York, where he became the Artistic Director of the Aeolian Company, and the first expert player of the Aeolian organ. The illustration to be found by clicking the link above depicts the initial private recital for Pope Leo, with the General Chamberlain, Monsignor Ottavio Caggiano de Azevedo, and the privy Chamberlain, Monsignor Rafael Merry del Val, also in attendance. In the spring of , the Spanish-American War was declared, resulting in defeat for Spain, and the American acquisition of Puerto Rico and other islands.
As patriotic Spaniards, Fermin Toledo and his son, Vicente q.
Given that Vicente was already appearing as soloist in New York concerts in the mids, it seems likely that he would have been born no later than the s, at the time his father was active in Puerto Rico, and so he counts as a Spaniard by birth. He must have been introduced to the Aeolian range of instruments at a very early age, and he clearly developed a real affinity towards playing from roll, because he took part in a number of the Aeolian Company's important public concerts, and no doubt in its regular in-house demonstrations as well.
In January , he both organised and performed in a well-publicised concert at Mendelssohn Hall in New York, a sizeable affair, with three well-known soloists and a chorus of forty, during which he gave the first American performance of Widor's "Symphonie Gothique", by means of music rolls on an Aeolian Pipe Organ, as well as accompanying two singers, a violinist, and his own father in the Finale from the Mendelssohn G minor Piano Concerto.
April of the same year saw him in charge of a second concert at the same venue, only this time with Madame Nordica and Edouard de Reszke as vocal soloists, a combination that could hardly have been bettered. Moving to Paris in , he was equally busy with concerts and demonstrations in that city, as well as performing in various other European countries.
Two years later, in November , he was soloist in the Rubinstein D minor Piano Concerto at the Teatro de la Princesa in Madrid, accompanied by an orchestra of some 45 players, conducted by the Spanish composer, Arturo Saco del Valle. A photograph of that occasion may be seen by clicking the link above. In he moved once again, this time to Madrid, where he became artistic director of the Aeolian establishment in Spain, and in he and a partner set up in business on their own account, selling pianos and player pianos under the name of Gasset y Toledo.
Percy, as he was known in the player piano world, became one of the most accomplished player pianists of his time, and he developed his skills in that regard with the aid of a number of different instruments. Beginning his career as a Pianola representative with the Aeolian Company in New York in the late s, he left in to take charge of Melville Clark's Apollo showrooms in that city.
Two years later he transferred to a similar position with the Estey Company branch in St Louis, in good time for the impending Louisiana Purchase Exposition, known generally as the St Louis World's Fair. In he joined the Wanamaker organisation in Manhattan, giving many Angelus concerts in the famous Wanamaker Auditorium, and acquiring a considerable following amongst the musical public of New York. With an inventive turn of mind, he turned his attention to the devising of a system for indicating expression and tempo on music rolls, coming up with the Artistyle device, which combined in one single form of notation what the Pianola achieved with its separate Metrostyle and dynamic lines.
When Wilcox and White began the production of Voltem hand-played rolls, and subsequently Artrio recordings with automatically controlled dynamics, Van Yorx moved to Meriden, Connecticut, as the Company's chief recording producer and editor, and he remained in that city for about fifteen years, witnessing the bankruptcy of Wilcox and White in , and the acquisition of the Angelus Artrio, first by Hallet and Davis, and subsequently by QRS, whose expression piano, the Recordo, thereby became another of his responsibilities.
To those who doubt that the player piano was ever a truly musical instrument, the following recollection of Van Yorx's abilities, taken from the Music Trade Review in , has a plausibility that derives from the very detail of its description:.